Home Improvement

For almost three years now, we've lived in a two-bedroom apartment in a 135-year-old building. Our abode is rife with, erm, character, so much that it deserves its own rant post. We've been furnishing and decorating with a modest budget since we moved in. There's a limit on how much we want to invest in a money pit rental like this, but since it looks like we'll be here for at least another year, I've been trying to focus on small things that have been bugging me for a while.

Sometimes I do something big, like downsizing the coffee table and moving some furniture in the living room to make it seem bigger, or at least big enough for two small children to peacefully coexist.

Did I take any "before" pictures? Nope. Can I find the panorama I took a few months ago of the "after?" Nope. But do you like my choice of furniture moving pads?

Time to remove the broken child lock and sticker from the diaper pail.

Ta-da! All shiny and Pinterest-y.

And maybe even replace the lamp with the smashed base on the changing table with something the toddler can't kick off during a diaper change.

 This lamp was a placeholder from the Salvation Army, anyways.

Thanks, IKEA.

While the smashed lamp went to the dumpster, the shade was too cute to waste.

It had a crack in it on the wall side.

Boy, that really classed up the $2 lamp from a different thrift store.

While I was at HomeGoods in search of window treatment inspiration, I found two of these:

The best part? The FLAT PLUG.

Do you ever have that problem? Where you always walk out of HomeGoods with what you weren't looking for? Anyways, this led to a little power strip rotation I'd been wanting to do for some time.

This is behind the couch. The not-flat plug was getting bent, which made me nervous since, well, upholstery plus electricity? Note the cable to our router has been drilled THROUGH THE FLOOR.

This also eliminates the visual clutter of the Squid, which is now hidden in our desk. That thing is such an aesthetic burden, but I got it on clearance, ok?!

Flat plug fits behind the couch!

Then there was our super sophisticated method of powering appliances on the kitchen counter, since

some brilliant person wired an outlet at floor level. THROUGH THE CABINET. So, with the Squid in the desk, I moved the desk power strip to improve this little wiring fiasco. I pinned this tip about photocopying the back of something to aid with drilling a few years ago...

I freaking love using the drill.

So much less MacGyvor-y than the extension cord I picked up at Rite-Aid 6 years ago.

Where's the other flat-plug power strip, you might ask? It's now behind the bed. We have four outlets in our bed room, once centered on each wall. I didn't take pictures of our mattress (sitting on the bed rails that came with it, not a bed frame with a fancy headboard or anything) bending the plugs our our bedside lamps, or the baby monitor plugged into an extension cord curling around the hutch on my dresser but I'm sure you can imagine how fire-hazardly that looked.

I'm sorry if this was the most boring blog post that you've ever read It's just that sometimes the smallest things make a big impact in convenience. (And fire safety.) Do you rent or own? How do you shore up the limitations of your living space?

a bad case of the Mondays

I hate Mondays for a multitude of reasons. The laundry hampers and the trash are always overflowing, the kids are usually grouchy from missing naps on the weekend, and we always hate facing the next long workweek without Mr. Husband.

This weekend had the perfect storm of

(Photo credit)

Closing a show. Does that mean we're out of the woods now? Don't get me wrong, I'm grateful for the opportunity to make some extra money for our family and keep up my professional skills, but playing musicals takes such a toll on our family. I'm out late for many nights in a row and a zombie during the day, the housework suffers, my patience with the kids fizzles, and I don't see much of Mr. Husband.

Taking the kids to visit the in-laws. I'm fortunate that my in-laws are really nice and don't live super far away from us. Sir Toddler in particular gets to enjoy running around a yard that isn't mined with dog poop and has insane luxury features like BACKYARD WATER SPIGOTS THAT ARE HOOKED UP TO ACTUAL PIPES and thus can be used to fill kiddie pools. (Our single spigot is in the front of our unit and hooked up to...nothing! But our practical joke of an apartment is worthy of its own post.) Mr. Husband and I can relax while our kids enjoy their grandparents, and in general these visits aren't a bad thing at all. But spending a day at a normal house also reminds me of our apartment's many shortcomings, and a day away from home means no housework gets done after a musical week where nothing got done either.

This is only a quarter of the mess that was adorning our living room this morning.

Our ceiling was sanded. Over a year ago, an ice dam in a pipe draining through the ceiling (?!) caused water to come through the ceiling in the kitchen. Although our landlord was prompt in fixing the leak and patching the ceiling, the extra step of sanding had to wait until everything was dry. He told us to remind him to come finish the job, but it's amazing how quickly you get used to looking at a patch in your ceiling and forget to send that reminder. In any case, we finally remembered to remind him, so the ceiling is fixed, but now EVERYTHING in the kitchen is covered in a fine white powder...floor, furniture, pots and pans, baby toys...EVERYTHING.  This means extra chores on top of the normal chores that have been building up. I kind of miss that ceiling patch.

But all of this would be tolerable if it weren't for

Queen Baby, ruiner of sleep and all that is sanity. I haven't had a decent night's sleep in over three weeks. Right up until then, Lady Infant was starting to sleep six and seven hour stretches. Then some sixth sense must have alerted her to my upcoming show, and she decided the night before the sitzprobe to start waking up every two to three hours. I assumed this was a growth spurt, so I fed her and put her back to sleep with each waking for a few nights and assumed it would get better when she got through it.

But it hasn't gotten better. It's gotten worse.

Three weeks. Three bleeping weeks enduring hours of screaming despite all the rocking and binky-holding-in that we can muster. Mr. Husband's and my conversations have gone from "she'll just have to fuss it out" to "maybe we can sleep in the living room tonight? or put her Pack'n'Play in the basement?"

So it's a Monday to out-Monday all other Mondays, and I'm fighting the good fight against the worst pessimistic, self-pitying baditude I've had in a while. How do you get through the Monday blues?

The Capsule Wardrobe...

...because I can't dress myself. Honestly. For years I tried to rock a "Bohemian" look with clearance, thrifted, or outdated hand-me-downs from my mother (from the 90's...my mom is actually a pretty stylish person), but I usually came out looking like I'd lost a battle at Savers. I'd hit a sort of stride in fashion a few years ago, but the cycle of pregnancy, postpartum, and nursing took a toll on how my clothes fit and what I needed. I found myself passing over the same tops and pants day after day because they weren't flattering, didn't match anything, or weren't easy to nurse in.

The idea of a capsule wardrobe always appealed to my love of minimalism, but in practice it has made it easier for me to put together a reasonably coordinated and nursing-friendly outfit very quickly. According to everything I've found by Googling "capsule wardrobe," the best way to get started is to completely empty your closet and dresser.

Yikes! I'd never realized how many clothes I had. This wasn't even counting the collection of maternity clothes and clothes-completely-incompatible-with-nursing I had stored in the basement. I'd never really considered myself a hoarder, but here was the evidence.

Most of the resources I found about capsule wardrobes recommend having several capsules based on season and occasion, and exclude workout clothes and loungewear. Since I almost never wear my "work clothes" pieces outside of work (black slacks and blouse, the universal musician's uniform), I put them aside on a single hanger and moved on. I also decided to put all of my workout/pajama type clothing in a single drawer of my dresser, and all of my out-of-season clothing in another. That way, I wouldn't have the visual clutter of clothes that I wasn't going to be wearing in my day-to-day outfits. Then I filled bag after bag of clothing to donate to St. Vincent de Paul. From there I realized I could use a few nursing-friendly short-sleeve tops (my nursing-cami-under-short-sleeve-top system only works up to 70 degrees), so I picked up three stretchy v-necks from Target in gray, navy, and dark green.

What remained, I (eventually) photographed and uploaded into Stylebook, an app for the organizationally obsessed. And here is my late spring/summer/early fall capsule wardrobe thus far.

Everything that doesn't need to be hung up fits in a single drawer, so it's very easy to visualize my options for the day.

I may have sort of "half-fast" the photographing cropping of some of the images (beige, gray, white, and striped clothing don't fare well in the auto-crop feature) before I started looking for retailers' images of some of my clothes. I also haven't photographed most of my jewelry, but at this point I'm not sure it matters. Most of my necklaces are in the Graveyard of Jewelry Destroyed by Sir Toddler, so I don't wear any except for special occasions.

One of the neat features of Stylebook is that it allows you to put together outfits (or "looks") effortlessly, that look like professional graphic designer's work. It makes my outfits look a lot cooler than they are in reality.

Outfit I wore on a cool beach day.

What I wore for an anniversary date with Mr. Husband.

My everyday look. Sometimes I change it up with the Saltwaters or my stylish 6-year-old running sneakers.

The "look" features is actually deceptive, because...

...sometimes all of those outfits are in the wash.

Have you ever tried a capsule wardrobe?