the january cure : assignment three.

the assignment:

Find a spot in your home that you rarely (maybe never!) sit in that gives you a view on a room or area that you feel is especially problematic. Take a seat on a chair (or the floor) and just observe for ten minutes. Turn off TV, radio, music and your phone - this is a quiet exercise and is most effective with focus and concentration.

1. Look around the room and try to imagine what it would look like empty. Recall what it was like when you moved in.

2. Once you have done that, focus on whatever part of the room that you feel is the most problematic and imagine removing the "stuff" from that area - furniture, belongings, everything. Now, start rebuilding that area, adding back in only what feels right and looks good in your minds eye.

3. Make note of what changes you envision and move forward with some additional clarity about how you truly want your home to be; what you need and what you can move forward without.

i made james do this with me, and we picked the master bedroom. despite the mess the guest bedroom and office are in, we've discussed at length what we want to do in those rooms, but our own bedroom - not so much. right now it's a boxspring and mattress, two dressers and a short/wide bookshelf, and two temporary nightstands (because we're having a harder time finding and deciding on nightstands than we were with the coffee table).

things we know we want: more closet space, built-in! and a direct entry into the master bathroom (making it an en suite, please). new lighting. a five-panel door. no more yucky carpet. all sort of obvious things we agree on. the problem is, the room itself isn't that big. and what we learned is that neither of us is in any sort of agreement about how to go about getting the things we want into the room.

so in the end, we are in real agreement about nothing, but it's good that we've finally started talking about it.

the january cure : assignment two.

the weekend consisted of three assignments, to be done whenever over the friday through sunday period: buy flowers, clean all the floors and rugs, and stock up on green cleaners.

and we did it! the cleaning took place all sunday afternoon, but all the floors have been vacuumed and swiffered. as for stocking up on green cleaners, i already use method for most of the house cleaning, but i did pick up murchison-hume's stainless steel cleaner and the laundress's bleach alternative while at the container store yesterday. i have to say, i've tried several stainless steel cleaners, most recently a 409 "stone and steel" cleaner (since we have marble countertops and stainless appliances), and none of them helped. if anything, they just sort of moved any grease around and left behind more streaks, but the murchison-hume stuff is amazing and has left my kitchen looking like new. i'll definitely be looking more into their line of natural green cleaners.

and of course, i bought some flowers. nothing fancy, just some green and yellow mums. i put them into a vase and two mason jars. it's kind of nice to have some fresh flowers in the house.

and even though i wasn't assigned it, having made a list for the first assignment, we ended up knocking out a bunch of things (not many, 5-or-so) on our giant to-do list as well (like installing the security camera so it doesn't just sit on the mantle!), which feels pretty great.

we're composting!

we've talked about composting for quite awhile since i cook so often, and with fresh produce 99% of the time, as well as all the coffee we drink. well, after a lot of back and forth, and investigation, we finally committed! we bought this outdoor compost bin at home depot, and this simplehuman kitchen compost bin off amazon.

the outdoor bin assembled relatively easily, though because it's cheap-ish plastic with snap-together pieces, i did accidentally break a small chunk of it off - you can't even see it! i then gathered a bunch of fallen leaves and other scraps from around the yard to get us started:

our little kitchen compost pail fits nicely under the sink:

it's a decent size and i've been filling it with scraps and coffee grinds for the past week and a half now. it has a place for a carbon filter in the lid, so it doesn't smell at all (except when i open it to put more stuff in, of course). and the lid even has a little hook so you can let it hang without having to find a place to put it. i love the sturdiness of it, too.

anyway, that's all we've done so far, but we're officially composting! expect an update in a few months (or maybe even weeks, if things go well) with how it goes..