the january cure : day one.

as i mentioned earlier today, i'm going to try and to participate in and liveblog apartment therapy's annual january cure this year!

it's day one and the assignment is this: make a list of projects. more specifically, set aside an hour or so to do a walkthrough of your home and make notes on any trouble spots as you move through each room.

it's quite an extensive list - and that's with leaving out all the renovations we want to do eventually, as that's a whole other can of worms. i even took and included unflattering photos of most of the rooms as they are now, without doing any picking up. here goes..!

The Living Room.

• take down christmas stockings
• iron the curtains
• deal with bowl of halloween candy
• fix the door hinge nightmare
• put up the last curtain rod and curtains
• replace the ugly college floor lamp
• find a home for my laptop
• find a home for "cotton spool" piece
• organize the tv console
• put up the memory/shadow box
• organize the bookshelf
• hang/install the security camera

The Dining Room.

1. take down the christmas tree and cards
2. write thank-you notes for our southern reception
3. iron the curtains
4. wine storage solution
5. remove un-connected thermostat

The Kitchen.

1. re-organize the medicine drawer
2. clear out leftovers from the refrigerator
3. clear out unnecessary items from the island and counter
4. find a place for the metal crate on top of the bookshelf
5. put up the utility gripper
6. re-organize the coffee and tea cart
7. create a better feeding station for sanford 

The Hallway.

1. create a more eye-pleasing dog gate solution
2. adjust the closet pole so that the doors can close
3. actually organize the closet
4. paint the attic entry
5. paint the walls so we can figure out what color(s) we eventually want to paint the house when we've replaced all the walls

The Landing.

1. find a home for all the hanging bags
2. find a home for all the stick-like things in the corner

The Guest Bedroom.

1. sort and put away bedding
2. frame remaining artwork
3. put up remaining artwork
4. go through still-packed boxes and find homes for things
5. check if wemo (remotely controllable light switch) is installable
6. re-organize and better utilize the mostly-empty closet

The Master Bedroom.

1. get real nightstands!
2. find solution for james's clothing
3. hat solution to make room on james's dresser
4. organization solution for my dresser
5. get rid of "the sock pile"
6. paint a wall! (our house is sooo so so so white)
7. organize the closet
8. replace tower fan with a smaller table-top fan

The Master Bathroom.

1. fix leaky faucet
2. reorganize the toiletries
3. get (or make) a real ironing board cover

The Office.

1. go through still-packed boxes (lots of them)
2. find homes for things

The Hangar.

1. Clean. Clean. Clean. ShopVac the heck out of the place.
2. Organize all the clutter
3. Get a functioning workshop going

The Basement.

1. Assemble and install second shelving unit

The Exterior and Yard.

1. Take down christmas lights
2. Put mulch down in the front garden
3. Trim back trees and hedges
4. Clean up old lumber stacked in "carport"
5. Put up remaining critter barrier on the attic gables
6. Powerwash all the surrounding concrete areas like the porch

apartment therapy's january cure..!

apartment therapy's annual january cure starts today:

Join our once-a-year-only January Cure and we'll send you emails each weekday from January 2 through the 30th, giving you all the info you need to know to follow along, stay motivated and complete your assignments. By the end of the month, you'll be sitting pretty in a clean, fresh, organized home. We've even built in plans for a gathering of your friends on final weekend to help you celebrate!

daily assignments? usually i get home after work, make dinner, do the dishes, and go to bed! i barely make it to the gym twice a week. plus, i'm just recovering from a cold since last friday, james has been sick since tuesday, and i'm freaking out a bit about sanford who threw up five times last night and kept hack-gagging in the middle of the night (no, there is nothing stuck in his throat, i checked, and he did seem better this morning). so adding additional daily to-dos at this point sounds crazy, right? well - no promises, but i'm going to try, and blog about it, too, for accountability's sake.

today's assignment is to make a list of projects. as in, walk around the house and make a list of all the things that need to be done. that's going to be huge. we sort of have a running list in hour heads that we discuss often, but getting it down on paper will certainly be a useful exercise. hopefully you'll be seeing a post from me later tonight...

the holidays, and curtains!

ah, the holidays. we had so much fun decorating the table for halloween, that we had to do it for christmas too! we kept the pretty antique bowl and added pinecones, berry garlands, and decorative candle holders from michaels . oh, and the pretty silver damaske table runner is from sur la table.

outside, we only put some string lights up on the two small trees in the front yard. it's not much, but we didn't want to put too much effort into the exterior decorations just yet this year.

we also put up a small christmas tree in the corner of the dining room (all the same decorations as last year) and - wait for it -purchased curtains!!!!!!!!!!! the curtain rods were from overstock, and the curtains themselves were from target (the sheer are nate berkus heathered herringbone in gray, and the decorative are threshold grayson toile floral in shell and chocolate). and yea, i was too lazy to iron them first, but i figure they'll de-wrinkle on their own over time.

what i really love about them though, is how much warmer and cozier they make the house. without them, and all our white walls, things felt really sharp and cold.

here are really old photos from when we first got our dining table, but they show you what our fishbowl of a dining and living room used look like:

and yea, we've cleared out so much of the erroneous stuff too - the bookshelf is long gone, and other than the wine fridge along that back wall, all of that has been removed and replaced with much nicer things (but that's for another post). it's really starting to feel like a home, guys!

and just a reminder, this is what our mantle looks like:

also, gold frog and rafiki wish you peace and serenity this christmas!