Some people use letters or numbers, others use colored stickers (we in fact did that for the boxes), but for keeping track of which shelves and which sets of shelving pegs belong with what bookshelf, Vyx broke out the washi tape. During the preparation for moving day, she used one roll of washi tape for each individual bookshelf, then stuck a strip of tape from that specific roll onto:

• The bookshelf unit
• Each shelf from that unit
• The bag containing the shelving pegs taken from that unit

You might wonder why she went to all that trouble, but not all of our shelves were purchased from the same store or during the same timeframe. Even from year to year, Ikea’s bookshelf line can change somewhat. (Sometimes.) And not all of our shelves came from Ikea. (Most, yes, but not all.) All of this means that “just grab a couple of the black shelves” won’t guarantee that they’re the right fit for a given unit. Best to keep ’em organized.

Which wouldn’t be a problem but we have a lot of dingdanged bookshelves (and bookshelf-adjacent units, like my CD/DVD shelves). There are eight in the office alone, plus several more in Vyx’s bedroom, plus at least four in the living room. I might even be forgetting one or two somewhere.

During my lunch break I wanted to get one more of the office bookshelves squared away, so I looked at the washi tape stuck under the top of the shelf unit so I’d know what to go grab from the supplies stacked downstairs… then realized I probably wouldn’t remember by the time I got down to those stacked supplies from the office upstairs. So I did the purely logical thing:

I peeled the tape off of the shelf unit itself and stuck it to the back of my hand as a… well, handy reference while I looked for the correct shelves and pegs. Simple, practical, and since washi tape comes off very easily it wasn’t even painful.

And now, yet another shelf awaits its allotment of reading material.

We have so much yet to do, but progress is progress nonetheless.