a place for storage : the basement!

hello! it's been forever, and i apologize. things have just been very crazy over the last couple of months. james has been working lots of overtime wrapping up his department on how to train your dragon 2, i've gotten busy at work with the film i'm on starting production, i had an unexpected trip back to taiwan for a family matter, and the house has suffered for it. we really haven't done anything to it in the past few months, but we have big plans and hope to do a lot this spring and summer!

one thing that we started, is to move some items out of the house and into the basement! we bought a couple metal shelving units from home depot and got them set up. only one has been filled so far, but if you saw the state of our office and guest bedroom, well, you'd realize that one shelf left is no where near enough. but, every little bit certainly does help!

these were about $100 each, and a cinch to put together - though i do recommend two people just because it's size can be a bit unwieldy at times. but they're really sturdy and we're so glad we got them!

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..