debbb's Profile

Hi! My Cure is totally out of order, and this is my first (and therefore long) post, but I'm happy to report that I'm enjoying the Cure changes in our 2br, 2bath in downtown NYC. Here's why:

Thanks to the Cure I realized why my living room was feeling wrong, wrong, wrong. It was 80% color and 20% neutral (and as we've learned from Maxwell and AT it should be the other way around). The whole space was too busy with color, and too matchy-matchy. So I removed the extremely colorful, patterned 8 x 10 carpet and replaced it with a smaller, round, neutral carpet from the kids' room. More of the wood floor is exposed, so the space looks bigger.

I switched around the (unused/hidden behind the couch to maximize playspace) coffee table and the kids' art table and added an actual - gasp! - living gardenia plant bought from the Flower District. Somehow we've kept this plant alive for weeks!

On the wall in the living room we had a set of 8 very colorful pictures arranged in 2 rows and 4 columns. Yes, they matched every color in the carpet, the throw pillows, and the kitchen stools. I took down 4 of the 8. What a difference.

Now the space is 80% neutral and 20% color. Ahhh. The room is infinitely more relaxing and restful now. It's lovely.

(I'm not sure what to do with the expensive 8x10 carpet - it's now under our bed, and I'm not sure if we should sell it.)

I'd love to share "before" and "after" photos of the living room, but in my enthusiasm to change things I forgot to take "before" photos. I'll see what I can find.

Regarding the landing strip, I moved our Utensilo/ "Wall-All" out of the kids' room (previously my office) onto the wall next to the entry closet in the kitchen/living room space. It's much more useful now as a central place for pens, keys, measuring tape, scissors, hairbrush, thank you notecards, etc., it looks great, and it's very close to the landing strip of shoe baskets and a mail sorter, which gets refined each week.

As for the kids' room ... my 3yo and I took the carpet from the master bedroom, rearranged the furniture (we do this pretty regularly, actually) and decided to order a junior bed conversion kit for her oval Stokke toddler bed. We extended and raised the bed this weekend, and she absolutely loves her roomy big girl bed. She even took a long nap on Saturday, which she hasn't done in ages. She happily filled up a large bag of toys and clothes she doesn't love, to donate to Housing Works or to her school. We agreed to edit down the family photos to only those that tell a story (so that's my next project) and move the store-bought nursery artwork closer to the beds.

For the master bedroom I considered repainting our bedroom's accent wall from mauve to robin's egg blue, to make it more relaxing, and I went so far as contacting a painter and getting color chips, but I've decided to hold off on that project. I posted ads to sell a beautiful but unused Monarch nursery chair, currently in the bedroom, but I haven't gotten any interest off AT, Craigslist or UrbanBaby.

Other basics: I've cleaned out the closets, discarded or donated things, and moved winter stuff down to our small storage locker. Yet somehow all these closets, and now the storage locker, are messy again. Argh. I'll gather more stuff to donate this week. Also, I've got to take another look at the kitchen drawers (and the whole kitchen cure chapter).

I'm thrilled with the 80/20 breakthrough in the living room. I'll review the book and hope to post (more briefly, I promise) on other Cure-inspired changes soon!

I intend to put 2 Stokke cribs in the nursery - one (at toddler bed stage) for the 2.5yr old and the other (at bassinet conversion stage) for the newborn. Has anyone seen 2 Stokke sleepis in one room? So curious to see how it'll look...