It was an IKEA pick and mix at Ms H's today - she's only just moved into her new flat, and has received a bulk delivery of many brown boxes containing all the parts for some wardrobes and storage units that had formed a small mountain in her living room.

The challenge was trying to determine what was in each box (without opening them up), made more difficult by Ms H also wanting a couple of the wardrobes upstairs - so it would make sense to take the parts for these nearer to their final destination, if only you knew which boxes to take.

After a bit of a chat with Ms H on how best to tackle the challenge, I just decided to begin somewhere...with something manageable.

I opened a box containing a Trofast storage unit - fortunately this seemed self contained, and Ms H showed me the separate baskets (that fit inside the unit) in a stack elsewhere...and got to work. I'd counted four brown boxes of Trofasts, so with the benefit of the learning curve, by number four I'd pretty much got the construction sequence mastered, although by now I had IKEA thumb from turning the Allen key so many times.

The clock had struck midnight (metaphorically...although it was very dark outside) at this point, so I showed Ms H what I'd managed to do, did a tidy up of the various other boxes, and assured her that we would arrange a return visit to try and conquer the rest next week...at least we've made it out of base camp.