home improvement

In a few months we will be celebrating nine years in our little house. During these nine years Jonny and I have used three of the six rooms in our house as our bedroom at different times. None of these rooms have had a door. Certainly the most unconventional place we called our “bedroom” was the living area next to our front door (you can see it in this post). There is something a little uncomfortable though about being able to wave hello to the UPS man from my bed. I have been happy to be sleeping upstairs again, but our bedroom was still not private at all, as Keats and Gabe share the room adjacent to ours, and there was nothing dividing the two rooms…until now. In the above photo, the door on the right leads to our bathroom. The new door on the left, separates our bedroom from the boys’ room.

I was really hesitant to have Jonny put up a dividing wall and a door because I loved the open feeling of our upstairs. But I reached a point where keeping the flow just wasn’t as important as oh my goodness–the wonderful feeling of being able to shut a door. For almost nine years the only place I could have any privacy was the bathroom. This new baby who is pressing his little feet into my ribs as I type, was my main motivation though. I really, really, need a place for him to be able to sleep in relative peace and quiet during the day when he arrives.

(in the above photo-the new door is the one straight ahead, the door on the right leads to my closet)

The new wall encloses shelves that Jonny attached to the back side of our chimney years ago.

He also added a hidden shelf over my closet for more book storage.

Behind those shelves is the side of our brick chimney. I took a series of three photos to try and show you the entire wall–it was tricky in the tight space.

The bottom shelf holds some of Larkspur’s favorite books.

And there are a few toys on the little brick ledge, and yet more books in baskets in the little nook created on the floor between the new wall and the side of my closet.

Of course we still share our wonderful and newly private bedroom with Larkspur and Beatrix. And while this door will make daytime naps possible for our new little one, I haven’t figured out yet how things are going to work at night with two babes in the bed with us, and one on a bed next to ours. We’re just going to wait and see what happens.

And just so I don’t give you the wrong idea…

We still have lots of company in our “private” bedroom.

Most of the time, this is just how we like it.

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I hate to overload you guys with my deep thoughts, but this is so good, I’ve just got to share.

Last week after reading this, and then this, I knew I had to make some changes. The first thing I did was throw out my kitchen sponge, and pull a fresh one from under the sink. But I didn’t stop there, because that truly just wasn’t enough.

See this basket of kitchen rags and towels? They weren’t always gray. I find it fascinating that I can own a wide variety of towels in many colors, but over time, they all end up looking the same, gray. I do like for things to match, it’s true. But gray isn’t my favorite color. I also wonder if the gray might indicate that there is mold hiding out in there. I think maybe so.

I’m one of those hippy types who rarely uses bleach, and buys all natural laundry detergent. For awhile I made my own, but my low water washer didn’t seem to like it, so I found a new natural one that I really like (It seems to do really well with cloth diapers.)

(oh, and yes, I do really love my Trudy, so if she hops in one of my photos that’s the one I use!)

My rags looked like this long before I started buying the latest natural detergent that I started using a couple of months ago, so I am not going to blame it. (I know you are probably wondering what it is–it’s this. I do really like this stuff.) For the longest time I used Costco’s “environmentally friendly” he detergent, and before that I think I was using Method brand-just so you know my history. Detergent aside, I really blame my low water washing machine. Honestly, we are on our second set of them, and I am not convinced they really wash our clothes. But maybe I’ve got it all wrong. Maybe I need to start buying Tide like Leila does. Anybody have any opinions on this stuff? You know, low water washers, natural detergent vs. Tide, and other fascinating laundry related stuff. What causes the gray? Mixing my colors? (I sort colors for clothes, but not rags and towels-that would create too many loads.) Maybe if I got Jonny to hang a new laundry line for me, the sun would take care of the gray? Mine rotted, well, years ago, and we haven’t made it a priority to hang a new one. It’s on the (very long) list for this spring.

Anyway, for now, I donated all of my kitchen towels to Jonny because he always needs shop rags, and I now am the proud owner of a drawer full of fresh clean kitchen towels and rags courtesy of Tuesday Morning and the Dollar Store.

Looking at these towels just makes me feel really good. Even when the drawer is closed, I know they are in there, all white and stripey and clean. There’s a chain reaction that happens when I do something like this, and I get all hyper and motivated to keep my kitchen cleaner. It’s kind of great. I owe Leila a big thank you. She has revolutionized my kitchen this past month, not only because of my fresh clean towels, but also because I took her advice and started having my boys load the dishwasher every evening. That’s pretty great too, in fact it’s even better than the clean towels. I am not sure why I was so convinced that they couldn’t do it properly (okay tangent there-sorry.)

One piece of advice: If you do run out and buy new dishrags at the dollar store, it’s maybe not a good idea to buy the ones with the red stripes (they are the prettiest!) They bleed.

edited to add:

we are on city water, and it’s not particularly hard-I looked it up (34 mg/l CaCO3)

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