pyewacket's Profile

Gray is too trendy? My favorite room ever was gray, and I painted that a decade ago. How could something so neutral be anything but classic?

If I had that room, I would use it as an excuse to buy or build a big old canopy bed - the old-school kind, with curtains. Then the light would stream in from all the windows and I could awake behind my heavy velvet draperies and groggily reach my hand up to pull the curtains back an inch, letting a finger of light fall across the pillow. I would then grab the bellpull and have my servant bring me coffee immediately.

I would also paint the room a lovely soft light gray, with a darker gray ceiling and white moldings.

Actually, according to the book Stuff, hoarders generally believe that they "know where everything is," but it's not actually true. They just feel that it's true. It's worth considering that your perception might be off here. My husband tends to get frustrated if I put something away if it's not where he thought it should be, but he also spends an enormous amount of time searching for the things he put down any old place. He's ADD, and I am, too, but I'm much milder than he is and I worked hard to force myself to get more organized. Unfortunately, that means it's twice as hard to be in a chaotic space. A lot of training myself to be more organized was training myself to be more present - thinking through small things like where I'm dropping my keys instead of just dropping them. My husband will drop something in a spot where it's likely to get covered or broken and I'll point that out, and his response is that he's just getting it out of the way - it's not meant to be a permanent spot, he's not thinking about other issues. But that to me is the point. Taking on organization is taking on the business of thinking outside the moment. I'll never be a person with perfectly organized files, but I've at least moved beyond losing my keys and wallet regularly and not being able to find the clean clothes mixed in with the dirty ones.

Absolutely fantastic. Everything looks beautiful and personally meaningful and just lovely.

I have those Ikea chairs, and I love them as back-ups, particularly because they're really cheap - but they're pretty uncomfortable. That's the only negative thing I have to say about the whole house!

I like to gather material together on themes that interest me as larger subjects - photographs of heirloom vegetables and fruits or old photographs of food workers. I follow some people who pin interesting things from historical graphic design and typography. But there's an awful lot of bad recipes (why are there so many recipes that call for candies?) and shopping wishlists. I find it hard to dig through and find the stuff that excites me.

I like the black color of the shutters, but shutters scaled too small to actually close is a pet peeve.

If you don't know the neighborhoods, find a beat cop and ask. He'll tell you far more than a real estate agent.

Also, remember that research has consistently shown that people tend to overestimate the effect of lots of space on their quality of life and underestimate the effect of commute length. Shorter commute=happier person, most of the time, even if they don't think it matters that much. Since commute time for space is a common tradeoff, it's worth remembering to load the value of a short commute a little more than seems warranted.

Lovely apartment.

I wear shoes at home all the time. I have lousy feet, and they hurt without shoes. Admittedly, I'm usually wearing something flat, not leopard-skin heels, but then again, I am not quite that FABULOUS. I wish I were.

There's only one thing that could make this better - bigger drawers!

I have no idea why a canning funnel would be dorky.