It’s sperrmüll time again here and that means there are piles of junk on every street corner in our town, along with tons of white panel vans with Polish license plates cruising around. The vans started appearing on Saturday morning already, waiting with anticipation as people put things out over the weekend. It’s incredible to me how much stuff people find to throw away on these trash collection days, some of them making use of each and every one that comes along. And what you find out there is 95% pure trash. I mean it’s broken, damage, ancient, abused or just otherwise crap. But you have to register everything you put out or it will not be picked up…and I swear the garbage guys actually have a list with them because if you put out one pot, rug or book over what you stated on the list, they will leave it behind. And then there are the ones who don’t register at all, haul out a ton of stuff and then wonder why it sits there for the next week until they face the ugly truth and haul it all back into their garage.

We took advantage of the oversized trash collection day and finally parted with our leather sofas from the living room. They moved with us from Miami and have now been in 5 different houses over the past 8 years. As the first major piece of furniture I bought and paid for with my own money, it was incredibly hard to let them go. Plus I absolutely loved these sofas because they were classy, comfortable and a real steal when I bought them. But they have sustained lots of damage from cats, humans, a Newfie and more over the years and, aside from having them recovered and rebuilt which would likely cost us more than I paid for the sofas years ago, there just was no more hope for them.

So here they sat in front of our gate, begging someone to stop and pick them up. A few people did actually pause to see how they looked, but then they got back in their vans and drove away, which must mean that they were in even worse shape than we thought. It’s really such a shame because they were once so nice…

So as we grieve them, I share one last photo of them in our living room where they happily sat for the last 2 years. We did keep the chair for Ayla because it’s hers and she can get it as dirty as she wants at this stage. Now she wants to have a corner of the couch of course but we’ll see how that develops.

And now our living room looks like this. We had this couch in our extra room upstairs (which is becoming Mackenzie’s room) and Stefan’s dad helped switch everything out Saturday morning before they left. As you probably notice, this couch is massively smaller and less bulky than the other which makes the room feel huge. We’re still trying to find the optimal corners and positions for ourselves on it and are still commenting about it just not being the same but we are slowly accepting the change.

We’re probably going to order some darker Mysinge covers for it soon from IKEA which will not only bring more color into the room but hide some of the Newfie fur which is bound to be found on it soon. Throws and pillows will make a big impact as well. How do you like our new curtains by the way? Never would have thought something so simple could make such a drastic change in the room but adding those actually made the room feel cozy within minutes. Like a finished room and not just some place we’re storing furniture!

We have a trip to IKEA on our schedule for the near future anyway because we need to order closets for our bedroom so we can finally start on Mackenzie’s room…and will probably pick up her crib and changing tables then too so we have them ready to go. So much to be done still and before we know it, she’s going to be here!