We have been living in our house for 6 months now. The move was big and we knew things would get lost. We just didn't expect them to stay lost for this long.
We moved several times before we bought our first house -- at least once a year. But those moves were with two adults and, for the last two, one very small child. This time around, we had five people, each with their own bed, dresser, and ton of gear, plus more furniture. It was a big job, and one I pray that we don't have to do again until the kids have moved out on their own!
We were very careful, when disassembling furniture, to put all the pieces and hardware into labeled ziplok bags.
Elli has a hospital bed -- the head and foot both raise and lower with hand cranks, and both sides of the bed have bed-length rails that you can raise and lower like the side of a crib.
So her bed has a LOT of hardware. I remember specifically labeling the bag for her hardware.
Then it disappeared. For 6 months.
We've had her bed in the corner of her room, with a dresser at the foot and a bookcase on the remaining open side, to hold all the sides up. For 6 months.
Yesterday, the warm weather prompted the kids to ask where the swings went for the swingset. We had taken them down for the winter. I started searching the garage, hoping that I would get lucky and find them within reach without climbing the creaky, rickety, rather scary ladder to the attic.
Under a stack of painting supplies, I spotted the bedskirt we had put on Elli's bed. I pulled everything out, and grabbed a bright orange booklet folded in half and held there with a hair elastic. Tucked inside was the ziplok bag with Elli's bed hardware!
We are both sure we've searched that box before. We can only guess that we didn't recognize the booklet (the manual for the bed) because we were looking for a clear plastic bag.
