apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

I really love the ambiance in that first photo. It's the kind of feel I would like to have in my interior, that sort of "inside/outside" feeling, with windows showing snowy landscapes, while you're at warm in a cosy chair. One of the reasons I like winter, I rarely find it that dreary.

I never get depressed in winter. It's actually the time of year I'm happiest. I feel so refreshed and energized going out on a cool crisp day! What makes me depressed is days like today when it should be cold, but it's freakin 76 outside. I'm really excited for tomorrow cuz the high is supposed to be 56! Finally a day of winter! I'm different from most people in that Summer makes me so depressed. I hate walking out into a hot, sunny, humid day. It just makes me never want to go out.

I've been experiencing sundowner's for the last two weeks!

I make sure that I get out of the house after during the daylight hours and then after dark, even if its just a trip to the grocery store. I spend most of my days at home with my son so the act of getting out is emotionally important. We've also added more lighting to our home to combat the long evenings of darkness outside.

We've also gone for drives through the more established neighborhoods to enjoy their holiday lights. It isn't practical or green but it helps.

True Tex: though you may not know the cold of Minnesota (and, the depressive qualities of dark setting in at 5:00pm), you are more than familiar with humidity than I. Though ours is not as bad, I agree with you: the humidity makes me never want to do anything in the Summer! I just feel disgusting, all sweaty and sticky all the time.

As far as Winter goes, though, I am one who has just in the last few years embraced the season. Where it used to be just a miserable, cold time of year, it's now a time, to be calm and reflect - to go "inside" myself. But also just to be inside my warm apartment with an excuse (it's just too cold to be anywhere else!), just sitting around drinking tea and reading a good book. There's nothing like the reflective qualities of snow, so I think it's key to have that visual to take advantage of the daytime light, therefor lots of windows is helpful.

This Winter, for me, also means taking on new things. I'm focusing more on the aesthetic and function of my home, trying my hand at sewing, teaching a friend how to cook and that same friend is teaching me to play piano(we'll see). It's a time to take advantage of being inside and being close to those you love!

Yeah, I'd like Winter, too, if I could stay INDOORS, warm and cozy the entire time… I LOVE warm weather.

Ok, so who has some more helpful hints?

My only advice is to cheer up starting on December 21st already, because after that, the days start getting longer! And to bake things in the oven for aromatherapy, apartment-warming, and (nearly) instant gratification…

I recommend the fireplace heater I saw on AT! It adds "ambience" and heat, but may not exactly address the short-day issue.

One thing I do in the winter is adjust my schedule so I take full advantage of the daylight hours that are available. For me, that means starting work on the later side (9-6 instead of 8-5), and waking up at the crack of dawn. I have a few hours of daylight for personal time that way.

Fellow Canadian here: my best winter tips are drink lots of hot tea, TONS of baking (we use the oven almost daily), oatmeal for breakfast, and when you see the sun shine, really make an effort to soak it up.

TrueTex - yeah, well, look where you're at. We Texans take the sun for granted. My FIL got into a tizzy because he was trying to arrange business travel to Sweden in February, when everyone heads south for vacation. What was their problem? Well, let's see... they haven't seen real daylight in three months...

Even in our wimpy little winters, I'm a big fan of the candles. They just make it look warmer, if that makes any sense.

even if it is too cold to go outside, I make sure to have my curtains open for as long as possible during the daylight hours, just to get the natural light. When I can tolerate it, I also open a window or turn on an exhaust fan just to prevent my apartment from getting too stuffy as well. it is how I survive the winter.

Another Canadian here, except I am on the West Coast where winter means dull grey skies and months of rain. I find the festivities of December shield me from the winter blues, but on January 2nd when the fun is over they really kick in.

To help, I recently painted my dull white living room walls a springy green and the rest of the house a warm brown. I am hoping the infusion of colour livens up the indoor space. We have also installed a gas fireplace and new wall sconces to add more atmosphere and coziness to the space.

One bad (grey and soggy) days I will track down a friend for a coffee, or make hot chocolate and watch a movie, or bundle up and head outdoors for a hike in the rain. On a really bad day I head to the pub for a beer. Being with other people is my favourite way to cure the winter blues.

I started taking a low dose of 5-HTP (a supplement) when Daylight Savings Time ended. I have to say it really has helped!

I rarely get a chance to be outside when it's technically daylight this time of year, so I try to take advantage of the artificial holiday lights. Walking around downtown and taking in the decorations helps if it's a nice crisp night.

But sometimes I'll head indoors, to a mall or department store, and after about half an hour of all the noise and light and color, my living room seems more cozy than stifling, and more soothing than dreary.

I just moved a floor lamp into the kitchen and the warm, incandescent light makes a huge difference. Now it's so cozy to work on crafts on the kitchen table near the oven which I'm using a lot more lately.

I'd suggest shifting the focus from the living room into the kitchen for these dark months.

No, but I probably should. I tend to spend winter being tired, miserable, and demotivated; it makes my classwork suffer and annoys the rest of my family by proxy.

Happily, I'm in the southern hemisphere, where we're four days in to summer. Yay! No more depression until next June!

One of my favorite things at Henry Hobson Richardson's wonderful Glessner House in Chicago--an 1886 landmark full of features that we take for granted nowadays, but that were startlingly new when the place was built--is a south-facing exterior door that lies straight ahead as you ascend a flight of broad, shallow steps from a dark, narrow vestibule into a spacious Pompeian red hallway with a curved wall.

That exterior door gives onto an enclosed courtyard, and Richardson's solution for bringing warmth to one of Chicago's typical gray winter days was a leaded-glass door panel made out of hundreds of two-inch-square chunks of roughly fractured amber glass. The sharp-edged inner surfaces splinter the dull beams of the low-lying winter sun, soften it & throw it all around the room. There are other innovative aspects to the house, too--a first-floor master suite for the owners, with twin dressing rooms & direct access from the man's room to a private stairway leading to a separate carriage entrance, to enable Mr. G to leave for early-morning meetings at the office without waking Mrs G; a room for schooling the kids at home, also accessible by the side enetrance; a moss green-&-oak home office/library with a double partners' desk directly off the front hall; a zoned floorplan on the first floor that allowed all the major public rooms to be opened up to one another for large gatherings or closed off for privacy as needed; a cork-lined alcove overlooking the main hallway to serve as an impromptu art & musician's gallery during parties; central heating for warmth (with six art-tiled fireplaces added for atmosphere & supplementary radiators for extra heat on the lower level); electric lighting; an ingenious parallel circulation plan that allowed the family & servants complete access to all parts of the house with minimal overlap; a home workshop for Mrs. Glessner's hobby of silversmithing; a--well, I could go on but I won't--but one of my favorite things is that doorway in the front hall, a beacon of warmth & hospitality for anyone entering Richardon's massive iron-bound front door from a Prairie Avenue raked with winter gales off Lake Michigan, only a hundred yards away.

A few years ago, there was an accident that left this beautiful window nothing but a pile of jagged glass on the Morris-carpeted floor, but fortunately, it's now been restored to its original beauty, and William Tyre, the Executive Director of the Glessner House Museum intends to continue the careful restoration of this little-known landmark. Anyway, if you live in Chicago and you haven't seen the house--and the window--you need to check them out. If you go weekend after next, you also get to see the place decked out in holiday attire, but the place is just as beautiful--to me more so--in its day-to-day dress.

At any rate, I don't have the kind of money it would take to recreate a gold-glass window like that from scratch--or the patience to learn to do so by myself--but it was really easy to steal Richardson's idea & adapt it to my minimal budget, and I managed to warm up my chilly east-facing bathroom with nothing more than a three-dollar roll of amber Easter Egg-basket Celophane from Jewel. The roll's width is the exact width of my window's glass, and static electricity holds it in place without a wrinkle. Voila! Instant sunshine. You don't even realize it's there, you just feel warmer. Well, sort of.

Either way, it's a nice effect for a minimum of effort, which is just the way I like it. In the summer, I get the opposite effect with a roll of pale blue Celophane, which lowers the visual temperature in there by about 2O degrees. In these straitened times, there's nothing like making do. Magnaverde.

i agree- i like that shock of winter when i look out the door. i've lived in LA most of my life and i couldnt wait for snow when i moved to NY. i never realized how silent it the world is when it snows. and how beautiful my otherwise ugly prewar courtyard looked. and Times Square at the holidays? wow. i know that since i dont live it in every year i dont know the real issues with driving or getting to work, but i did have my issues. but i miss it so very much. sigh....

I use G.E. Daylight bulbs, some CFL's, but I turn on all the lights in the house, whether I'm in those rooms or not.

I read somewhere that people in Finland (?) turn on every single light to combat winter blues, and in my experience it really does help.

racheloncegentry -- a sundowner is what we in the healthcare field call someone who gets confused at night :).

I love winter! I only wish it snowed more here. I would like to have a lightbox, though. Unfortunately for me they are rather pricey.

That picture makes me miss snow *tear*

A long time resident of Michigan, I recommend nice winter gear. It's like a friend of mine who mentioned how miserable she was in Portland during the winter, then revealed she had no raincoat!!! Get some uggs (best snow boots ever created), leather gloves, a nice thick down black coat, and a sexy warm hat and scarf.
Being able to GO OUT in the cold will take away all those bummed cabin fever feelings.

Phew, I am not alone! Great bits of advice.

PrettyKitty - let us know if changing the walls from white was helpful!

I've been leaving work earlier. I live in New England and walk to and from the office, about 30 minutes each way. Watching the sky go from blue to ink to almost dark, is SO much better than stepping out into blackness.

I have Seasonal Affective Disorder and feel the effects coming on as soon as the days start getting shorter in October. It lasts until about late March-early April.

Hands-down, the best solution I've found was the Sunbox. http://www.sunbox.com I sit in front of this full-spectrum light for about a half hour to 45 minutes every day during those months. It makes a night-and-day (no pun intended) difference! I've tried all kinds of incandescent and fluorescent bulbs in my regular lamps, but none of them really feels like daylight the way this one does.

Other little helps: get outdoors as much as possible, even if it's cold or cloudy. Even a gray day outdoors will make you feel better than the fluorescent lights indoors if what your body is craving is natural light. Take a walk at lunchtime, offer to run whatever errands your workplace needs done, whatever; just get outside. Light lots of candles indoors after dark. It also just helps to not fight nature and to acknowledge that when the days are short, our bodies will want more sleep. I pllan on going to bed a half-hour earlier every night and the extra pillow time makes me feel less like I am dragging myself through my days.