Wow, what a day!!

So this morning, I awoke to the sound of a knock on my door. It was the FedEx guy returning my laptop to me, which had been sent to HP for repairs. I had stayed up too late last night (see previous post) so I was not up yet and had to rush down the stairs to get to the door before he left with my laptop. I was expecting it, so I knew who was knocking. I’m glad it woke me up.
When I came downstairs, got my laptop from the delivery guy, and turned around to walk back up the stairs, I stopped cold. Why? What did I see?
In my dining area, I have 2 tall, black bookcases. We had 3 but lost one in the move. One of the others had been dangerously close to collapsing, so we reinforced it with metal brackets, hoping to make it last a bit longer. We thought it was working out well, but apparently we were wrong…
The entire bookcase had collapsed in the middle of the night and was crumbled into a book-laden mess on the floor! This happens to be the bookcase with 4 of the 5 shelves packed full of books. It was a mess! So I went and got Joey out of bed and took him back upstairs with his Daddy to hang out while I cleaned up the mess.
It took me about half an hour to get everything off the floor and I had to rearrange my other bookcase in order to find a place for all the books. That left quite a few other items without a home.
We managed to get through the school day without any major mishaps, though I did have to shoo Joey out of things more often than usual because things were here and there. Later in the evening, we decided to run to Wal Mart and grab a few grocery items. I also had 2 things to return.
We got all of our groceries and then made our way over to the furniture aisle to see what kind of shelving they had that was in the same price range as the money I had received from my returns.
Let me take this moment to share a public service announcement with you. The bookcases I had were tall, 5-shelf bookcases. The brand was Wal-Mart’s mainstays brand. IF you like to rearrange your furniture on occasion, or move around a lot, do NOT purchase these shelves!! The price is great at around $30, BUT they will not last very long. The 2 older ones that collapsed of mine were just shy of 2 years. We have moved dwellings twice since purchasing them, and I can’t even tell you how many times they have been rearranged since purchased. They did not hold up well. Spend the extra money and buy a nicer bookcase, I beg you! The reason they are not sturdy is because the side pieces are actually not one solid board. They are 2 separate pieces. Here are the bookcases in question…
To make a long story short, I decided to buy a smaller, 3-shelf version (which we also already owned one of) to get me by until I can afford a nicer set of bookcases that will not fall apart on me. The bad part about them is they had NO black shelves in stock and I had to have a replacement ASAP as I had lots of things without a home.
It ended up just fine though and I really like the shorter shelving. It makes the room look less cluttered, which is always a good thing. I will try to take pictures tomorrow. I spent another 2 hours after we got home assembling the shelf and arranging my things exactly where I wanted them. Yeah, I’m a little OCD, so sue me.
The silver lining through all this was that the shelves collapsed in the middle of the night while we were all asleep. That heavy pile of books could of really hurt one of us if we were in the way when it came down, especially Joey. Once again, God was looking out for us!
I’m hoping for an uneventful day tomorrow!

Blessings,

: ) Cassie