I wanted to start working on Nils’ tree nursery, and I needed tools. Soon, I had to learn that finding tools in the adega was difficult. But, I should be more specific: finding tools was easy. They were everywhere. It was finding the tools I was actually looking for that was challenging.

There were piles and there were piles. If you looked in the right pile, you would eventually find the answer: the tool you need is in a different pile.
There were really quite a lot of tools. And the system was—Well, supposedly, there was a system: some piles were Annemarie’s, some were Laurelin’s, some were Nils’, some were something in between. I did not know, nor care. I just wanted to find that damn thing with the saw-toothed edge!

Those who know me well know that I can be … impatient—a trait I inherited from the adega’s owner Annemarie. It was already November. Their stuff had moved there in June. So why had she put up with this maddening mess for so long?

The answer was in the ceiling—the wooden ceiling with tiny little holes everywhere made by little woodworm fuckers who weren’t even supposed to be there because hadn’t the sellers insisted that “no, there are no tiny, squirmy creeps eating away at your house”?

And so it was that my 68 year-old mother—grandma of 5—had been slaving away, poisoning the adega ceiling (hopefully not herself), so that her youngest daughter Laurelin wouldn’t have to. After all, Laurelin might still need her ovaries.

Meanwhile, the boric acid fumes had subsided, the little critters were assumed dead, and Annemarie no longer needed to be able to access the ceiling with her brush of liquid death. And their stuff? The stuff was still there, spread over heaps, boxes and crates.

There was stuff under the stuff. But there was also stuff that could potentially be used to put the other stuff away in.
The wine barrels were already there.
What if I stack the big barrel that’s in the middle of the walkway on top of the other barrels?

After moving one barrel out of my way, and starting to surf the wave of my annoyance alone, I was soon joined by Annemarie and Laurelin, who had had to tolerate the same wave of annoyance rolling over them every day for months on end. Now, the time had come to ride it out.

Like the woodworm, the chest was an unpaid extra from the previous owners. And it had to be treated with boric acid, just like the ceiling, the doors, the doorframes, a lot of left-behind tools, shelves, et cetera.

Before we could do anything else, we needed to make room for the unassembled shelving units that were scattered all around. Having cleared most of the floorspace adjacent to the walls, we could start erecting the racks, and then move all that stuff back in, neatly stacked.

Annemarie could finally put these boxes in their place, stacked in racks where they can annoy no longer, with what little energy was left after months of fighting more than just woodworm.

And thus I was able to leave for The Netherlands (to “Huize Haarbal”) the next day with a somewhat lighter heart, knowing that, although the messy adega surely wouldn’t have annoyed the residents as much as it did this highly inflammable person, it will serve them better in its more organized state.

Before our frantic wave of annoyance flushed through the adega, these foodstuff were a scattering of boxes, baskets and piles.
The solid wooden chest was allowed to stay, but it had to settle for an orientation against a narrower stretch of wallspace.
The three Portugese hobbit creatures in the picture are taking stock of all the new storage options.

With Annemarie’s now-organized adega, there was one less mess to constantly remind her of the falsehoods and neglect that she bought into.