You Have to Clean Before You Can Tidy
My closet is now officially tidied (or KonMari’d, if you want to turn the method into a verb)! It doesn’t look drastically different, especially because the most dramatic change is in the drawers, but it feels so much better in there. No more piles of t-shirts on the top shelf, no more collections of crap on […]
The Life-Changing Cult of Tidying Up
Are you interested in my quest for a less disastrous house? Check out my whole tidying archive of posts! If you are a person who reads the internet, you have probably heard of Marie Kondo’s book The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up. Perhaps you have even tried to read it. Most people who succeed in reading it […]
Oh, The Container Store
The other day we stopped by The Container Store to shop for trash cans. Yes, I have reached the point of my life where I think a trash can is something you shop for. While there I saw they are having a 25% off Elfa sale. We’re having another baby and I totally want to […]
Visible Progress, Finally
After a lot of trips where nothing at the house changed much (and a few where they looked considerably worse), we finally had a weekend where it felt like things were moving again. We went down Friday after work and I made a plywood cutting jig, following the instructions in this youtube video (hat tip […]
Crazy Ideas
So planning a kitchen is exciting stuff, which is good because dealing with structural problems is pretty boring (but also expensive). But today I’m taking a break from the real world of home improvement and diving into insane(ly cool) stuff. Because I need a break from researching gas installation and hot water heaters. Here’s 3 […]
Fix All The Things
Inspection was last week. Man, 40 year old houses sure to have a lot of shit wrong with them. This is really the first time I’ve had to deal with most of this stuff. The places I lived in college were post-civil-war era shit holes slowly collapsing into the earth, but I was renting so […]
A Shore House in a Flood Zone
Let me start by saying that I never really wanted a beach house. I’ve been in enough hurricanes that the idea of owning property near the beach is more terrifying than alluring. Super Storm Sandy ravaged the New Jersey coast in 2013, bringing flood waters near or above what FEMA defines as the “100 year flood” […]
Time Management as an Art Project
For the past few months I’ve been waking up in a cold sweat freaking out about things I forgot to take care of. A lot of it is little, like forgetting to schedule a hair appointment until after they’ve closed for the day. Some of it is bigger, like the Kickstarter I did a few […]
Toddler Closet Organization
It’s my favorite time of year… time for the Container Store elfa sale. This year the closet in my daughter’s room got a makeover. Her closet consisted of hanging organizers from Ikea which were the source of much cursing due to their poor design and awkward center of balance. I have been planning this closet for […]
It turns out you can wash pillows
I was browsing Pinterest for work (yes that is an actual thing) and saw a pin on how to whiten your pillows. It links to a “magic whitening formula,” most of which is probably just OH MY GOD DID EVERYONE ELSE KNOW PILLOWS WERE WASHABLE? Somewhat skeptical, I went to the Closet of Old Gross […]
