After my first full week, the bedroom is set up. Clothes are put away in drawers. Window blinds are installed, where they weren't when I moved in. Clothes is hung. Laundry is being done. The other important room, the bathroom/laundry room is set up with new shower curtain & liner. A nice, but inexpensive, metal wire shelf, over-the-toilet shelf is set up, which holds towels, etc.
The kitchen is functional, but not a lot put away as I need to install cabinet and shelf liners. In fact, I'm making new shelves for all the wall cabinets. They previously were simply raw pressed wood shelves which was gross and warped and impossible to clean (the Trifecta of "trash-it"). I also got some white 1/8" masonite which I am cutting out for the bottoms of all the wall cabinets and base cabinets. It is glossy white and easy to clean.
Since I cannot yet put things away in these cabinets the kitchen appears to be a disaster with all my appliances, dishes and utensils filling the countertops and my kitchen table. Also, the refrigerator has become an erstwhile cabinet for lots of food items that really don't go there.
This does not mean that some cooking and baking has not been done. Friday I made a nice little 1 lb. meatloaf and made a loaf of white bread in my vintage Panasonic Bread Oven. I plan on baking bread in my cast iron dutch oven soon and also playing with sourdough and other starters. (If you are interested in breadmaking, I highly recommend "Flour Water Salt Yeast" by Ken Forkish.) But for now, you can't beat the convenience of tossing the ingredients in the Panasonic bread pan, pushing a button and going out to do other things while it magically transforms it into a fresh, hot, steaming loaf of sandwich bread for the upcoming week's lunches. I'm sort of curious to know what I can do with a meatloaf sandwich in the (new) Breville Panini Press that I found at the Goodwill for $40. (Love that thing and there are lots of ideas for what you can do with a panini press on Pinterest.)
The other absolute essential is morning coffee. I only need a single cup in the morning, before heading off to work (2 or three cups on weekends) and so nothing beats an Aeropress for the combination of fast and delicious. ("Frugal" makes it another Trifecta). It also takes up next-to-no-space in a drawer or cabinet. If you don't believe me on how great the Aeropress is, perhaps you will believe the many reviewers on CoffeeGeek.
So, on tap for today is changing the leaky trap under the kitchen sink, finishing the kitchen cabinet shelf project and putting things IN the cabinets, as well as putting books in the bookshelves. That should free up some floor space and allow me to get rid of a lot of boxes. The big mystery right now is what happened to the box containing the nice vintage set of Revere Ware set that I purchased off of eBay. I swear it was one of the first things that I packed and brought into the apartment, but it is nowhere to be found. Hopefully it will turn up, but I think it is GONE. If so, that is a bummer.
