hendrickb11's Profile

My daughter is almost three weeks old, so we are ready to let her drive.

Simple, clean, and efficient. Ties form to function well.

How do I find he Dakota dishes?

Last summer, we had an issue with ants in the kitchen. A friend recommended pennyroyal oil, something available at health and natural foods stores and typically used to treat animals for fleas. It worked. Well.

Anyone know anything about that coffee table? It just works so well.

More importantly, where can you get that simple, sweet poster?

I agree with *chloe's comments. Since I cleaned all of my drawers and my typical hiding places, I have found my home to be much more of a sanctuary. I realized halfway through my own "cure" that I was actually very cured already. I do not want to paint as I am in a rental, even though the landlords have said that I can go crazy with the color. I might still paint the doors in my room to give the place some pop. I have found inspiration in throw pillows, which actually scares my roommate and my girlfriend. We are fortunate to have a generous basement, one that basically adds several hundred square feet to our place. With this space, I have been able to create a kitchen storage area in addition to the main storage. My cure consisted of organizing my extra possessions in boxes, purging those things that did not matter as much as I thought they did, labeling the boxes, and clearing up the basement.

The tips that have mattered the most are the ones that help with the routine of dealing with the little things that often begin to pile up: recycling the mail, using attractive storage to deal with clutter (felt baskets on the stairs that move with me now that I can deal with more than a few magazines and some shoes, ikea baskets to hide extra mail and mags, etc), eating well, and the medicine cabinet. My friends laugh that I refer to this site so often, but a few of them have begun to cite some of the same posts that catch my eye. I better end this post. Thanks, AT.

Here is some more inspiration:

http://chezlarsson.typepad.com/myblog/2008/08/organizing-our.html

http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/chicago/bathroom/inspiration-12-organized-medicine-cabinets-069621

bepsf:

As strange as this suggestion sounds, try throwing every single menu that you have, all of the packets, and all of the plastic silverware into the recycling bins and the trash. You might curse yourself once or two trying to remember a favored restaurant or a delectable dish, but you will have nothing in the take-out junk drawer.

LilyC makes the point that starting out with small tasks lead to more ambitious ones. I read a great tip on one of the many home websites that find myself looking at; take 10 minutes every day to reorganize, purge, and/or clean one area in your house. Some might take you a little longer while some might take a few minutes longer. I have found that my place is less and less packed and more and more organized now. The whole process has taken less than a month, and I even skipped a few days.

I have two of the knock-offs from West Elm and for the most part am happy with their stability for the most part. One of the shelves seems to lean forward a bit more than the other one. I wonder if it might be slightly bent although the steel rods that users must insert through the tower structure and each of the shelves is extremely stiff. In my former, and much more cramped rowhouse, I bumped into the shelves on a few occasions and nothing fell off. The books only shifted a bit.

Can I pick your Eileen Grey tables? Ha! My Tolomeo lamp has nothing on the vintage Victorian heating grate that I picked up from my grandparents' summer home, my homemade Mission-style side table that I picked up at the Georgetown flea market years ago, and my sweet new microfiber couch that invites naps and relaxing. I hate to label interior styles. I like a mixture.