Nicole Lewis's Profile

Never put anything solely in your name, or agree to being paid back "later." In the worst case scenario you'll have a falling out and never get repaid, but even in better conditions the exact amount might be forgotten and never paid.

I think that if I ever have a roommate again, I'll suggest separate toilet paper rolls, so we don't have to bother mapping out whose turn it is to buy more paper, factoring in different priced brands and different sized packages, etc.

Also, if possible, find a place with a dishwasher. When living with other people, this will add more to your quality of life than having a large room or other appealing apartment qualities.

Not sure what you mean by water bugs, silverfish? Or roaches as well? When my building was hit by roaches I started pouring boiling water down the drain every night as well as taking out the trash, making sure no dishes were in the sink, wiping down the counters, etc. Wiping things down with vinegar (a repellant) seemed to help too. My building forgot to sent the exterminator to my unit after I reported seeing 2 roaches, but after I did all this stuff I never saw another one again. I don't know much about preventing silverfish, but I'd imagine the boiling water would be worth trying. Have heard of pouring bleach down there as well, although that might be a bit of an environmental concern if you're doing it all the time.

I love small spaces and would probably do okay in that house for a short while, but it would bother me that I'd never be able to have people over, unless we wanted to stand and chat to each other in a single file line. I'm surprised there's so little window space though.

Recently the thought popped into my head of covering paperbacks with hardcovers, as it seems libraries used to do. Often when I check out books from my university library, the ones from the 70s have somewhat uniform green hardcovers, with the titles and authors' names stamped on the spine in the same clear font. It seems to me like in the 70s, the library covered all the paperback books it acquired in these covers, to protect them from borrowers. Anyone know if there's an affordable and viable way to do that for one's personal book collection? I have a lot of paperbacks and I think covering that way would help them as well as keeping my bookshelves looking less cluttered. Plus, I'd imagine if you got really into it you could color-code appropriately, using slightly different colors for different book categories.

Purple and red is my favorite color combination, but I never see it used in people's homes. I'm moving into an apartment with exposed brick and am thinking about painting the remaining walls a muted purple color, kind of like a mauvey lavender. Would love any suggestions about how to approach such a color scheme and what other colors I should use or avoid with those. These rooms pictured here are a bit saturated/dark for me, although the second one is charming.