Category Archives: home care

Atomic Age Throw Pillows

June 4, 2013 admin

I’ve been in a bit of a nesting phase lately. I think our apartment is about halfway to being pretty darn awesome, and I’ve been overcome with the urge to push it the rest of the way. I’m trying to take advantage of my enthusiasm and motivation to actually tackle some householding projects, and one of the first is something I’ve had in mind for awhile now: new throw pillows for our couch.

My parents bought this couch for me when I moved to Walla Walla, because my mom couldn’t stand the idea of me not having a place to sit and relax in my little house. And because my parents are unfailingly generous. It’s a lovely little couch upholstered in soft brown microsuede, and it’s very, very comfortable. But it came with two fairly boring, polyester throw pillows.

The pillows just felt lost and sad; their muted colors ensured that they practically disappeared into the couch. And they weren’t very pleasing to the touch, either. I wanted something with a little more style and flair, and finally I decided to bite the bullet and order some new fabric. I bought some matching piping at Britex one afternoon, and as soon as my fabric arrived I got to work. These pillows were actually very easy to make (so why it took me over a week to finally get both pillows done is a mystery), and while I didn’t quite get the piping on the corners right, I’m calling that a design feature.

Isn’t this fabric fun? I love the way this robin’s egg blue pops against the brown, and the colors modernize the otherwise very retro print. These throw pillows make me happy, and I actually have enough fabric left to make a third.

I really like the texture of this fabric, too. It’s a printed cotton, but there is a bit of roughness to it which I think is a good contrast to the smoothness of the couch fabric.

This was such an easy and gratifying first project in my grand apartment-polishing scheme. Both Sean and I want a new rug, and some new art to hang on the walls. And I’m right in the middle of an epic 30 Day De-cluttering Project (which I will definitely be sharing soon). It feels good to purge some of the stuff I’ve accumulated, and to make our apartment feel a little more pulled together. It’s a small space, and I’m trying to make better use of it than we have been over the last two years.

Of course, it will be all-too-predictable, in my peripatetic life, that as soon as I get our apartment all fixed up and perfect, we’ll have to move… (Did I just jinx myself? Doh.)

feminism, home care

Housewifery

February 7, 2013 admin

There’s something I have to come clean about. I feel like an embarrassment to feminists everywhere, or at least to my younger self. But here it is: I want to be a housewife.

I’ve been a feminist as long as I can remember. I always believed that I could do anything, be anything in life, even President of the United States (I no longer believe I can be that.) Some of my favorite imaginative games as a kid involved me pretending to have a career of some sort (teacher, architect, real estate agent…yeah, I was a strange one). Throughout my twenties I disavowed the idea of having children, and wasn’t even sure I ever wanted to be married. I’ve always been ambitious, and those ambitions have always been shuttled toward “career,” even when the notion of the career I wanted to have shifted. I never wanted to be taken care of by anyone else.

I still don’t want to be “taken care of.” As my partner and I plan our wedding, and think about what our marriage means to us, nowhere in those promises do I want anything to do with being taken care of or supported. That is no one’s responsibility but my own. Or rather, ours, together. We take care of each other, as a unit. As equals.

But part of that taking care does mean taking care of our home, and our home life. It will eventually mean taking care of our child, and our family. As it is, we both work, and we both take care of our home life, and that is wonderful and as it should be. For us. Right now. But over the past few years, I’ve realized how much I love taking care of home life. That I love it more than I love my job. I don’t necessarily feel fulfilled or satisfied by my work, even when I enjoy it. I don’t feel like my work defines me, and when I leave the office at the end of the day, I shut down the work part of myself (most of the time), and I focus on other things that I love more, like cooking, sewing, cleaning, reading, knitting. I concentrate on my family, my partner, my friends.

I always imagined myself as someone who would be invested in her work, not just a nine-to-fiver. If I’m going to work, I want it to be with determination and passion. Maybe that’s unrealistic, and maybe it’s healthier to be a person who shuts off the work part at the end of the day and focuses on other things. Be that as it may, many women of my generation want to be dedicated, hard working professionals.

It feels like a betrayal, of myself and my fellow ladies, but when I think about the possibility of leaving my job and being a full time homemaker, that thought is really pleasing to me. I feel jealous of people who are able to do it, and sad in the recognition that, these days, being a one income family is nearly impossible, especially in the Bay Area, where we live. These thoughts of giving up my job and being a stay-at-home partner/mother are alien to me, and to my younger self, but there they are.

Many people might want to blame feminism for removing the full-time homemaker option from the family, whether it’s the man or the woman who wants that role. I don’t blame feminism, not even a little bit. I blame an economic system that leaches off of the population, paying them less and less for more and more work, and constantly upping the ante on consumerism and the cost of living. These days, women often aren’t full-time homemakers because there is no way their families could financially survive that way. That’s certainly how I feel about our burgeoning family.

And I’m pleased when I read that a majority of women would rather be single mothers than married to someone who’d rather they stay home. Maybe it’s in the phrasing. I’d rather be single than married to a man who would prefer I stay at home. Because my husband should only prefer that I do what makes me happy, and that we make decisions about our family together.

But sometimes I do wonder if I didn’t suddenly regress a million years in my personal outlook. Because suddenly I’m thinking that I’d be very happy if I could stay home and take care of my family all day. And I think it’s curious that when feminists fought for women’s rights to do work they loved, we somehow managed lose what was once the only valid option.

Does anyone else feel this way? Do you think I’d change my mind quickly once I left my professional life behind? Do you think being a housewife causes imbalances in the power dynamic of the home? Do you think it’s ok for women to want to be housewives even if they have no children? How do you feel about balancing work and home life?

home care, winter

A Media Fast

January 25, 2013 admin

Last night I decided to take a little “media fast,” prompted by Apartment Therapy’s January Cure. I’ve been watching a little too much bad television lately (I am totally obsessed with Vampire Diaries), and spending way too much time pinning wedding dresses and whatnot on Pinterest. The timing seemed right to take an evening away from the screens. No scrolling through Etsy on my phone. No watching TV. No Pinterest. No blogs. I didn’t even check my email.

Instead, I made excellent progress on a new shirt that I’m sewing. If I finish it tonight, I can bring it to Seattle this weekend! I made dinner, and didn’t feel rushed during the process. And I read, an actual book.

It was terrific. I lit a candle and our apartment smelled lovely, I cleaned up my sewing gear so it wasn’t cluttering our table and distracting me while I read. It was quiet and cozy as Sean and I both sat on the couch and read our respective books.

The evening seemed to stretch on much longer than they do when I’m watching TV. That was an added bonus. And I slept SO well, and felt really rested when I woke up.

Here’s to more frequent media fasts, especially during the work week, when I’ve already spent the entire day sitting in front of a screen.

goals, home care, winter

The January Cure: Getting a Fresh Perspective

January 15, 2013 admin

This month, Apartment Therapy is hosting The January Cure, a month-long project encouraging readers to take a good look at their homes and make meaningful changes that will improve their living spaces. I got a bit of a late start, but I’m all in.

I’m about to air some dirty laundry. Well, it’s not technically laundry, though I have some of that, too. I’m about to show you the messiest, most disaster-prone part of our small apartment. Are you ready?

This is our spare room. It’s very small. In fact, in the original layout of the house, it wasn’t a separate room at all. The owners built up a wall and a pocket door, turning this into a very large closet room. When we rented the house I was excited that we’d have another room, where I could work on projects and maybe set up a little cozy reading nook. Intead, this room has basically become storage.

We (ahem, ok, I) have a lot of stuff. I have a lot of books. I have crafting supplies. I am a sentimental collector, so yes, I have years and years worth of letters from friends, newspaper clippings, papers I wrote in college. Owning all this stuff makes living in a small space challenging, and this room is proof of that. We clean it up, and within weeks it’s a disaster zone again.

I really want to get this space under control and make it useable. So when the January Cure encouraged me to get a fresh perspective in a problematic space in our apartment, you know where I went.

In this perspective-getting project, the Apartment Therapy people encourage you to sit in a place where you can get a perspective on a room that you don’t normally have, and to just sit and observe. Imagine the space empty, mentally removing whatever clutter or mismatched objects might be there. Figure out what does work and what doesn’t work in the space, and make note of the changes that you envision for the space, so you can move forward with clarity.

I immediately realized how many things in this space can simply be thrown away. I quickly thought of other spaces in our apartment (both in closets and just in other rooms) where some of this stuff could go. For example, my studio photography lamp can go into a corner in the dining room area. Not only will it fit better there, without feeling like it’s just taking up space, but it might encourage me to actually use it more often. I realized that buying more pretty storage boxes would really help with some of the clutter, and that those big plastic storage bins (we keep our camping gear in them) can go into another closet.

So, I’m hoping that in about 30 days time, this room is in much better shape, and I can’t wait to show you.

I’ll keep posting about the January Cure, too, so check back in to hear more about what we’re doing to cure our tiny apartment.