May 05, 2008
Yes we have no bananas today
While I do enjoy my berry good smoothies regularly, sometimes I don't want to add a banana. I may not have a banana, for example. Or I may have them but they're really really ripe ... compost ripe if you know what I mean and I think you do.
But if you still want the creamy goodness that a banana provides and you either don't like bananas or don't have one on hand, what do you add instead to get the smoothie smooth?
Ideas? Suggestions?
Posted by laurie at 09:37 AM | Comments (135)
April 22, 2008
Earth Day Girls Are Easy
It's Earth Day and as of today, Whole Foods is getting rid of their plastic bags. You bring your own bag or you get paper bags but plastic is like, SO March 2008! Totally!
Other cities have made plastic bags an expense -- in some places, if you want plastic to hold your goodies you have to pay for it. It's been like that in many places in Europe for years. The first time I saw it was in Zurich in 2002 and the Co-Op (the local grocery store) charged for bags at the checkout. I thought it was a pretty cool idea, especially because Zurich was one of the cleanest large cities I had ever visited and it just seemed to fit in with the whole "We're Swiss, we're neutral, we make great cheese" vibe. I love Zurich, I should go back soon. The cheese is REALLY GOOD.
Anyway, before Gwen left Los Angeles, she gave me two big green woven Whole Foods grocery bags that I love and use all the time. But only at Whole Foods, of course. After Allison read about my issues with branded bags, she gave me possibly the best gift anyone has ever given me -- a pack of five Envirosax. They're these fabulously strong and roomy nylon bags that fold and roll into little tiny egg-roll shaped logs that fit neatly in your purse. If you buy the five-pack, which is what Allison gifted to me, the little logs fir in their own carrying case and the whole thing is smaller than my makeup bag.
I keep one or two bags tucked away in my handbag all the time for unexpected purchases, or to hold my lunch on the bus or whatever. I love my Envirosax!
The Envirosax online store is here. I don't work for them or get a kickback -- I just think they're a cool product. I love them so much I even bought a set for my mom, which is news to her since they haven't arrived yet (her birthday isn't for another week.) And I plan to give them as gifts this year for Christmas. I love these little bags because they're so easy to keep on you at all times and it's so handy when you just happen to make a little impulse buy to skip the bag and use the Envirosax.
Since Allison gave me this amazing gift, the amount of plastic bags coming into my house has decreased by about 90% -- which means I am also consuming 90% less plastic and bag-related resources than before. It's not like I made cold fusion or cured cancer or something -- my life hasn't changed in some dramatic way -- but it's one very small, teetiny change that over time could have a positive impact on the planet.
Little changes are the key for me.
Of course you can always make a bag yourself, sewing one or knitting a tote -- maybe that will be my next summer project, a hand-knit grocery bag. But if you don't want to buy a bag, today the California Grocers Association has a whole list of participating stores in California that are giving away FREE re-usable bags! Apparently these bags are "soft, durable and made of 100% recycled water, soda and food containers and carry the message, 'Great Taste & Zero Waste.'" Check out the entire list here. I am all about the free.
Posted by laurie at 09:43 AM | Comments (104)
March 26, 2008
At long last....
At last ..... my love has come along
My lonely days are over
And life is like a song
At last ..... the skies above are blue
And my heart was wrapped up in clover
The night I looked at you
I found a dream that I can speak to
A dream that I could call my own
I found a thrill to press my cheek to
A thrill that I have never known
You smiled, and then the spell was cast
And here we are in heaven
And you are mine .....at last
Frankie adorns the table. It's a Noguchi knockoff, but she doesn't mind...
Yes, at last, I have a coffee table!
Back in early January when Drew was here visiting, he and I let Faith introduce us to the amazing H.D. Buttercup. It's a big fabulous furniture mart in Culver City, and they were having some kind of crazy new year sale and I finally found it, AT LAST, my true north, my true love: my coffee table.
And apparently buying new furniture is time consuming as well as tree-consuming, because it took three months for my purchase to arrive but last week the store called and said my little table was in and so Faith and I went to pick it up just a few days ago. Faith's car is kind of amazing with the holding of weirdly-shaped items. Her car has a fourth dimension. Anyway, the cats love the new table, something new to conquer and recline upon.
As I was admiring it the other day I realized that this is the very first brand-new coffee table I have ever owned. I've always been a fan of vintage (read: "thrift store") finds, but I searched forever for a coffee table and couldn't find one I liked. Finding furniture that fits well into a very small space is challenging, so I have been sans coffee table since The Great Decluttering of 2006.
Not anymore! Let the surface clutter begin!
P.S. Frankie is not considered surface clutter.
Posted by laurie at 10:17 AM | Comments (73)
March 24, 2008
Green and mean, with a side of beans
After all that talk of smoothies last week, I decided to try some variation of Green Lemonade over the weekend. I've known about Green Lemonade for a long while, it's a juicer recipe originally from the Raw Food Detox Diet. I usually try to eat one raw food meal a day (like a smoothie or a fruit salad or a regular green salad) but I have never been a big greens eater, even at my most neurotically health-conscious. I tend to be a little schizophrenic about meals, sometimes all I eat is junk and more junk with a helping of wine, and sometimes I won't let anything pass my lips unless it's organic and made of nutrients. This used to drive my poor parents crazy, they'd never be able to tell if I was coming to dinner for a whole cow with a side of butter or if my dad would be rustling through the cabinets to find something with no oil, salt, additives ("or taste," my brother would say.) Once after I was being particularly difficult during a summer break in Mississippi, my father sighed and then handed me a carrot on a plate. "It's completely additive-free," he said. And laughed. And laughed.
My poor father. Between me and my brothers and our assorted tomfoolery it is a wonder he didn't run off and join the circus.
ANYWAY. Yesterday morning I took Bevvy's Green Lemonade recipe from the comments and made it into a smoothie. My variation used:
2 apples, cored and cut into pieces
4-5 leaves of Kale (I chopped them up a little beforehand, too. My mixer is good but not great.)
1 whole Meyer lemon, peeled but some of the white pithy stuff was still on it, sectioned into pieces
About a tablespoon of chopped up ginger
a handful of spinach leaves
some water
a few ice cubes
And I blended it all up for this:
I thought it would taste awful, to be honest. Even as I was making it I wondered why on earth I was wasting a whole Meyer lemon. Yet I soldiered on because I am nothing if not adventurous when it comes to health nuttiness. And you know what? It didn't taste as bad as it looked. IT TASTED WORSE.
It was just like drinking up a pre-digested salad with some stringy lawn clippings thrown in.
Things that make you go, "eeeewwww."
I have in my time embarked upon all sorts of oddball "cleansing" diets. One time many many moons ago I was reading the National Enquirer (don't ask) and I noticed a little blurb on a purifying diet that called for mung beans and clarified butter. I don't know about you, but any "purifying" diet that calls for butter is worth a try. This was in 1999 just a few months before we all perished -- possibly -- at the turn of the new Millennium. People were stockpiling toilet paper like nobody's business. Remember how much fun that time was? Doesn't it seem so innocent compared to now?
So I had never heard of mung beans and I went online to read more about them and how to cook them. As I searched the web it seemed I'd found myself in some underworld of Y2K bunker-ese preparation for the end of the world and mung beans were THE food to have on hand. Apparently they were Y2K compliant! There were entire message boards devoted to storing mung beans and using them for sprouts when the world stopped spinning on its axis and chaos ensued.
All that talk of stockpiling appealed to my little hoarding soul, and I do remember buying a little extra wine and rum and diet coke and cat litter for the impending end of humanity. And a really cute pair of heels that had a ribbon bow on the back (everyone needs cute shoes for the apocalypse.) And after all that necessary stockpiling, I went to the market and bought me some mung beans. I found a package in the health foods aisle at Ralph's and I tried cooking them and eating them for purification (clarified butter! yum!) except soggy mung beans + butter = deesgusting. I did not feel pure at all. I could actually feel them cementing to my intestines. If I recall correctly, I think I had to have a cheeseburger to purify myself from the purification. Then I believe had a cold drink and called it a day.
Not all healthy nut food forays go well, you know. It is part of the adventure of living.
And then of course we all survived Y2K and to this day I still wonder if there are people out there with stockpiles of mung beans just waiting for the day when they can use them. All those folks who were well and very prepared for The End may have gone through their hoard of toilet paper by now, but I am willing to bet someone out there somewhere is still hanging on to those ol' mung beans.
My advice: skip the beans and go right for the clarified butter. Trust me on that one.
Posted by laurie at 10:25 AM | Comments (82)
March 20, 2008
Bliss with blueberries on top
Breakfast and I were strangers for years and years, then I discovered toast. I LOVE TOAST. I love it slathered with butter and accompanied by hash browns and bacon. However, I don't cook (or have arteries made of steel.) I especially do not cook in the pre-dawn hours before work and coffee. Sometimes I have just toast for breakfast, or Cheerios, but my favorite no-cook breakfast is just heaven and healthy all at the same time:
The smoothie.
This little smoothie packs three (or sometimes four, depending on how I make it) servings of fruits in one single meal. Three servings of fruit! And it tastes great! For someone like me, that is miraculous.
I took this smoothie recipe from "You On A Diet
My Smoothies, more or less:Note: This is the order I add the stuff to the blender, which keeps the protein powder from flying everywhere or clumping up too much. See "trial and error."
• About 1/3 to 3/4 cup Kefir
["Kefir" is a yogurty-like drink, I found it in the milk and yogurt section of Whole Foods. It's a thicker consistency than milk, but a little thinner than yogurt and I like the taste. I use the lowfat organic kind because that's how I roll. I forgot to put the Kefir in the picture because I'd already put it back in the fridge but that's just as well -- you can use anything as a base, like milk or soymilk or yogurt or even ice cream!]• About 3/4 a scoop of Whole Foods soy protein powder in Vanilla
• 1 tablespoon psyllium husks **** Start out with 1/2 a teaspoon!!! Trust me! You need to work up to this amount of fiber over time or else, you know. Consequences.****
• A little flaxseed oil, maybe about 2 teaspoons, I just eyeball it
• 2 smallish bananas, peeled and broken into pieces
• about 3/4 cup frozen blueberries. The package says there are two servings to a bag, so I use half the bag for each smoothie.
• Or any other frozen fruit on hand -- I buy the bags of frozen organic fruit when they go on sale and keep the freezer stocked. I have peaches (YUM), strawberries and cherries, too. Frozen fruit gives this a nice cold smoothie texture.
Blend it all up and drink!
On the weekends I might make a smoothie for breakfast and then have one for dinner, too, thereby getting six servings of fruit in my body. On those days my body is like, "Where the hell did all this nutrition come from??? Why aren't we having microwave popcorn again?" At first when I started making these I just assumed I'd be hungry again in five minutes but the combination of foods plus the protein powder keeps me full for way longer than I expected. I love my breakfast smoothies, they make mornings happy.
It doesn't seem like something as simple and mundane as breakfast can change your life, does it?
Sometimes when you line up your life on a ruler (and by "your" life, I mean "my" life), it can look like "Wake up, rush, feed cats, late, shower, don't forget the so-and-so, blow-dry hair, where is other shoe?, morning commute, morning commute, rush, late, work work work, etc., work all day, deadlines, hurry up, where is that memo?, more commute, many cars, late getting home, dry cleaners closed? no... open, feed cats, tired, go to bed do it all again tomorrow..."
I don't know when it happened that I became someone who lived for the future. Maybe it started back when things were unpleasant, or maybe it was my lifelong dieting mentality ("I'll be ten pounds thinner in eight weeks, so then I can do X, and I'll be down 20 by my birthday so I can fit into X...") But however it started, it became habitual and before long I was someone who saved all her nice things for "one day" and lived for tomorrow, next month, next vacation. But when next month arrived, I was already living for the next one. I mentioned that a little a while back, about my mental checklist and my life map. And even last summer when it dawned on me that life has already started. This movie is already in progress.
But it's one thing to know and understand your habits and it's a whole nother thing to break away from them. Little tiny things, like waking up and making a smoothie and drinking it before work and really enjoying it -- it's something that small and mundane that makes me happy and makes me happy NOW, not in the future or two months from now or someday when I am skinny enough/financially stable enough/accomplished enough/rested enough/whatever enough. Because what if that day never comes, anyway?
I always thought it would be the big events, the high points in my life, that would make me happy. And they do make me happy maybe for a few moments, but sometimes they're also stressful. As it turns out it's the small, seemingly insignificant things that are helping me find contentedness in my day-to-day life. Petting the cats before bedtime when everyone piles on the bed at once. A really good book. Soba sitting on the fresh laundry. Blueberry smoothies for breakfast.
Not bad for breakfast philosophizing, anyway.
Posted by laurie at 09:08 AM | Comments (103)
March 19, 2008
Very mysterious
On Monday night at 3:40 a.m. I was jolted out of bed. Literally. I thought it was an earthquake -- it felt like the bed was violently pushed away from the wall with one huge shove. I got up (jolted!) and turned all the lights on in the whole damn house, as if that would help, but we weren't having an earthquake. Nothing else was moving. The cats were pissed off for being disturbed during their beauty sleep and it was all very mysterious so I promptly went back to bed and forgot about it. It was 3:40 in the morning after all.
Then I noticed yesterday that the bed was actually moved away from the wall -- by about six inches. WEIRD. So it really had happened, whatever it was, that pushed the bed away from the side of the house in the middle of the night and disturbed the beauty sleep of three felines. Et moi.
I decided to go round the side of the house and have a look in case the neighbors had a rowdy St. Paddy's Day and drove into my house. Luisten, stranger things have happened. It was already dark outside so I can't be certain my CSI efforts were 100% perfect, but there didn't appear to be any damage to the bushes or the plaster on that side of the house. The box shrubs did seem a little dry, but I seriously doubt a state of parchedness in the hedge area would case the house to tremble.
So after much chin scratching and carrying on, it is clear that there is only one possible logical and clear explanation:
My house is haunted.
On the plus side, I'm from a part of the country where we have haunted crap everywhere. In fact you are not even really considered Southern unless you yourself have lived in a haunted house, or are related to someone with an apparition, and/or have been intimate with OR gone to school with OR attended church with someone who has at some time lived in or next door to a haunted house. Bonus points if your church itself was haunted OR you ever went looking for the Bell Witch.
The downside is that right now I just do not have time to add anyone new to my life, phantasm or no. I AM BUSY OKAY. There is a lot going on in my life (aside from laundry which is an other-worldy issue of its own) and I am just far too harried at this time to entertain a specter, people. I barely have time to clean up after myself and the aforementioned annoyed felines so having to pick up plates off the floor and constantly shut mysteriously opening cabinet doors and see stuff floating mid-air is just not in my planbook. Not to mention being shoved awake at 3:40 a.m. That is just RUDE.
I am not and I repeat NOT in the mood for a haunting. I can however recommend one or three excellent neighbor houses that would be perfect.
You can stick that in your other-world pipe and smoke it, buddy.
Posted by laurie at 09:09 AM | Comments (102)
January 15, 2008
Ode to the Crock Pot
I don't cook.
Sure, there is the microwaved baked potato, the salad from a bag, the occasional spaghetti. But there isn't real cooking going on in my house on a regular (or even semi-annual) basis. My father is a natural gourmet, he can take a can of beans and turn it into a Michelin-rated five star meal. I do not know he he does this. My brothers also got the cooking DNA, they can whip up delightful meals without setting off the fire alarm and having to call out for pizza on Thanksgiving like some people we know.
I have gotten even sloppier about cooking since living alone. One of the best parts about living single is that I don't have to pretend that I am going to cook dinner and be a good wifey. I can just burn a bag of microwave popcorn, pour a glass of wine and call it a night. I've sunk to new lows with my dating skills, too: I once bought a Ralph's grocery store rotisserie chicken and brought that sucker home, put it in a pan, dumped some baby carrots around it and stuck it in the oven AS IF I HAD COOKED IT MYSELF and served it to my date. Like I was Betty Flippin' Crocker.
He said it was the best chicken he'd ever had. I agreed. But the carrots were a tad underdone.
And while my baked-potato-salad routine works for me most of the time, sometimes I find myself in need of more serious nutrition and not really desiring to spend twelve hours in the kitchen preparing it. This is where I begin today's "Ode To A CrockPot."
I actually forgot I had a crock pot! I bought it back when I was married and used to make a mean pot roast. One of the best features of the slow cooker is that it is really quite hard to burn food in it, which seems to be my primary downfall with cooking (I do, however, rock the grill -- mmmm, cook meat on open fire!) but since I moved to my little house in Encino-adjacent, my crock pot has been resting peacefully in a back cabinet. While my friend Drew was here, I was determined to cook at least one meal of decent taste and quality and since he's a really good cook, I figured he could help me with a one-pot dish in the slow cooker.
Well, that one meal was so good that I went out this weekend and bought the same stuff to make the dish all over again just for me! I've been a little under the weather and I need some serious nutrition in my body with about as little effort as possible. This crockpot thing is the BEST invention -- one pot and enough food to feed me for every meal for days. In fact, when I set it to cook overnight it smelled so good in the morning that I had my crockpot meal for breakfast. A little weird maybe, but filling and good and healthy.
You'll need:
Some root veggies -- I bought whatever they had that was organic. Parsnips, carrots in multicolored bunches, celery, leeks, golden beets, onions, garlic and celery. The bananas in the back left of the picture are not for the crockpot. Heh.
And you can't have a meal in my life without some potatoes -- here I'm using red organic baby potatoes and some turnips:
Chop everything roughly and add a layer to the bottom of the crock pot:
To that I added half a turkey breast:
I chose the free-range turkey with the bone in and skin on. The skin and bone and marrow provides natural fat and flavor. (My dad would be so proud of me. I said "marrow.") Since I am just feeding me and this whole crockpot of stuff will last me a good five or six or eight meals, I decided to buy the highest quality groceries like organic vegetables and meat that has no hormones or anti-biotics and stuff. Even at Whole Foods prices, my bill came to $26.35, which averages out to about three bucks a meal. NOT BAD!
For flavor, I have garlic and onion and some spices for the turkey, as well as some vegetable broth to add to the crockpot to get everything steaming. You need about a cup of liquid. I added no oil, butter or fat to the dish and trust me it was just fine... and this is coming from a girl who thinks butter is a food group.
Then add some more chopped veggies to the top (I keep the leaves on the celery to add even more flavor, I love the way celery tastes!)
Turn it on high and let it cook for 3-5 hours, depending on the size of the turkey. Drew told me that poultry needs to be heated to an internal temperature of 180 degrees, so I used my meat thermometer to check for doneness. The whole house smelled so good while this was cooking and I didn't even set the smoke alarm off!
I've been eating some crappy food lately and I can tell even just eating junk a few days in a row how my energy level goes way down and my skin starts to look bad and I'm grumpy. I guess I never noticed before how much my body needs real food with decent vitamins and minerals in it. I'm glad I remembered my crockpot! After just a few meals I already feel better and I swear even my skin looks better. I think I could get better with cooking if it were all this easy. So if you have any (easy) crockpot recipes, please share! I like my turkey meal but I don't think I can live on one meal my whole life. I mean really now.
But doesn't this smell YUMMY:
mmmmmmmmmmmmmmm! I didn't take an after picture... I was too busy eating!
Posted by laurie at 06:25 AM | Comments (185)
January 14, 2008
Hello! It is January, it is sinking in now....
Three or four times recently I've caught myself saying, "Oh, I'll catch up with that after the New Year..." or "I'll have to get right on that after the New Year..." and then I realize all over again that OH MY GOD the new year is not just here, it's been here and it's practically old already and I still have my Christmas Tree up!
I am five weeks behind on life and it is already January 14. Help me.
Anyway, weekend before last (yes, that's right, I am just now catching up on something that happened TWO WEEKENDS AGO) Drew came to visit and we had a grand old time, and Faith came to rescue us from my driving and we did a little shopping at H.D. Buttercup, which I had never been to before but immediately I tried to move in. It perhaps freaked the staff out that I was picking out which living room I wanted to live in each day.
Drew relaxed while I tried to figure out how to use my new camera, having broken the old one in a freak battery-replacing accident and now trying to understand why I cannot seem to "point" and "shoot" without blurring:
Faith looking adorable in the pottery section:
Then we went to Chinatown:
Look, you too can start the new year off right by hanging with "Confusions" as your guide:
Later Drew and I drove up the coast and found this awesome seaside town whose name I do not know and there was a very good restaurant:
And we walked out along the pier while I droned on and on about how much I want to live near the ocean:
We happened to be there at low tide so the critters living on the pier pilings were exposed, like these amazing looking starfish:
Later we got home and Soba was mad we didn't bring her one to eat. Whatevs, cat! I'm pretty sure the starfish are protected by the guv'ment against cats.
We also got our hair did by the awesomeness that is Aharon (Umberto, (310) 274-6395) and his gorgeous assistant Jasmine:
Beauty is hard, and also apparently made Drew into crazy eyes:
And you'll never believe it, but guess who now has BANGS!!!!!
Yes, that's right people. I have BANGS. Wispy-ish ones that kind of go to the side but still, they are BANGS nonetheless! And you, too, can witness the dorkyness that is my exciting life change, a.k.a. "a haircut with bangs" when I see you this Saturday in Mission Viejo!
Saturday, January 19th, 2008
BORDERS -- 1:00 PM (Reading & signing)
25222 El Paseo
Mission Viejo, CA 92691
Phone: 949.367.0005
Click here for a map -->
I promise not to be late. Well, I promise not to be two weeks late, like I have been with everything else. My bangs and I will see you there! Confusions say so!
Posted by laurie at 09:50 AM | Comments (128)
December 24, 2007
Merry Christmas!
Merry Christmas from my jolly brood to yours!
Posted by laurie at 10:31 AM | Comments (80)
December 21, 2007
Oh no, she's taking pictures of the teevee again!
When I was going through my Big Budget Revamp, I got rid of all my cable pay-movie channels. With the lower-cost cable package there are a couple of free movie channels, perfect for those occasional drunken Tivofests where you sit with the program guide and choose weird stuff to Tivo which you promptly forget about until you come home two weeks later and wonder why you have six new movies on your Tivo List, including both Sister Act and Sister Act 2: Back In The Habit.
(OK, I cannot lie to ya'll. I LOVE the Sister Act movies. They make me laugh. Plus, the songs are good. Who doesn't love some Whoopi in the nunnery, now, huh? C'mon.) (Don't judge.)
But only recently I discovered that my cable lineup also has a Turner Classic Movies channel and a Fox Classic movies channel and both have movies without commercial breaks. My classical movie knowledge is spotty at best -- I never watched TV as a kid, so I spent my teenage and early adult years catching up on such staples as The Brady Bunch and Gilligan's Island. I'm just now getting around to the movie staples thanks to Tivo and my freebie channels.
The other night I watched this movie called "Take Her, She's Mine" with Jimmy Stewart and Sandra Dee. (I couldn't find it available on amazon, but here is the link to it on IMDB.com.) It was cute in places, kind of surprising in others, but James Stewart is charming in pretty much everything so it was a good movie (especially with a cat on my lap and some knitting, love you garter stitch scarf!)
Maybe it's the weather or maybe it's the time of year, but all I want to do is eat chocolate, knit simple cozy projects and sit on the sofa with a cat on my leg while watching some TV. It may sound boring to some people, but considering the pace of this past year, the downtime is really decadent to me!
Last night I watched An American in Paris
So was he considered a George Clooneyesque hot guy back in the day, or was he more of a non-heartthrob entertainer? I can't think of a modern-day equivalent, maybe like Tom Hanks? Or Billy Crystal? But with amazing feet, of course. Tell me what you think. I'll have to check in with Grandma on this one, too, I have a feeling she will hold a definite opinion one way or the other!
For my money there's still just one bygone-era man who takes the hunky cake:
Gregory Peck, of course. I realize that the man would be ninety-one years old if he were still alive, but I still have the hots for him. That particular picture of my television set was paused while watching the movie "On The Beach
Le sigh.
I love this time of the year. It's finally cold and we've even had some weather (grey skies! alert the media!) and the cats like to snuggle since my house apparently has no insulation at all and seems to hover around 60 degrees no matter how much I use the heat. But whatever, not complaining! I have chocolate and I have a simple garter-stitch scarf for mindless, perfect knitting while I catch up on my movie history ... dancing Gene Kelly, Jimmy Stewart playing a man who just looks like Jimmy Stewart (hijinks ensue), bleak handsome Gregory on the beach ... and my Sister Act movies, too, of course!
Posted by laurie at 08:36 AM | Comments (167)
December 19, 2007
Happiness presents for both the be-furred and the be-fatted
Two pre-Christmas presents are a very big hit at Chez Furball right now, both of them were supposed to stay under wraps but the cats managed to sniff their way inside the bag holding their gift and the human manged to open and devour half of hers and all parties involved needed an intervention.
Awesome Present for the Human
Whole Foods organic dark chocolate truffles, imported from France. And this whole box was something like four dollars, which if you shop at Whole Foods you know that's less than a tomato costs.
Now, normally I do not have much of a sweet tooth, and while I do like dark chocolate I'd still rather be face-down in a vat of french fries if we're talking about calorie allocation. But these truffles are so good I wanted to be alone in a room with them. I had to get them out of my hands so I had to lock them in the garage for safekeeping.
Luckily, I alone have the key to the garage.
- - -
Awesome Present for the Felines
New curved cardboard cat scratcher that I found at Target. It was in the cat supplies aisle and cost about $14.
Alas, Target.com and Amazon.com do not have any listing of this item, nor did the three major online pet supply retailers I checked and neither did the manufacturer's website! Crazy! So, just in case it was some kind of promotional fluke, I went back to Target and bought the other two they had left for safekeeping because my cats love it THAT much. (Safekeeping means I had to put them in the garage and lock the door.) (The cats do not have the key.)
Also! Usually ya'll are better at finding stuff online than I am, so if someone finds this cat scratcher online, will you put the link in the comments? Thanks!
Anyway, I do hope this is an item which the stores will be carrying lots of, for replacement purposes, since it is the hottest ticket in furtown right now....
"Pardon my retouched eyeballs. Dictators cannot have red eye."
Posted by laurie at 10:13 AM | Comments (87)
December 14, 2007
Winter Wondering-What-That-Is Land
This morning there was a strange, cold, white substance encrusting my jeep:
Frost in the valley, ya'll! Break out all your handknit items, STAT! It was very exciting, I ran back inside for a wool roll-brim hat, a bigger, heftier scarf and gloves. The gloves are leather (not hand-knit) but I found them a few years ago in the dead heat of summer on clearance at Bloomie's. They were approximately one billion perfect off the regular tag or I probably would never have bought them, buttery soft black leather lined with cashmere and I love them enough to want to marry them. People scoffed at me then, buying cashmere-lined gloves in 118 degree weather. But I knew! I knew a day would come when ants could ice skate on my Jeep's little canvas rooftop!
If you were an ant, you could do a sit-spin on that roof.
We have weather! It's very exciting. Now it feels like Christmas.
Posted by laurie at 09:08 AM | Comments (56)
November 05, 2007
When did it become November?
This is what a busy weekend at my domicile of residence looks like:
That is the Sobatator, making sure the freshly washed and dried towels are fully furred before being allowed back in the cupboard.
As soon as she sees me with the laundry basket she starts following me and finally, because these cats are spoilt rotten, I give in and let her decorate the warm laundry with her butt. She can sit there quietly keeping the laundry from escaping for hours:
(That thing in the top left of the picture is our Comfort Zone Plug-In Diffuser
Laundry is not safe from the Sobanator. I have to lint roller whatever was on top of the pile when she finally removes herself from it, usually hours later. And speaking of the lint roller, other forms of craziness in our house are calico in nature. This is one very badly done home video of me and Frankie (Frankie is a cat who does not meow, she whines like a baby and it's annoying and also strange because she sometimes sounds eerily human) in which Frankie gets lint-rollered:
Have you ever seen a cat so excited about a damn lint roller?
On Sunday I got up Painfully Early and went to get some inspiration and afterwards I met up for breakfast with Faith and Allison at a great diner in Culver City called Dinah's. Later when I got home I was doing more of the aforementioned dreaded and soon-to-be-refurred laundry and trying to get stuff accomplished before setting out again for another trip and I walked into the bedroom to put some clothes away.
Bob and Frankie were all stretched out on the bed in a big pool of sunshine and the sheets were all fresh and I just sat on the bed for a minute -- just a minute -- to pet on the cats all splayed out and showing me their fluffy bellies and before I knew it I was taking a nap. ME. I am many things, but a napper is not one one of them (napper - no. Gangsta rapper - yes.) I have not taken a nap in years, no really, I mean YEARS. I kind of woke up about ten minutes into my nap and thought, "I have to get up!" but Bob stretched his legs out so that the very pinkest part of his toes rested lightly on my arm, something that has never happened before. Roy used to do that all the time, just needing something of him to be touching something of me. So I stayed still.
I closed my eyes. From time to time I would feel myself waking up, feeling guilty, because I'm supposed to be doing this, completing that, fixing that one thing, sewing on a button, vacuuming, reading that book before this weekend, finding that document about that other thing, putting together the cabinet for the office, cleaning the catbox, calling that person back... but then Soba got on the bed too and curled up behind my knees and I just gave into it. Slept for almost two hours, which if you knew me would shock you.
For people who have trouble sleeping, a nap is like a miraculous gift, kind of like checking the pockets of your jeans before washing them and instead of finding a fiver, you find a stack of hundreds. The cats nap all the time, maybe I could learn a thing or two from them.
And just so we don't end this one with Bob feeling left out, here he is in a late-night picture, grainy because he's scared of the flash but still bobaliciously cute:
Also, if you are new to Los Angeles, let me remind you to leave work extra-early today. You don't believe me now, but trust me: this is one of the worst traffic days of the entire year. On the Monday after Daylight Savings Time ends, the city gets dark earlier and you will find that in the months of summer and lazy sun-filled afternoons and evenings people have lost the ability to drive in the dark. There will be gridlock and honking. Trust me, I know of what I speak.
My city may be crazy, but at least it is predictably crazy.
Posted by laurie at 09:22 AM | Comments (114)
September 14, 2007
Friday "Clean Up" Q&A
Yesterday lots of excellent questions and comments popped up, thought I'd try to answer what I can...
Rhett asked:
"What do you use to dust? I would love to save the money and be a little greener too! but dusting is very important to me."
Answer: Hey there Rhett! To be honest, dust is a MAJOR problem in my house. I like to open the windows whenever it's not a thousand degrees outside to get fresh air circulating but living in Los Angeles with no rain there is a LOT of dust in the air.
Oh, and uh... yeah. The cat hair and the cat litter dust. Need I say more?
So my primary tool for dusting (when dusting must occur) is the vacuum cleaner. Now I would rather get a full-body wax than do dishes, I do hate dishwashing, but I could vacuum all day long. It's so therapeutic... goodbye dust! Au revoir kitty litter! Using the brush attachment is great for vacuuming the TV, all my electronics (major dustcatchers, gross), the slats on the window blinds, the toaster ... you name it. For small items (I don't have a lot of knickknacks, but a few small ones) I just dampen a paper towel or one of those lint-free cloths and go over the item quickly to remove the archaeological layer of dust. My housecleaning time is pretty limited so there's definitely always some dust on stuff. But I try to do one massive vacuum dusting about once a month.
One of the benefits to decluttering -- and frankly, one of my main motivators -- was that I got so damn tired of having to clean and dust all my stuff. I have about ten knickknacks in the whole house (like candle holders or vases or picture frames on tables.) I still have dust on everything, sadly, but at least now there's less stuff to be dusty. That's an improvement, right? Right?
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Readers Susan and Aileen wanted to know how you use Borax:
According to about.com's explanation of Borax, it is used as a natural laundry booster, multipurpose cleaner, fungicide, preservative, insecticide, herbicide, disinfectant and dessicant. Borax crystals are odorless, whitish and alkaline. Borax is not flammable and is not reactive. It can be mixed with most other cleaning agents, including chlorine bleach.
It is, however toxic and like any commercial cleanser it can be bad for you. As the article above mentioned, don't use borax around food, keep it out of reach of children and pets, and make sure you rinse borax out of clothes and off of surfaces before use.
You can buy it in the laundry detergent aisle at your store -- look for 20 Mule Team Borax, that's the brand I use. And yes, it can be toxic but I myself don't let my cleaning stuff lie around open and available to cats or guests, and I keep the bathroom door closed when I use Ajax with bleach or any commercial cleaner because I don't want the cats messing around with it. So with any cleaning product, heck... even with just lemon juice... I do the same thing. It's not like I'm slopping it on the floor and rolling nekkid it it. As always, your mileage may vary and use with common sense.
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A few readers mentioned concerns that Magic Erasers contain formaldehyde. You can read about the debunking of the myth here on snopes.com, or read the official word from the Mr. Clean team addressing this rumor.
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Marlyn asks, "Okay, where do you find this Ecover stuff? It sounds great. I'm trying to switch to greener cleaning supplies, too, though not moving as quickly as you are."
Hi Marlyn! I buy Ecover products at Whole Foods. I love Whole Foods... of course, it's so expensive to shop there that I have to restrain myself from going nuts! But being a one-person + cats household, a bottle of Ecover laundry detergent will last me a good long while. You can also find a list of products available on amazon.com to purchase.
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While we're at it, I have a question for you cat owners:
If you have a blanket or basket liner for your cats, how often do you wash it, especially if the cats sit or sleep on it daily? Once a week? Once a month? Anyone? I'm not sure how much is too much, but goodness those blankets get hairy fast.
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Barbara commented, "By the way, you do know that Al Gore is married, right? I'm just sayin'. But he would be proud."
Yes, I heard that rumor. He's so darn cute with his powerpoint, don't you think? (Sometimes I like to mention Al Gore and my love for him just because I know somewhere on the other side of the country my daddy is shaking his head and wondering if I need a brain transplant. Remind me to tell ya'll about the time I framed a picture of Al Gore and set it on his desk just for fun. Ah, good times.)
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I don't know if ya'll caught this exchange in the comments but it about had me laughing so hard. Ya'll are funny. I'm gonna be out of a job if you keep this up:
Megan said, "And I'm confused about what 'green' means to everyone - does it mean 'not harsh' or just 'natural'? Ammonia is certainly natural - we pee it every day! I bet rubbing a poison tree frog on your shower doors would work wonders for the soap scum."
Lyda replied, "But Megan, wouldn't the fumes be hallucinogenic?"
To which Megan replied, "...Hmm... Lyda wants to know if poison tree frogs emit hallucinogenic fumes when dragged across a shower door ... I say, we can only hope."
Heh. But in answer to Megan's original question ... I'm trying to move closer to non-toxic. Natural is great, but some "natural" items such as bleach are toxic so I'm going to try to cut back on them and re-think how much I rationally need to use for getting the house clean. In other words, "Would a cup of bleach work on the sink instead of half a gallon?" That sort of thing.
Also, if anyone knows where I can find a hallucinogenic shower-cleaning tree frog, please let me know.
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Oh -- and a few readers have mentioned to me in past columns the joys of placing clothes on a clothes line. It popped up again yesterday as we talked about green cleaning. Being a gal from the country I can attest to the good-smelling loveliness of line-dried laundry. Living where I live however, I can also attest to the fact that nothing would be left on that line when I return home.
City living is a wild and wonderful experience, isn't it?
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Reader Nancy writes, "...I'm a little concerned about your current cleaning/organizing frenzy..."
Well, Nancy. Thanks for the concern. Now, I would be more concerned if I had started maybe using heroin or picking up men at streetlights or hitting up the sun-in (do they still make sun-in, anyway?), but I can assure you I'm not in a frenzy of cleaning. I'm just trying to address the year of no-cleaning-whatsoever that occurred while I wrote and edited and re-wrote my book. I remember coming home once in the midst of all that and looking for a single pair of clean underwear and being too exhausted by the messy house to even sort the laundry. Sorting would have been an all-night affair (I think I ended up wearing some horrible butt-creeping panties of doom. Alas.) So, anyway, my house was in dire need of attention.
Besides, I think sometimes we all do what we can to feel more plugged into our own lives and this is my thing. While I myself wouldn't classify this as a frenzy I still think it's better than embarking on a life of crime or taking up a porn addiction.
I do have some friends that would disagree with me on that last point however! Tomato, tomahto!
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Don't be talking dirty about my cleaning bucket!
Denise commented: "What's the point of recycling all those plastic bags, and then buying plastic buckets and caddies?"
Ah, Denise. As it turns out I purchased one (1) bucket and one (1) caddy which fit neatly together as a single carry-all. In my way of thinking, I needed a bucket (for scrubbing those wood floors) and it was such a nice treat to find a portable cleaning toolbox that fit right inside it. I knew if I were ever going to really do any cleaning, I should be properly outfitted. This is how my mind works, see. I found it inspiring to do some preparatory pre-shopping.
(It's kind of hard for me to get excited about scrubbing, so a gal has to do what she can.)
Also, these are not one-time-use items and I use them all the time now, they especially come in handy because I tend to be a naturally very scattered person so having a single place for all my stuff -- in this case my cleaning stuff -- has worked wonders for my personal get-it-togetherness.
And just to be clear here -- my goal is to do a little better for the environment than I have been doing, but I will never meet anyone's standards of getting it all right. One of the things I find really off-putting in sometimes sharing with people that you're trying anything new is that once you admit to making little changes some folks seem to start yammering on about how you're not doing it right, or not doing enough, or you ought to do more, or shame on you for not doing more sooner.
Like a lot of people, I can only do the best I can with what I got. In my way of thinking it's best for me to make some small changes and let them build on each other. If I felt like I had to change EVERY THING IN MY WHOLE LIFE AT THIS VERY MINUTE, well, I wouldn't be bothered to change a damn thing. It's too hard, too overwhelming, too exhausting and doesn't work for most humans. And I'm sure if someone came knocking on my front door for an inspection and made up a list of every thing I do wrong they'd judge me just as harshly and I'd be sent right off to the Jail For Failed Homemakers.
On the plus side, I bet the company in my jail cell would be a hoot and a holler.
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Another question from yours truly here, is it normal to get cat hair tumbleweeds in the corners of the living room now that I have these wood floors? Is it just more noticeable now since the carpet is gone or do ya'll think the cats are having a party every day while I'm at work, inviting the neighborhood wild animals over to shed all over the floors? Because they are really not fooling around with the tumbleweeds.
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And finally, reader Melissa wrote: "I love Kim and Aggie too, but I'm also quickly becoming obsessed with "You Are What You Eat" which is on BBC America too at 4 and 4:30 (eastern time zone). You should check it out! It is...well, you just have to watch and see..."
Melissa! I am already on that bandwagon and I love that show too and cannot wait to see new episodes on my Tivo list. It's my new favorite thing ... I'm addicted! I was chitchatting with Brenda for an upcoming podcast and she lives in Wales so I made her tell me in great detail what a "fry-up" was, since I saw it on that show. A whole fried plate of food -- now, they could be Southern! Except for the beans of course, you'd have to put grits or hashbrowns in place of the beans. But it's another fabulous find on BBC. Curiously enough, I like to watch it while I'm walking on the treadmill, maybe it's an incentive!
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Ok, that's all for today. Have a great weekend and I'll see some of ya'll in Failed Homemaker Jail. We can talk all about the time we couldn't start cleaning yet because we had to run out and stock up on cleaning supplies (yes, I did that, I admit it.) I'll bring the wine!
Posted by laurie at 07:41 AM | Comments (278)
September 13, 2007
Clean and non-toxic(ish)
There are a lot of reasons to green up your cleaning supplies ... better for the environment, less toxic for you to touch and smell, cheaper, and so on. The main reason I am making the switch from my chemical cleaning arsenal to plain old natural cleaning stuff is uh, well, because of the cats.
This summer I read an article somewhere that talked about the things we buy (bleach, ammonia, chemical cleansers, that sort of thing) and how these cleaning products sit silently on the shelves of our homes giving off fumes. This had never occurred to me. Could my stockpile of cleaning products be off-gassing in the air? And I thought about my little gatos who never go outdoors and live inside the house all day long, 24 hours a day, and they're so close to the ground what with their short, furry legs and all ... and I started to wonder how hard it would be to clean without Windex.
Was it even possible? I mean, I love Windex! I love Scrubbing Bubbles! I love bleaching the sink! Who are these hippieass granola-lovin' clean green people anyway? Are they crazy? And most importantly, if I give up Windex and go au natural, DO I HAVE TO START WEARING BIRKENSTOCKS?
(Oh calm down... I jest, I jest.) (Kind of.)
Mostly I wanted to know if I could get the same level of cleaning out of natural or "green" cleaners as I do with my heavy duty chemical cleansers. Then I started to think back to my great-grandma and her little farmhouse out in Blanco, Texas. She used white vinegar on windows and plain soapy water on everything else. Her house smelled like lemon and fresh air, it was spic 'n span with never a trace of dust anywhere. I don't remember a single cleaning product in her house, aside from soap flakes and vinegar and no one ever got sick from not having enough antibacterial cleaning chemicals.
So, yeah, I guess it's possible. Somehow, someway people once lived without the awesomeness of Formula 409.
I would love to tell you I immediately ditched all my chemicals and went straight to the baking soda, but this is a process. I am not one who is easily swayed from her long-held list of Products To Love And Buy. I started using Shaklee cleansers a while back, but Lord that gets expensive. So slowly, and I do mean sloooowly, I started experimenting here and there to see how clean and non-toxic I could go before ... you know. Having to buy Birkenstocks.
The first step has been creating an arsenal of clean.
The space between the fridge and the wall previously housed a GINORMOUS mountain of plastic and paper grocery bags and some cobwebs. A few weekends ago I re-purposed a wire rack from the back patio, scrubbed it off and brought it inside. Fits perfectly! The mountain of plastic bags went to a recycle bin at Whole Foods. I kept a small supply of plastic bags for cat pan cleanup and some paper bags for hauling out the household recyling, but I did not really need 75,000 bags. Really.
At Target I found a cleaning caddy and bucket hold my everyday cleaning supplies:
The set is from the "Real Simple" cleaning line and I think they cost me about $12. Inside I have spray bottles with my homemade cleaning concoctions, a shaker jar full of baking soda, a jar of white vinegar (I buy the bigger gallon size jars and refill the portable one as needed) and various scrubbers, sponges and gloves. I also have magic erasers in there because I love my magic erasers.
My favorite duster is there, too, it's some kind of fluffy animal fiber and I wash it as soon as it gets dirty. The telescoping rod means I can get the cobwebs in the corners of the ceilings!
The little wire storage rack houses bulk supplies, too. I am and will always be a Cancer gal, so you will not see me running out of toilet paper, paper towels, or cleaning supplies. It's a fine line between being prepared and being a hoarder, and I walk it very carefully. That's where I store my have backup cleaners -- baking soda, lemon juice (opened lemon juice is in the fridge) and various sponges and cleaners, including a small box of Ecover enzymatic laundry powder that I use for household scrubbing.
I do a lot of laundry. While I loved my Shaklee laundry detergent, it was just way out of my budget. I switched to Seventh Generation laundry detergent, and now I'm using Ecover brand laundry liquid because I like the scent. Both work just great. I have bleach for sheets and whites (Drew says bleach is a natural chemical, but it isn't non-toxic so I use it with more restraint now). For dishes I use my Shaklee dish soap or Seventh Generation.
My biggest struggle has been finding a perfect combination for a cleaning spray to replace Formula 409, Windex and various bathroom cleaners. I've tried plain vinegar (yuck smell), vinegar and water, soap and water, soap and vinegar and water and so on. What seems to be working for me right now is a combination of plain water, a few drops of dish soap, a few drops of essential oil (this week it's citrus, but sometimes I use tea tree oil or eucalyptus oil) and a small amount of vinegar. Sometimes I add a small bit of baking soda. I put it in a spray bottle and it seems to be doing the job. Windows get straight vinegar and I clean them with newspaper and -- shock!!! -- this age-old cleaning tip really works. The vinegar smell goes away pretty quickly and I don't have to worry about the fumes I'm breathing in or worry about Windexing little cat lungs. Now the cats aren't having to wear little gas masks everytime I go on a neurotic cleaning binge.
We have very hard water out here in Encino-Adjacent. It's a menace on fixtures. So last weekend I took a tip from my heroes Kim & Aggie and soaked my limescale-encrusted showerhead in lemon juice like I'd seen on an episode of "How Clean Is Your House?" and it worked! I honestly did not really believe this trick was going to perform any miracles, I sort of half-expected it to be a bit of TV tomfollery but thought it was worth a try.
I just filled a ziploc baggie with enough lemon juice to cover the face plate and then secured it over the showerhead with a hair elastic. Then I let it sit for about five hours. I am also such a nerd that I took before and after pictures:
Showerhead before:
Showerhead after:
In the past I've used massive amounts of CLR Limescale Remover on my bathroom fixtures to get the crud off. CLR is so toxic that you have to wear gloves and fully ventilate the room and hope no one lights a match. I was always terrified I would spill a little somewhere and one of the cats would accidentally step on it (ditto for Scrubbing Bubbles, bleach and Ajax powder).
Lemon juice smells pretty and doesn't require a massive clean-up lest a stray kittycat paw step find a spilled drop. I think I'll try this on the shower doors, too, although that is a bigger job than the showerhead. I'm guessing I'd have to take the doors off and sit them on the back patio with a coating of lemon juice and borax, a combination which is supposed to be great at removing built-up scum and scale. I am also supposing that this may rewuire possibly more gusto than I have to work up over some shower doors. Well, maybe I'll save that one for when I have company. Maybe.
Which brings me to my last toxic-to-nontoxic switch, and it's happening this weekend. Mark your calendars, alert the media. You see, I have been using Ajax with bleach in my bathroom for years and years. (Just think of the powder I have inhaled after 15 years of using Ajax with bleach once a week! I have me some clean nostrils!) (That's gross. Moving on.) But I will not sacrifice toilet bowl cleanliness, yo. I have my limits.
This weekend, I will make my first non-Ajax pass of the bathroom. Using a paste of Borax and lemon juice (another tip from Kim and Aggie, of course, what ya'll think I just sit around at night dreaming this up? No way Jose! I learned it from my best fried, TeeVee.) I plan to scour the bowl and report back. I am skeptical, but it would be really nice to find a cleanser that doesn't require major ventilation. And frankly, every time I have a guest over I have to obsessively check to be sure they've put the lid down or panic about whether or not Bob is drinking Ajax water.
Like I said, these are the concerns of one lady with a lot of cats who has a deep, anxious fear of another one of them dying.
There are a few items I haven't been able to let go of, because I love them and boy do they work! Magic Erasers will always have a place in my arsenal, but according to a scientist friend of mine the main cleaning agent in the basic eraser is a superfine grit that essentially sands your dirt off (cool!) And I love Bounce dryer sheets, so hopefully they aren't super toxic because, well, I love them. I'm not sure I will forever and always let go of the Ajax, but I am trying and that's something.
My slow switch to nontoxic cleaners has saved me more money than I would have ever anticipated. A big box of baking soda, a gallon of vinegar and the Wal-Mart brand bottle of lemon juice on my supply rack cost me less than $2. Borax was about $2, and my spray bottles were 99 cents each. Ecover is expensive (compared to generic or ALL brand of laundry detergent) but I think it's worth it. Mostly I like the peace of mind that comes from knowing my little gatos aren't breathing in toxic fumes while I'm at work breathing in the toxic fumes of downtown. I love that when Al Gore finally takes me on a date I can impress him with my saving of the envoronment of Encino-Adjacent. I love that I can use the same cleanser on almost everything. And it is good for the world, and that can't be too bad, either.
And of course, crazy animal lovers unite... if they're breathing in healthier air, then I am a happier lady. And it can't be a bad thing for me to have healthier air, too!
Posted by laurie at 07:48 AM | Comments (190)
August 30, 2007
Hot, handyman and hello there, inner decorator!
I'm not even going to bother complaining since it is August and I do live in the Valley. I'm merely posting this for my friend back East who was complaining about it being 95 degrees or some such nonsense. Also: Hello, there Dallas Raines! That is a fine tan you have, weatherman!
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Next:
Saw this driving yesterday. This photo is not my usual top-quality traffic photography since -- gasp! -- traffic was actually moving. But Lord, I wished I'd known about that sort of service back when I was married. I am just saying is all.
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And in household news...
The old mini blinds in the kitchen had been up long before I moved in and no matter how much I Windexed them and wiped them down, they still had a film and grimy ick to them. The main window over the countertop also looks directly into the next-door-neighbor's window and onto their driveway. And God love 'em, but my neighbors spend an inordinate amount of time in the driveway doing I have no idea what. Who walks up and down the driveway all day? They don't even use their front door, I'm almost positive they spend the whole day walking up and down the driveway, opening and shutting their back gate. It's nutty!
The other window in the kitchen is part of the back door. It was also covered up by a mini-blind that was undeniably gross, sticky from its proximity to the stove. No matter how much I cleaned or scrubbed or soaked the blinds, the gunk remained. And every time I opened the back door, I scraped my hand on the poorly-placed lower blind hardware. OUCH.
So I removed the blinds from both windows and scrubbed each window and windowsill clean (hot soapy water and tea tree oil with a scrub brush. Probably should have done this BEFORE cleaning the countertops and floors. Whoopsy.)
Then I worked the MAGIC. The magic of window film!
Decorative window film is something I have been looking for for ages. One weekend I was at Home Depot and there it was ... a whole display of these amazing colored and printed vinyl sheets that you cut to fit any glass surface. They use no adhesives so the designs are 100% removable and temporary -- perfect for a renter like me. Each roll of art film is $19.95 and will cover an average-sized window. It was a little more expensive than buying new mini-blinds, but well worth it.
The back door before and after:
Artscapes Decorative Window Film in "Bamboo" ... also, this picture doesn not truly convey the nastiness of the window blind but trust me it was gross.
Here's the kitchen window before, during and after (OK, I got excited and forgot to take a total "before" pic, so it has one pane of art film):
Artscapes Decorative Window Film in "Wisteria"
It took me about half an hour to clean the windows and measure and cut the vinyl film to size and another 20 minutes to apply everything just so. I love it!
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Right after I applied the artscapes film to my kitchen windows, I caught an episode of some home improvement show on HGTV where the designer hated this kind of window treatment. I got up off the sofa and walked into the kitchen and evaluated my windows ... nope. I still loved them no matter what some designer on HGTV said.
Being decidedly single for the first time in my life is a new, interesting place. Like most girls growing up in the South in the 1970s and 80s, I took my style cues from my friends, my family, and later from MTV, watching my favorite videos over and over to scrutinize whatever my idol-of-the-moment was wearing. I always had my own little sense of personal flair (see: side-part mohawk) but when it came to decorating I didn't have a big say in things until I moved out on my own and by then I was either looking for a guy, looking to be pleasing to a guy, or settling down with a guy.
It seems that all my window dressing was something done to achieve an effect, to create a nest or project an image ... all meant to please another person.
Realizing things like this always makes me a little ashamed of myself. What woman living free in the United States of America in this day and age builds her home around a man? Any man? But that was the fact, and since I've been un-hitched I've slowly unfolded into my own style which is, as it turns out, nothing at all like what I thought it was!
I tried to make a list of all my little personal design epochs, the "home interior" version. My first design style was clearly Trailer Park Church Box Thrift Shop. No questions there. My teenage design style was I LOVE PRINCE. And U2. And Madonna. And "...the 80s called, they want their Debbie Gibson back." Later, my room was full of Marilyn Monroe posters and pictures of my best friends and lovey-dovey framed photos of my boyfriend along with a few dried prom corsages.
College was my favorite decorating period because it was so simple. I was just happy to wear my hippieass broomstick skirts and patchouli (OH GOD) and decorate with found objects and fellow art students' paintings. But it was a sweet time, I loved my little apartment in college. We burned a lot of incense.
When I moved to Los Angeles I had enough stuff to fill the trunk of my OH-SO-COOL Volkswagon Fox, and ya'll that is not much stuff. My decorating style that first year was "I cannot afford Los Angeles, I need a cigarette." It didn't help that my first apartment out here was so tiny you could make dinner while showering and answer the front door all at the same time.
When I got married the accumulation began in earnest. I liked our first place a lot, the little apartment where we lived with just Roy and Soba for a few years. It was nice and the clutter was at a minimum. I began to buy things I thought would please him, make him happy. Or maybe I always did that, took on the fashion and decorating style of whoever influenced me the most at the time. (I have a girlfriend who does this with music. One day she told me in a panic that she did not actually know what kind of music SHE liked. She'd always just listened to the musical choices of whatever boyfriend she had at the time. I hope I was kind to her when she confessed this to me, because I was in a similar panic the night I started at my Burke table for two hours wondering if it was actually my style or if I just bought it because it completed some picture of us as a couple.)
The last piece of mid-century modern furniture I bought was my sofa, and I bought it long after Mr. X moved out. It is the one single piece of furniture I love more than any other and I didn't buy it for its vintage coolness, I just bought it because I fell in love with it. It's a huge, long Vladmir Kagen style bent-leg sofa reupholstered in smooth cappucino brown ultrasuede. I love that sofa. It's warm and comfortable and inviting and that's the style I like. It was a start, anyway.
The decluttering process made me take an even more critical look at the junk I'd amassed. Did I love that vase or did I just buy it because it was on sale/was a name brand/fit the "look" I was trying to project? And who the hell tries to project an image at my age? At any age? Shouldn't home be your most real, most happy and comfortable space? Who has to be impressed with your house? After all, it's supposed to be both a reflection of your truest likes and a service to your most basic needs for shelter and comfort and happiness. Can those things be achieved by shopping to please someone else? Who is this someone else, anyway? And why have THEY been driving the car of MY life?
And that's kind of how I've happened upon what appears to be my own personal home design style, modern-hippie-Moroccan avec cat-hair ... with less clutter than I thought ever imaginable. (And I love my dorky windows with their faux artiness.) Maybe it's strange to be in your mid-thirties and only just now figuring out what your personal design style is. I don't know, I'm not sure I care. I'm just happy I'm figuring it out, whatever it is.
Posted by laurie at 06:55 AM | Comments (156)
August 29, 2007
My favorite corner of the house
In this month of turning my rented house into an actual cozy home, I had to address the dining table situation.
My dining "room" is exactly 15 inches wide by four feet long. It isn't a real dining room, of course, or even a dining nook. This space sits at the end of the long living room (now with wood floors! love you, wood floors!) between the doorway to the hall and the kitchen wall. The kitchen in this house is so small there's barely room in it for a garbage can, and definitely no room for a table.
Toward the very end of my marriage I acquired a rockin' Burke tulip-base table and four star-based chairs (the graphic designers are all nodding right now, everyone is is going, "Burke? Star tulip whatsit? Huh ...?") but as much as I love that dining set, it's just too big for the house I'm in.
Blocking the flow of chi, and cats.
And along with its massive coolness factor this set is also old, built back in the days when Americans did not have such ample behinds for padding convenience. Do you see where this is going? While I love that Burke dining set and I appreciate its mid-century modern vibe, every time I sit in one of the chairs I worry it's getting tiny little stress cracks in the fiberglass and bringing down the resale value.
That's not very homey, homie. My expensive antique was basically a catch-all tabletop for mail and the chairs made excellent cat beds.
Finally, I realized this was just not good for my homey feng shui. I disassembled the table, packed it up and will decide what to do with it someday. Today is not that day. After months (and now years!) of aggressive decluttering, my house is really pared down (for me, let's be realistic here.) But I'm just not ready to decide what to do with the Burke dining set. I'm attached to it, it was the biggest purchase I made back when I was trying to make my home with Mr. X into a little shrine of married happiness and there's something sad and hopeful about that table and apparently I need more growthy before I know what the hell to do with it. Or therapy. Or wine!
For now, though, I wanted a small and cute and very affordable table and chair set just for the "dining room." My requirements: The new dining set had to be small but sturdy, inexpensive but not look cheap, and something I could haul home and assemble on my own.
I found it at Mecca. Um, I mean ... Target:
Even the painting is helpy. hehehehe
Thanks so much to reader Pam who found info about that painting online here for those who were asking. You'd think that as its owner I would have had more information but uh. Nope. Thanks, Pam!
This three-piece set has a round wooden table with adjustable fold-down sides and solid wood chairs. (In this image I have only one side of the table folded down, the side that is flush against the wall.) I got it on sale for $179. ONE HUNDRED AND SEVENTY-NINE DOLLARS. For all three pieces! Can you believe that? (It's not on sale on the website, but even at $229 it's a great value.) I often stress out about buying new stuff, since I think I should stop contributing to consumerism, I should be fiscally responsible, etc. etc. (See: "Still have not purchased coffee table.") but I did the math, and $179 is like a month and a half of smoking money ... so yay me for quitting smoking. (This is how I justify shoe purchases, too, in case you're wondering.)
And it's important to have a nice place to eat your dinner. If I have a big group of guests over we always eat outside at the long table on the covered patio, it's definitely the outdoor dining room. But for just me, I was tired of coming home and having dinner on a TV tray by the sofa or -- fine, I am admitting this -- eating standing up over the sink. YEAH I SAID IT. Total chick-flick movie freaking cliche ... you know those movies where they show the girl before she gets the makeover, sad and alone and eating dinner on the sofa, cue sad music. Then she gets a good makeup job and ditches the shlumpadinka clothes and she gets the guy and one can only assume dinner alone never happens. The end, cue montage and happy music.
ANYWAY.
The wood in this dining set ($179! For a whole table and two chairs! Still shocked!) is real wood, not pressed particle stuff, and the stain is a deep espresso color. The set is "counter height" which means it sits up higher than a regular dining table but it's slightly lower than pub table height. Most of the other tables I looked at were pub tables, and I'm about four inches too short to feel comfortable in those chairs.
My little three-piece dining set is sturdy, was very easy to assemble, and I got it home in the Jeep with just a little of it sticking out the back window. It doesn't have the coolness factor of the Burke dining set but let's be honest here, I am a divorced woman in my thirties who enjoys knitting, wine-drinking, and taking pictures of my extensive herd of cats. CAN I REALLY BE ANY COOLER? This dining set also fits perfectly in my space, and it feels really solid and -- most importantly -- it fits me and my full-butted American self! It's cozy for dinners for two people, and perfect for a nice dinner alone, too. For under $200. That is crazytalk.
Cue happy music!
Posted by laurie at 06:05 AM | Comments (119)
August 24, 2007
The floors, the floors.... the scary, scary floors.
The one thing I have hated most about this house are the floors. Specifically, the horrible ugly poop-brown sculpted hi-lo shag.
If you think about it long enough, you, too, will be grossed out beyond all redemption. See, sculpted hi-lo shag has not been in style since the 70s. And even with a generous time allowance, this particular type of carpet hasn't been sold in stores since the late 1970s. Which means by my calculations, it is at least 35 years old. IF NOT OLDER. And it has seen how many rental tenants...? And their pets? And children? And possibly not all of them have had the attention to Dysoning that I have...? It is enough to make your skin crawl and drive you to pick up the phone and call the steam cleaners once again.
Not that it helps. I've had the carpets steam-cleaned twice and the owner had them done once. But even with three deep cleans the carpet is an eyesore at best, a health hazard at worst. I really, really hated the carpet.
After a few months of living here I was moving boxes around (oh, that whole time of my life will be known as "divorce - smoking - clutter" always moving a damn stack of boxes somewhere...) and I noticed the carpet was pulling up at one edge. Always a glutton for punishment, I pulled the edge up to see what horrors were lying underneath.
I was SHOCKED! This house appeared to have gorgeous original oak floors under the carpetrocity. Floors that had likely been covered in said brown carpet since the early 1970s, and maybe even long before that.
I tried wheedling the owner into hiring a guy to re-do the floors, but he wouldn't go for the price. "Find me someone cheaper..." he said, over and over again. (There was no one cheaper.) The landlord finally said he didn't care if I paid to pull up the shag but he sure wasn't paying for someone to come and refinish the floors professionally.
[I'd like to pause here and thank you in advance for offering to research all the ways he's slumlording in violation of so-and-so code. Thanks, man! I know you got my back. But this is Los Angeles. Finding a cute house in a safe part of town that accepts multiples of cats and rents for under $2000 a month is like... like finding a gorgeous naked man scrubbing your toilets on a Sunday. Tres impossible.]
In this city you take what you can get, uglyass carpet and all.
I desperately wanted to have wood floors in the living room but I knew I would have to do A LOT of decluttering before I could have people in to do the floors, even if I found a guy who'd work for next-to-nothing. Just six or eight months ago it would have been a full day's work to move stuff out of the living room, last year it would have been impossible.
Time passed, and life got crazy, and floors weren't the top priority. Clean laundry became a much more urgent need, and also "meeting deadlines" and "arriving to work to bring home bacon, fry in pan" and so on. But once things began to settle down and my insomnia returned full-time in late July, I found myself alone at 2 a.m. fixating on the carpet again. My clutter level had reached an all-time low. I had also gotten to an almost-but-not-quite-all-time low, personally, and needed to make some changes. I'd started thinking maybe I should stop waiting for conditions to be right to actually move in, make a home, have a lovely little space, live my life to the fullest. And I knew someone who was crazy enough to work not just for cheap, but totally free.
Me, of course.
In my defense, I am practically an expert in home repairs. Over the years, I have watched at least five bazillion hours of HGTV programming! Surely that investment of time combined with my extensive knowledge of cuteness levels of Home Depot employees makes me an expert at home improvement do it yourselfery. I mean really now.
And that is how I decided to embark upon what might be The Worst Project Ever. (Or, you know, maybe it would be OK.) I made an $8.65 investment in a tackstrip-removing tool, pulled out my gloves, pliers, vacuum, sense of humor, sense of adventure, aspirin, face mask and studiously set upon bringing sexy floors back.
My strategy was fairly boneheaded and simple: Pull up the tackstrips slowly over a period of a week by pulling back the edges of the disgusting carpet and removing a tackstrip or two. I figured this would make the hideous tackstrip removal less annoying, spreading it out and multitasking it while the TV was on at night after work. Then I planned to spend a weekend day removing the carpet and underpad, and cleaning the floor with a round of hands-and-knees scrubbing with warm water and an enzymatic powder (to remove ick and proteins, please don't think to long on this one) and follow it up with several good moppings of linseed floor wash.
The most important step involved two glasses of wine and a decision to hold out HOPE. Hope that whatever was underneath the carpet wasn't horrifying. (There was a point midway through the process when I hadn't yet pulled up the carpet and I confided to a friend that my greatest fear in this Do-It-Yourselfathon was that I would uncover the chalk outline of a crime scene in the middle of the floor. Hey, guess who's seen too much CSI! Three guesses!)
Here is the room before carpet removal, this photo shows the big Ikea rug in the middle of the floor. Notice that nearly six months after I sold my old coffee table in the yard sale I still have not bought a new coffee table. Le sigh:
And a picture without the rug concealing the carpet:
The biggest obstacle standing between me and wood floors was no longer clutter removal or time, it was the loathsome, dreaded tackstrips. Furthermore, I have discovered along the way that I HATE TACKSTRIPS. Whoever laid the carpet in this house some century and a half ago was not messing around with the tackstrips. I started at one corner of the living room and each night after work I would carefully remove a tackstrip or two, then fold the carpet back down over the area and move on to a new quadrant of horror.
The key to this job is to work slowly and carefully, wedging the tool beneath the strip and slowly prying it up nail by nail. I was surprised how fulfilling it was to remove each strip, I felt like I was channeling Bob Vila, showing off my Southern ingenuity, and also, you can drink wine simultaneously if you work slow enough!
Despite the repeated steam-cleaning and the massive amount of vacuuming I do here at Chez Furball, there was a layer of dirt and detritus underneath the entire carpet pad. It was ancient dirt. Perhaps even prehistoric:
I got all the tackstrips removed last Friday night and spent the weekend pulling up and removing the carpet and cleaning the exposed floors. (For this job, I put the cats in the other part of the house and closed the hall door which leads to the living room. I did not need that amount of feline assistance.)
I will not lie to you, removing the carpet and cleaning the floor and baseboards was sweaty, exhausting work. It was also AWESOME. Every time I got tired and wanted to rest alone in a big glass of wine far away from the hellhole of home, I would find a new horror and get inspired all over again to get rid of the shag. And I believe this speaks for itself:
Brilliant me undertook this adventure fully on my own. I also didn't tell many people about my big project because I am sensitive to the amount of advice folks love to give, advice which usually involves doing things in some way other than the way my stubborn little brain has decided to do the job. I can be hardheaded like nobody's business. Plus, if I decided halfway through the process to change my mind I wasn't accountable to anyone but me (hey, it could have happened.)
And aside from my fears of unearthing a crime scene (which would've made a heckuva story, I tell you what) this harebrained project of mine was kind of empowering. I think women have a better attention to detail than men do, and so I was extra-careful with the tackstrips and left the most tiny, barely visible holes. I had to be smart about moving the furniture so I didn't end up in traction, and I decided to divide the room into three segments of work. To remove the carpet, I cut it in manageable strips and got it all out of the house by myself. There's something really rewarding about sweaty manual labor, and the fact that I did it entirely by myself gave me the "I am sweaty, hear me roar!" feeling.
Not bad for a Sunday afternoon:
This part of the job took me about nine full hours of labor: pulling up and removing the carpet, moving the furniture around, scrubbing each section of floor with enzymes, letting it dry and mopping it with the linseed floor wash. In addition, I spent roughly five hours removing the tackstrips and staples on the floor. The total amount I spent on supplies was a very affordable $14.86.
By the time I finished on Sunday night it was almost 11 p.m. and I was dirty, sweaty, aching and exhausted. Therefore, I did not take a picture of the floor without the rug because I was smelly, see above, and the cats were refusing to walk on the floor like normal until I put the rug back down. Weirdos. However, I assure you there was no crime scene underneath the carpet, just lovely oak floors.
Here is my living room on Monday morning after I took two Motrin and hobbled out of bed like a hunchback:
Well worth it!
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Edited to add a few notes: To clean the dirt and proteins and general scum, I used Ecover enzymatic laundry powder dissolved in lukewarm water. Very cold or hot water can warp the floors, so it's important to use lukewarm water. I used a scrub brush and a bucket of the soapy water and washed the floor in segments. As soon as I scrubbed an area, I cleaned the soap off with old towels that had been dampened in water and well wrung-out.
For the general mopping, I used Ecover Floor Soap, which has linseed oil in it to feed and shine up the floors. You could also use Murphy's Oil Soap. Two capfuls of floor wash in a bucket of lukewarm water cleaned the floor with a basic sponge mop. Rinse, wash, repeat. And repeat again!
Posted by laurie at 06:00 AM | Comments (319)
August 17, 2007
It's not really about changing the air filters.
Last night I was in the Jeep, windows down, it was hot but late enough to be out running errands without sweating all the way through my clothes, and anyway I was driving to the Home Depot for replacement furnace filters. Not exactly glamorous.
The house I'm in is so old that even the size dimensions of the furnace filters went out of style in 1960, and now the only place I can find them is at Home Depot. I also need to look for an inexpensive grout-remover tool thingamajig. In other places they may call these tools by such names as "butter knife" or "screwdriver" but I like to have a specific tool for a job like that. Well, only if I can get it for five bucks or less. Butter knives are cheap.
So I was thinking about air filters and grout and that was the exact moment I remembered, out loud to myself, that it's not just about home improvement. It really has nothing at all to do with pre-shopping for an upcoming weekend of cleaning and furniture arranging and maybe finally hanging a picture on the wall. It's about deciding every single day that I am worth a clean air filter, and that I am not waiting until some unspecified day in the far-away (but so easily fantasized about) future when things are perfect and I get on with the business of having a great life and living in a house with pictures on the wall.
Drew once told me that if you show up for a thing, your effort sends a powerful message. I guess it's like a memo in triplicate to the Universe/Cannoli. "I am showing up for happiness in my life."
He reminded me that by just placing yourself on the right path and walking in its direction, even little steps, it sends out positive ripples into your life like a pebble in a pond.
I like that theory. I know it's not just air filters and grout and baking soda cleaning concoctions. It's the effort put toward a well-appointed, well-loved space.
That's got to be on the right path.
Have a great weekend. You know where I'll be ... in my house, trying to make the life I was waiting for. FILM FOOTAGE AT ELEVEN!
Posted by laurie at 06:37 AM | Comments (80)
August 06, 2007
Excellent organizational help is so easy to find...
The weekend was awesome. I saw a movie with Faith (Jason Bourne, call me! Love you!), walked around Urban Home in Sherman Oaks for inspiration and actually got some house-to-home work done without it feeling like dreadful work.
More often than not I start a home improvement (or cleaning) project and get distracted by organizing a row of books or painting my toenails or trying on clothes which reminds me... do I still fit in that one coat I bought at that place that time? Then I try on the coat which then reminds me to turn up the A/C which reminds me to buy air filters which reminds me I wanted to go to Target and get a duster.
DO YOU SEE WHAT I MEAN?
And back when I was married I would often hate coming home, knowing it was my JOB, my DUTY to clean the kitchen and bathrooms and do the laundry and make dinner and frankly I dreaded it at times. Housekeeping was just another chore, another item on my resented to-do list.
So to help me out on my monthlong adventure in Home Lovin', I decided to give myself a break right from the gitgo. I'll just admit right now to God And Everyone that I'm never going to be the most perfect housekeeper and there will always be someone out there with a prettier, lovelier, cleaner home. After all, I do have three cats who decorate my house daily with a fine patina of cat hair. So I just want to do the best I can with what I've got and really try to enjoy it, and if I desperately need to paint my toenails bright pink and fantasize about Jason Bourne while the sink soaks, I plan on doing just that!
Posted by laurie at 11:17 AM | Comments (94)
August 03, 2007
How Clean Is YOUR House?
Drew has gotten me completely hooked on this television show called "How Clean Is Your House?" It comes on the BBC America channel and I have it set on the Tivo so I get three whole episodes a day and I am addicted now. ADDICTED.
If you have never seen the show, I will give you a brief description: There are two lovely proper English ladies who go to messy houses in the UK. These are REALLY messy homes, usually stocked with clutter and unkempt for years on end. The folks who live in these house often embody the exact pictures of my Fear Life, the life with all the clutter and detritus. (Also in the show the hostesses use the word "detritus" and I think I am kind of in love with the way the British speak. They could say "this is a poop sandwich" and it would still sound very posh.)
The hostesses, Kim and Aggie, gross out over the dirt and grime, run lab tests to see what sort of deathly bacteria are on the countertops and sinks and then with the aid of a whole team of cleaners they get the place in super-clean and tidy shape. The transformations are miraculous. It's not a makeover show with all new furniture and decor -- it's just the cleanest, most uncluttered picture of the house using its current conditions. Then in a follow-up piece (which you see at the end of each episode) Kim and Aggie return to the home in two weeks' time to see if the offending parties have kept the household clean.
If you are squeamish, DO NOT watch this show while attempting to eat dinner. Nosiree, Bob. These are dirty, grimy houses.
Drew had been telling me about this show for weeks on end when I finally decided to watch an episode just so he'd stop mentioning it. Sometime in mid-July I set the Tivo (FINE DREW I WILL WATCH YOUR SHOW OK) and it recorded three half-hour episodes. The next night I went home and watched it. I'm a good best friend.
Midway through the second episode, I had to pause the Tivo and go scour and clean my sink. I am not lying to you. I HAD TO SCOUR MY SINK IMMEDIATELY. (And I do not think I need to tell you I am not under normal circumstances a person who comes home after ten hours at work and just gets her relaxation on with a scrub brush. Unless by "scrub brush" you mean "wine glass.")
Anyway, now I am completely addicted to this show and it has truly been a lifesaver. In the same way that looking at books of beautiful, decorated houses inspires me to have a beautiful house, watching this show inspires me to clean. It also put the fear of God in you, appealing to my germaphobia and needing to REALLY get that sink clean. And in a quirky twist of fate, I have always found that maniacal cleaning is an excellent distraction technique. When I started watching this show two weeks ago, I was shocked and kind of enthralled and also somewhat spiritually comatose. Cleaning felt like action, and action felt better than being morose.
I think that cleaning can be a form of active meditation. Now, don't get me wrong ... there is nothing at all stress-relieving about cleaning up a messy, cluttered house for unexpected guests when you have been on deadline for a bazillion weeks while working long hours at the Real Job and commuting and being crazy and so on. At those times you want to hide under the covers and make sweet love to a gin and tonic.
But when you have a Sunday morning to yourself, and it's not hot yet outside and the windows are open and the breeze is nice and you have on some music or maybe a book-on-CD or maybe just silence, and it's just you and a single cleaning project ... well, that's when the act of cleaning becomes more than a to-do list item. It's accomplishment and activity and self-care all in one. This is the same reason I love knitting, because it can be a form of active meditation, too, and I have always loved sewing for the same peaceful freedom from my own thoughts and worries. Intense concentration on one action, one very productive action, is something I just lose myself in.
I think sometimes I forget to put "cleaning" on the list of activities that zen me out because I often associate it with duty and work. But cleaning, when it's just for the sheer joy of a pretty sink or a sparkling fridge or a single shiny pane of window glass, can be happiness and meditation all in one. (This works particularly well for those of who who find sitting still and meditating a near impossible task.)
The best part about "How Clean Is Your House" is that they give you all sorts of hints on how to use natural things around the house as cleaners. Hostesses Kim and Aggie use a LOT of lemon juice and vinegar and plain old table salt and baking soda. (They are so adorably British and kept saying "bicarbonate of soda" and crackerass me was wondering what the heck bicarbonate of soda was... was it coca cola? Was it something only British folks had? Then I had a DUH moment. It is baking soda.)
Anyway, I had no idea you could clean the copper bottom of a pot with a lemon and some salt! Or remove rust with a potato and some salt. I also didn't know about running vinegar through the coffee pot -- how did I not know about that? -- to clean it and disinfect it naturally.
Mainly I love this show because it reminds me on a daily basis how I want to live and how I definitely do not want to live. One of the side effects of bringing the clutter level way down is that you can simultaneously bring the tidy level way up. It's hard to keep a clean house when half of the surfaces are under an avalanche of stuff. Decluttering and cleaning go neatly (!) hand in hand.
And living in a clean space isn't just beneficial for your physical health. For me it's a huge mental shift. Living in a clean house is a little gift every day to me and the furballs. My environment always seems to reflect my mental state (when I first went through my divorce, Shannon came over one night and saw the complete disarray and said, "Yes. This is the house of a terrible divorce." No judgment, just the truth. We laughed. Then I probably cried, and we drank wine. Ya'll understand.)
But a few weeks ago I began to wonder, what if I want to change the inside of me by changing my environment? Is that possible? Instead of being a reflection, can it be a catalyst? Then Drew got me hooked on this show. And now it's August and cleaning has already commenced! My goal is to deep clean every room of this house during the month. I work long hours during the week so my deep-cleans can reasonably only happen on the weekends. There are four weekends in August and I have five rooms: kitchen, living room, bathroom, two bedrooms. So I started the kitchen already... kind of a little jump start.
And of course, there may be a last-minute flurry of decluttering. Again. I sigh thinking about it. But I know it's easier to clean a simple, uncluttered house and it's way easier to keep it clean. The goal now is to have just what I need and what I can reasonably manage. August may be the month of moving in, but life is too short to spend ALL of my hours and days and months cleaning and managing clutter!
Somewhere in the middle of 2006 I got the house clean and passably decluttered and then I kind of got stuck. I kept up the maintenance, vacuuming, always keeping the litter box tidy, washing up on the weekends, but I didn't deep clean anything. This house had needed a really thorough deep clean for a few months before Drew got me hooked on "How Clean is Your House?" but it was during that very first episode that it clicked with me. Cleaning isn't just an obligation. It's also a way to honor your life, a way to show yourself you're worth that much effort.
I'm working on that one.
Posted by laurie at 09:00 AM | Comments (201)
August 01, 2007
Improvement begins at home, with the cannoli of the universe
[I'm sorry this is so long. Apparently I have had some wordiness stored up inside.]
How August came to be the Month Of Making A House A Home
On Friday, July 13th, I woke up and decided I needed to move. IMMEDIATELY. Apparently the way I try to worm out of a conflagration of bad events is to pack up and get the hell out of Dodge. As it turns out, the universe at large did not think this was such a good strategy and wanted me to remain in Dodge for the time being.
(My mom sometimes wonders if I have turned fully crazy because I talk about The Universe a lot. But I like to think of "The Universe" as this dude who looks a lot like Luca Brasi from The Godfather. Sometimes he's got my back. Sometimes he swims with the fishes. We both like cannoli. Sometimes The Universe even looks like ... just the cannoli. It's a fluid concept.)
Anyway, I am a person who has never had trouble finding a place to live. Ever. I just get the show on the road and somehow it always works out. The Universe, he's got my back. YouknowhudImean?
But let me assure you that after five full days of dogged determination, a hundred phone calls and a wasted $60 for an online listing service, I finally put my head down on the desk, beaten by The Universe and July, 2007. I realized Luca Brasi had other plans for me, plans to stay put and figure it out ... whatever It was.
Where am I, and how did I get here? And is there any wine?
I moved into the teeny house in Encino-Adjacent at the lowest of low points, and I had more stuff than any one human should carry around. I was heartbroken, disheveled and also just plain broke. I hated how small the place was, filled floor-to-ceiling with the million boxes of my misspent marriage. I didn't care one way or the other about this house, I was just glad moving was over and it had a covered patio outside to sit and smoke. I could never smoke indoors, it was a long-held peculiarity of mine ... besides, Roy had terrible asthma.
The boxes were stacked in huge piles in the bigger bedroom and they filled the garage, the living room, every space was overflowing with stuff. I couldn't even get the stove serviced by the Gas Company for a week because the stove was piled high with boxes. It took a long time to dig out from underneath it all, but I did eventually get the clutter down to a livable amount. By the end of 2005 you could at least walk around the place. Then I pared down to a more acceptable level, and I pared down again and again until my house began to feel spacious, all 800 square feet of it.
This time of paring down has not always been easy or painless. Frankly, at first I did not want to do it. I thought that holding on to the things I'd collected over the years would bring me some kind of security or comfort or a sense of safety. After I moved, I was thisclose to becoming another woman altogether, one who'd once had a life and then something changed and she just stopped living. I could see the path to this potential life so clearly: The clutter would pile up, a new layer on top of the old layer from an old life, a life left unsorted. Year after year more rubble would be added to the pile like clutter strata until before long this woman, the one in the potential future, is sleeping on a corner of the bed and nobody could come visit and she is alone and ashamed. She would wonder sometimes how to fix it, and she would desperately want to fix it, but by then things had gone on for so long she was immobilized by stuff and fear.
I didn't want that to happen.
For some people, of course, this path is never even a possibility. But it was real and kind of alarmingly near for me. I knew that inside me there was a line drawn in the invisible sand and I could have stayed behind the line forever, and my life would have become an archaeological dig of junk and despair. Or I could cross over to something new and scary ... and free.
I'm not sure what was the one single deciding factor for me crossing to the other side of the line. I think it was Roy and the cats, to be honest. (Does that sound weird? Perhaps when we're at our most alone we cling to what we can, we cling to the one living, breathing thing that needs us.) Maybe that's why his passing has been even harder. He got very sick almost right after I moved into this house, and even though it was a coincidence and not the fault of the move or the house, I made the decision to try very diligently to get the house tidy and sorted out. I wanted the cats to be able to move around without fear they'd be trapped under boxes and piles. Whatever time Roy had left should be really nice, in a comfortable house with clean floors.
And I didn't want to be that woman, the one sleeping in a tiny corner of her own life.
Getting rid of the junk, and the not-junk, too
I think I've spent almost three years here in this little house unpacking. My relationship with stuff is a complex one, and revising that relationship has taken a lot of work. Even now, after years of letting go, sometimes it's so painful it almost physically hurts. When Roy died, I had to restrain myself from running out to the curb to retrieve his little tiny self-heating blanket mat out of the bin before the truck came. I sprawled on the bed and cried like an idiot as I listened to the truck empty the big cans, taking away forever that little blanket.
But that old mangled up piece of fabric which had seen a lot of washloads and a lot of fur was not my beloved cat. It was just an old blanket. Sure, he loved it. But up until he left me I never really thought of the blanket one way or the other, just washed it once a week and put it back inside his little tent and I was happy he was happy. I did not love and miss the blanket, I loved and missed Roy and I WANTED HIM BACK GIMME THAT BLANKET RIGHT NOW.
But I had to let it go. Things carry energy and memories and he only used the mat because he was frail and sick and cold a lot of the time. It reminded me every time I looked at it how hard I tried to keep him alive and still he left and I was sad. And holding onto a grubby scrap of cloth just will not bring him back.
Other times letting go has been easy. I don't care at all about saying goodbye to pants that are too big for me now or towels who have seen better days. I loved passing on to the Goodwill a pretty duvet cover and matching pillow shams that I bought when I first moved into this house. They were still pretty, but they represented my attempt to rid myself of married linens, re-take the bedroom as it were, and frankly ya'll that is a war I have long since won. Yay me! And yay to the person who finds this treat in the Goodwill store.
Sometimes you have to let go so new things can come in.
The move here to Encino-Adj. required a giant moving truck of the 18-wheeler variety and a team of three men and still it took NINE FULL HOURS to load and unload. NINE hours, not including breaks and driving time. And that was on the day after four of my girlfriends and all their respective vehicles had spent a whole Saturday loading and hauling stuff to the house before the movers even arrived. I look back and I am embarrassed at how much stuff I had, how much of my life I wrapped up in clutter and accumulation.
But when you know better you do better, or so says Maya Angelou and I do not argue with her. Or Luca Brasi. So I forgive myself. I held on because I didn't have a lot of material things growing up and it felt like comfort and security to accumulate stuff as I got older. I held on even tighter when my marriage started to fade. HOLD ON FOR ONE MORE DAY. I shopped hoping to finally buy something that would make everyone happy. Now I know they do not sell my brand of happy at a store. (But I do have some great shoes.)
I appreciate everything I have. And sometimes I give things more importance than they deserve. But finally, finally, nostalgic and sentimental me has realized that in the end it's just a blanket, it's not a soul. And when stuff begins to crowd into your life, there's not a lot of room left for people and adventures. I wasn't very portable just a few years ago. I couldn't have people over very often, either, because it meant spending ten hours of prep time sorting, stacking, managing the clutter, cleaning and hiding all the stuff.
I want my life to be about living, not about moving piles of boxes from this room to that room. It's hard to feel grateful for what you have when you're struggling to hide it or move it to the side so there's a path to the computer desk.
Just go to Ikea, that will solve the problem!
I used to think the solution was to buy new things to hold my stuff. I had all kinds of cheap cubbies and cubes and plastic bins, filled and overflowing, if I bought something new I often bought something to house it in. I also used to be in debt thanks to my try-to-buy-happiness-on-sale approach. Now, truth be told, I still believe that you can buy things and they give you a happy feeling or make you pleased. For example, I adore my L'Occitane shower oil. I love pretty yarn. AND SHOES. How I do love shoes.
But nothing I buy gives me the ability to be in my own company and enjoy it. That was something that came from a place they don't have sales.
One of the habits that has been hardest to break is the urge to buy a really great Ikea shelving system as a solution to all my problems, or maybe some plastic bins in matching sizes, or a set of pretty boxes that I don't know what they'll hold, but Lord knows I'll find something...
No. The solution to having too much stuff isn't to go out and buy more stuff. Funny how that works.
From House to Home in 31 days...?
I wanted to move out of this house because I was sad, and July sucked, and I'm anxious about the future.
Nothing in my life is very stable right now, and for me (a stabilty-lovin' mudfoot) this is a really scary place to be. I am trying to Go With It, and often that involves wine and fervent prayers in the wee hours. Sometimes I plead with The Universe/Luca/Cannoli to just show me a little glimpse of the future. Please? And let it be a good one?
One night I looked around my living room and realized I have been living here, in this house, for almost three years and I have yet to actually move in. I was living in the past for the first year and a half, and I've been living for the future the rest of the time. And at the risk of sounding even weirder and self-helpier than usual, I realized in that moment of pure clarity that I have