Wanna House so Hard

Freelancing/being on work hiatus has been great. I've caught up on 6 months of housework, done laundry regularly - I even made ravioli from scratch the other night. It's weird. I'm starting to get this thing called a...life? 

One of the projects I've been working on has been to de-clutter the apartment. There were still some leftover moving boxes, sadly, that I hadn't gotten to before starting full-time work. I vanquished those suckers, and more, in the past couple of weeks. Here are some pictures of the improvements I've made - the kind that make me feel like a non-broke adult with a Martha Stewart Patronus.

Tim has always been stressed that there are books on our bookshelves. I love books, and I have many of them. Crafting, art, animation, clip art libraries - I love flipping through them for inspiration and reference. Throughout the years I've chipped away at my collection, selling or donating books that I haven't touched, could get on my Kindle instead, or just don't have interest in anymore. 

Finally, I looked up some bookshelf organization ideas online and realized that there's an entire art to it. Unlike most magazine/staged bookshelves, which are all cutesy and white and matched, we have books of different colors, heights, and styles. I don't think shelves are for housing bowls of lemons, for example. They're for damn books. 

Here's what I came up with:

This Amazon box is filled with books and movies I'm going to donate to the Montclair Public Library

I moved the DVDs off this shelf and put sit-down-to-read books here in the living room, like comics and Ray Bradbury short story collections.

I bought a couple of inexpensive media shelves and put my thinned-down (sob) movie collection on it. The shelves are shallow, so they don't jut out and clutter the wall. Even Tim is happy with them!

I like cherry trees. If I owned a house, I would have at least a thousand in the front yard so I wouldn't have to travel to DC or Brooklyn for the cherry blossom festivals. I like flowers in general - they're cheerful and pretty and make a place seem fresh and alive. However, our local supermarket can't even keep its produce alive, let alone a cut flower section. Trader Joe's has nice cheap bouquets, but there are none in walking distance unfortunately. 

So begins my foray into the world of silk flowers. Tacky? Yep. Depressingly outdated? Very. But, the spring cleaning kick's got me by the twisted female nutsack, so I have to see what I can do. 

I dubiously browsed different silk flower sites and read reviews and looked over pictures. We don't have an accessible Michaels or other craft store, or I could just go there and see how crappy they look for myself. I really wanted these cherry branches, and I let it sit in my head for a week, and finally just decided to splurge and try them out. 

Green plant is real, cherry blossoms are fake

When I first opened the box, I was immediately disappointed in the quality of the blooms themselves. The fabric edges were fraying and the stems were bright green plastic. The giant "MADE IN CHINA" tags attached to each branch wasn't helping either. Disheartened, I stuck them in their vase, a cool-shaped empty spirits bottle I'd bought for a dollar at Goodwill. Then I tried bending the branches from their stiff upright positions and found that this helped a lot. Finally, I took my coping saw to three of the four branches and sawed off the bottoms of the stems at varying heights. After bending out the branches so that it looks more organic and placing it on our living room mirror shelf, where it's viewed from far away, I'm pleased with how it looks. It really brightens up the room and it's one of the first things you see when you walk in - a welcome change from poopy gray concrete. Tim loves them and our neighbor, who works for the Brooklyn Botanical Garden and was an event planner for their cherry blossom festival, asked if they were real. Yesssss.

Re-arranged the consoles to make room for Tim's Nintendo Sixty-Foooouuuurrrr

Hung up Tim's present under my (currently) figure shelf

Found this side table by the trash. It didn't smell like fish juice so I took it.

Sanded, painted, and sealed it

New porch plant table

Didn't have room for our 2nd hanging baskets so I lined it with sphagnum moss and planted lettuce in it

Found these nice folding shelves by the trash as well and it serves perfectly as a porch plant stand. Gave the twin to our upstairs neighbors, who are also gardening.