Extreme Origami

I knew it was going to be a big bad ugly mistake. I should have walked away at the till. The little voices were screaming at me, NOOOO, don’t do it. Hindsight is a wonderful thing, and I must remember to put that on my next expansive wish list to Santa.

I purchased a 5 drawer filing cabinet and an A4 box during a closing down sale. Nothing too out of the ordinary about that, I hear you. I really do. However, said items were made out of cardboard were flat packed and self assembly. As I strode confidently out of the shop I felt like a time millionaire and that I really had bought a complete bargin. Until that is, I came to assemble it.

The window of opportunity was about an hour, whilst small baby slept. During said sleep, I normally clean the whole of the ground floor of the house, running round like a crazed tazmanian devil. I guestimated that I could assemble both items and still have time for a coffee and a slice of cake.

There were no instructions for the A4 box. After 10 mins of minimal effort, the box was standing and leaning only very slightly to the left. I felt proud of my achievement and was ready to graduate to the chest of drawers. Wrong, oh so wrong. After 10 mins of frenzied activity, I decided that the chest of drawers had been designed by people who put up Ikea furniture, in the dark, without instructions, for fun. There must be a name worse than sadomasochists for such people.

Determined not to be beaten, I started again. After repeating this cycle about 10 times, I started shouting the words Origami and Hai. I was even tempted to get one of Stuarts ties and wrap it round my head, Rambo style. Deep cleansing breaths did not help, nor did threatening drawers with the recycle bin. In the end, the shrill tones of my screaming daughter helped focus my frazzled mind. I persuaded the items to fit together using my feet, using a technique commonly referred to as kicking. That worked a treat.