How many times can you visit Ikea in a week?

Wow, it's been a crazy couple of weeks.  After two weeks of hotel-living and red tape as long as the Great Wall, we finally moved into the apartment. We moved our suitcases over and not but 4 hours after, our hired help arrived in the form of Caroline Klein. I had pretty much called up the Kleins the week before and begged them to fly down from Xiamen. Boy, was she a life-saver.

 To the untrained, non-OCD eye, our apartment didn't look that bad. But once we started opening up cupboards and looking at bathrooms, we were absolutely grossed out. I'll spare you the details, but in a nutshell, the chinese don't clean their house after they move out. Think wok-style cooking grease on every surface of the kitchen, yuck. Because of the humidity, the bathroom is all tile. They don't have shower enclosures or sloped drainage floors, so think mold/mildew in EVERY nook, cranny, and grout line.  Caroline and I spent spend about 3 FULL days scrubbing the entire house from top to bottom. I told her she gets the Friend of the Year award, don't you agree. Our hard work paid off, and the house looks and feels so much better. You know how it goes... you're okay living with dirt and germs, as long as you know that they're YOUR dirt and germs!

Here are some picture of the cleaned and organized apartment

Guest bedroom

Master bedroom 

Caroline cooking dinner, note the
amazing OVEN!!

Master bathroom, who puts a
glass door on a bathroom?

Family room, minus the new coffee table

On top of cleaning, we also had to buy some basic home necessities for daily living. Now you may remember that we packed a large shipment of stuff from our house in Midvale. I'd like you to know that the shipment finally made its way out of SLC, THIS WEEK. Yeah, I think my chocolate chips are melted. In the end, there was a lot of stuff we needed to buy including food, kitchen basics, appliances, and bedding.

Me and my Ikea cart, an impressive balancing act

There's this great area in Shenzhen called European City. It's a large area with several large foreign stores including Ikea, Metro (like Costco), Hola (like BBand Beyond), B&Q (Home Depot) and a few others. So we went shopping like the stores were closing down. I forgot how much stuff it takes to start up a home, and believe me, we're starting from scratch. The most annoying part is that when our shipment finally comes, we're going to have doubles of some stuff. But hopefully not too much.

Aren't we so cute

The next day it was back to Ikea to return stuff (they spoke ENGLISH at the customer service counter, go figure ) and then on to Metro (think Costo without the flat-bed carts). We made it out with one cart completely full and Caroline only holding the eggs (also very impressive). The final day of shopping was for appliances and a drain plug. Try explaining that you need a rubber stopper for your kitchen sink to a large group of laughing chinese teenagers. And they weren't just discretely giggling, they were knee-slapping laughing at us. In the end, we determined that sink stoppers just don't exist. I think we walked away with them still chuckling. Alas, one of the many frustrations of living in China. In the end, we got the house cleaned, the furniture assembled, and the kitchen put together. It's finally starting to feel a little more like a home, that is, minus the cockroaches ;)

Eric came home and said, "do you think you can
make cleaning up the floor a priority?"

Our lovely fridge, and new ikea bookshelf
filled with our "year's supply"