People use the word “ton” so casually, so metaphorically, that it no longer has meaning. But sometimes it’s important to convey just how heavy a ton actually is.

Shortly after relocating from El Cerrito to Oakley—once we’d cleared out some of the sixty-odd boxes we brought with us and put such furniture as we had in place—we made a trip to IKEA and took advantage of their picking service, an absolute necessity for anyone who plans to buy up half their store. And, of course, of their delivery service, ditto.

Two days later, a truck arrived with 1048 kilos of IKEA boxes for us. That’s 2305.6 pounds, or one ton plus my brother. Here’s what they looked like in our living room.

1048 kilos (2305.6 lbs) of IKEA boxes

We had to haul a lot of that stuff upstairs, including Galant desks, a Malm bed, and the mattress. That meant opening the boxes and carrying it piece by piece.

Stefan got to do most of the assembling, starting with the easier things like Lack end  tables and Billy bookcases. Even so, it seemed that every five minutes he was asking me to come help with something, even before we got to the hell of building the bed and the lesser but substantial challenge of the Dömbas wardrobe.

To make it even more fun, his new power drill/screwdriver gave out about halfway through, so we had to rely on mine, which is 10 years old: larger, heavier, and less powerful. But it did the job, so now all we have to do is figure out how to get rid of those over-sized cardboard boxes.