5 posts tagged “apartment therapy”

I am predictably falling behind on my apartment cure plan. I'm still only about 75% done with the kitchen and haven't done the oven yet. It's not that it was sooo dirty (though the inside of the fridge needed a lot of scrubbing), but I store a metric shit-ton of stuff in my kitchen drawers and cupboards and I had to sort through all of it and make decisions about it, item by item. That part is now complete, and today I was going to do the stove and surfaces and floor, but then I wasn't feeling very well, so I read this instead:

I should be able to catch up this week I think. The next week is not as grueling... I have also gone so far as to mark a green pouch for my daily receipts so I can monitor my spending. This will not be easy for me as my tendency is to totally block out any thoughts about how I spend my money.

I talked to my mom today and got an update on my increasingly-senile Grandpa. He is now forgetting how phones work and calling her to reach someone else. When she answers he tells her to let it ring next time so he can get through to the person he is trying to reach. He also pulls out his own teeth with plyers rather than go to a dentist and refuses to get a new hearing aid despite the fact that he's almost completely deaf now.

In happier news, I went to the Pike Place Market Ghost Tour with Lily and Corey on Friday.  This one had some good stories, but no ghosts appeared for us. I was most intrigued to learn that Seattle once made most of its tax revenue from the World's Largest Brothel. 500 rooms.

I'm making some initial progress on my apartment. Today I sidewalk free-cycled an easel, a huge ceramic cat, a lamp, and an exercise ball. I am always amazed by how fast things go when I put them out on the sidewalk. I've gone through the initial cleaning phase, and though I still have a lot of work to do, I am starting to see results...

This week's tasks for my various fall rejuvenation plans:

• clean floor in living room (which means picking up a lot of stuff, cleaning under birdcage...)
• buy fresh flowers
• start a style board/ notebook for decorating
• make a list of repairs needed in my apartment
• sit for 10 minutes in a place I never sit in my apartment
• set a decorating budget (aka $0)
• make a debt reduction spreadsheet with all current balances owed (I'll be posting about this later)
• bookmark sites for logging in to creditors to track balances (or add to mint)
• create a payment calendar
• make soup
  

I had a ridiculous wrestling match with my bedroom today.  I decided to some rearranging, which is fairly limited when you're talking about a 9'x9' room containing a Queen size bed and a ridiculously large Dania dresser (I think it is supposed to accommodate two people, but I manage to keep it stuffed to overflowing). I had to do a fair amount of thinking to figure out how to choreograph this without taking everything out and putting it back in again  - which would have required moving other furniture... and that dresser is really heavy, so there was no way I was going to try to wiggle it through the door and back without several strong men to help. I'm happy with the result so far - my bed feels a bit more cozy and I can reach my reading lamp from the bed without nearly falling out. A major victory.

The first step in this 8-week apartment cleanse I'm on is doing the floors to get the lay of the land so to speak. I did 3/4 of them today, and I'll get to the living room on Tuesday. So far so good.

I woke up at 4:30 again today, and this time I wasn't able to get back to sleep. I don't know what's up with the early waking, but it's making me feel very out of it. I should really be glad to be able to wake up early for a change. So I've been up since about six. I'm getting started on a major apartment deep-cleaning. I've signed up for the fall cure at apartmenttherapy.com. At least it's a plan I think I can stick to, and will keep me plenty busy without necessarily spending money.  Here are some "before" pics: