RaOb's Profile

I prefer hot coffee all year round. Occasionally, I'll have leftover coffee and I'll put it in the fridge for later. So yummy, especially on a hot day!

I've been failing at composting because I don't have a real composter (and live in an apartment). I've wanted one of these for so long, but they're too expensive. I'd love to win this!!

We were given a washer and dryer a few years ago. We lived in a house with hookups. It was great. We recently moved to an apartment where I have to lug our laundry down to the parking garage where the laundry room is. It's frustrating because we already own the washer and dryer. But, we moved for a job, and the job is great, so it's worth it. However, I long for the day when I don't have to leave home to do laundry. :)

I have both, but use my Cast Iron pans all the time! I have one that I got new, as a gift, and a bunch from yard sales and a thrift store (I cleaned them really well before using them - boiled water in them for a long time, then seasoned with oil in a warm oven for a few hours. Don't know if this is the proper way to do it, but it worked for me.). The only thing about them is they really hold their heat for a long time, so it took a while to get used to and occasionally adjust recipes especially for sauces so they wouldn't break. I learned recently about cleaning them with salt and a paper towel. I do that now, then rinse out with water (I don't know if any of this is the way you're "supposed" to do it) and it works well. I love them! They're what my mom used growing up (in addition to regular stainless pans), so they're special to me because they remind me of her too.

We have those chairs ("before" version). I'm so inspired to fix them up now!

Oh, and I guess I could mention a few things that we've done: we have a desk that doubles as TV stand in bedroom, we put wire stacking shelves (Target) in our walk in closet on the bottom to store our non-clothing stuff, we have a small kitchen and I work from home, so we made the dining room into an office with (Ikea) shelves to display some nicer kitchen items, as well as officy things, we have an ottoman (Overstock.com) that has storage for our board games, an antique chest that has misc things that we're not using stored in it, we have our knives, pots, pans and lids hanging on the walls.

Spidermum - I love the dresser with the granite top idea! Someday, I may ask my husband to make me one of these!

Both! I love painted wood, but also respect wood and love it just the way it is. I usually tend to leave antiques unpainted (unless they're already painted), and the more "thrift store" types often need some paint (and wow, what a wonder it can do!).

Some of these things are pretty funny, I think because we've been there (at least with some of it.) We've had some interesting neighbors that drove us crazy, but now we can look back at the experiences and laugh (um, usually/sometimes). We had a family of drummers across the street who practiced any time of day or night, and their dad didn't respect the neighbors enough to ask them to not play ALL the time (we understood that they needed to practice, but maybe they could have done it in their home, rather than in the garage for the whole neighborhood to hear, and not practiced say at 10PM). The drummer's cat who would dig in our flower beds and poop there (we think out of revenge for us asking them to be a little quieter). (NOTE, anyone who has this problem, a solution is cayenne pepper, which also works for dogs. It burns their noses when they sniff for a place to poop, but is harmless, from what I've read. Also, cats supposedly don't like rosemary or vinegar.) We had a 5AM wake up call from the neighbor's dog. When we talked to them about it they said that the dog also woke them up. Oh OK. At least we weren't the only ones. The all day barking from another set of dogs, who incidentally were given away because the barking started to bother the owner's boyfriend, who worked nights. We also lived across the street from a do-it yourself car wash, where people would vacuum their cars with their bass pumping. We called the owner of the car wash, who said he wouldn't do anything about it, we called the police, who asked us if we'd called the owner. We went over and asked people to turn the music down, and they were usually apologetic, but eventually we just moved, it was too much (all day, every day!). After moving from these past neighborhoods, we're realizing that the more we get to know our neighbors, the less these kinds of things might annoy us/the easier it might be to resolve these issues, because we have a relationship. Sometimes, in the case of the drummer family, it didn't work to get to know them (I brought them cookies once and told them we wanted to be friends, or at least have everyone feel welcome on the street). Hopefully in most cases it would have.

We just moved from a 4 bedroom house with a large kitchen, to a 1 bedroom apartment with a tiny kitchen. We went to Ikea and got some hanging pot racks that we mounted on a wall (and bought magnetic strips so the pots won't bang on the walls), we mounted a lid organizer on the wall, we bought some shelves to display some of the nicer kitchen things and cookbooks, and have many drawer organizers. I love all the ideas I've read, and am making a list of things that will help with our space even more!