Practicing Clutter Bug Restraint

Remember this drawing? I turned it into a repeat pattern and sent it off to Spoonflower to have fabric printed. I had an idea that if it turned out OK I'd use it in the laundry room as a curtain. I picked the cotton voile and ordered 2 yards. It's sheer enough to diffuse bright light, while opaque enough to maintain a good amount of privacy.

There are still a few touch ups left to make the laundry room finished, but I'm so happy with it. I've done my best to keep the clutter to a minimum, which is not a strong point for me. This particular nook of the house gets a good amount of sun, making it a favorite napping spot for 2 little kitties, but it also heats up pretty quickly in the summer. The sheers will diffuse that heat while allowing the natural light in. Plus I think the oranges in the curtains tie the weird orange rug into the room design; it might just stay after all!

The sewing table is covered in a tan cow hide, leftovers from a reupholster project. The brown laminate top was just too industrial for the space. Leather, fortunately grips to the table so the sewing machines don't dance around while in use.


That blank wall is tempting me to hang some art, but I'm holding out, waiting on some extra funds to properly frame a photo by Abby Powell. Since we usually take on an anything goes attitude with decorating, I feel like this is the closest room I'll ever have to a Mossy Shed.

There you have it: the quietest, sunniest room in the house. Inspiring space for folding laundry or blah-blah-yawnsville?

A weekend of progress

This is how we started off on Saturday. Pulling down the old ceiling which was water damaged from a roof leak and a couple of tiles were actually falling down.

Inspired by Abbey's ability to get stuff done, I set a goal to finish the room this weekend. So what if it was totally unrealistic? By 7 PM Saturday the room looked like this. (We're waiting to see how much/if the bead board will settle before trying to pull it flat around the edges.)

Then on Sunday morning I woke up at 6:30 while the other 2 2-leggers in the house slept for.another.2.hours. and touched up the paint, moved the orange rug back in and did a little bit of laundry purging.

When we demoed the closets to make the laundry area we saved the wood from the shelving. My granddad built the shelving from construction scraps and old army crate wood. I liked the idea of reintegrating them into the house somehow--you know, keep his industrious spirit a part of the place. The legs to this low table came from some of those shelves. I asked Charlie to make me a 56" long x 22" wide shelf in different types of wood so we wouldn't feel obligated to make it all matchy matchy.I like how it's rustic. Add a few houseplants on it and then we're really talking!


So maybe it's not totally finished, but it's so much better than this, right?

Still to do: Add ornamental trim around the door area to the washer/dryer to keep the look of woodwork uniform with the rest of the house;
hang bi-fold doors to hide the washer/dryer area;
paint trim white;
add sewing table top;
replace blinds with something (anything!) more attractive;
change the rug - I don't want to keep the orange rug, but since we already have it (no more money to spend on this project), for now it stays.

Laundry List

This is going to sound whiny and privileged, so bear with me and know there are also regular life things going on, so the following "issue" isn't really an issue, just an ongoing search for a clutterbug's organizing solution.

Our laundry room is in an upstairs alcove, which means it's visible as a space you walk past anytime you're upstairs. It's a 10 x 10' sunny, warm, welcoming spot when clean, but a stressful eyesore the rest of the time. Let's face it, stressful messy rooms don't get used, and I need to use the laundry room or they'll start complaining at work. 

In my eternal quest for a vacation-land home, I'm stuck. We have a few items (pictured above: free desk rescued from the dumpster by the Mr., similar dresser to the one shown via Craigslist, 3 sorting baskets from Ballard Designs) and I want to keep it as simple as possible.

Any great ideas come to mind for helping me make our ugly space pretty? I'm ready to start outsourcing laundry...hey, that's not such a bad idea. 

A brief intro to our indoor composting station

In case you haven't noticed, we take our compost pretty seriously. There's a worm bin in the kitchen, and passive piles (sometimes hot...but to be honest I haven't had much time to keep turning them so they're passive for now) in the yard. The chickens do a lot of compost work by eating veggie scraps, but we don't give them spent coffee grounds, onions, garlic and a few other things; our worms get those.

The worm bin, though was too awkward for our new kitchen arrangement. In order to get into some of the cabinets the bin had to be moved, and worms don't particularly care to be bothered with that. They like to have little by way of change, so I'd been considering a vertical worm bin for some time. We'd kept them going for 3 years in the storage tote bin, I finally decided it was time to move them to something a little fancier: a Worm Factory. Lucky for me, I know a guy.

I got in touch with my friend (and fellow Master Composter) Stefan and ordered the Worm Factory and a bokashi bucket. {Because if you're going to have worms in your kitchen you might as well have fermenting waste as well, right?}

Bokawha? Bokashi is an anaerobic form of composting. You're basically fermenting the food scraps. I thought we should add that to our composting repertoire because you can add bones and dairy to the bokashi bin.

Adding meat to my diet way back when created a new challenge for our household food waste. Before, when there was meat in our house, it was only Charlie's meals and I wasn't a fan of touching/preparing the stuff, so everything was of the heat-and-serve variety that no longer resembled the formerly living creature it once was. No skin, no bones, no fat to cut off.

Now, though, the meat comes straight from the farmer; it looks like meat, there are bones, there is skin, there is fat. Usually trimmed fat and skin go to the furry kids, but bones pose a risk so they are sometimes used for broth preparation, but ultimately go to the landfill.

After little rearranging in the kitchen, the worms are in their new home and the bokashi has started a-brewing. I'll keep you filled in as things progress, but for now I love the fact that I can open the cabinets without shifting everything around. A bonus for the new set up? The two new bins take up less space than the old worm bin alone!

Oh, this new old thing?

I spent a little time over the holiday break working on home projects that weren't on the agenda. This particular one started by cleaning out a closet, finding a piece of upholstery that was about 7 yards long and wondering what I'd  bought it for. I couldn't and still can't remember. Surely it was a great price, though? As far as the fabric goes, I think it's a polyester faux brown pony hide sort of texture, but it's soft and almost velvety. Very very comfy.

Like all good procrastinators tend to do with all the more important things needing to be done in mind, I set out to make a slip cover for our hand-me-down sofa. If you couldn't tell which is the better version of the sofa, it's the velvety brown version on the left. I promise the slip cover is an improvement from the worn fabric of its bygone days, despite my lack of photography skills. I didn't have enough fabric to do the pillows, so I'm still deciding what to do about them. Even before the new look we'd just keep them in a pile somewhere in the corner of the room and use bed pillows for a little extra comfort.

I'll save reupholstering those for the next bout of major house projects...you know, for when I need another excuse not to do something.

We've been enjoying the new old sofa quite a bit  since winter weather has moved in. Lots of TV time and family snuggling, plus it's nice to have a cover that can be tossed into the washer when a certain little someone decides to try out a glue stick on the furniture! Best of all? It didn't cost a new old dime!