Into the office. For those of you who do a significant amount of work at home, this might be a challenging week, but even more important as this area represents your *livelihood* and your public life. For others, this may be a very light week.
The two elements that have grown in importance to me are (ironically, as a blogger) the Media Fast and wireless technology (In our house, the computer has easily outstripped the television as most invasive media distraction. We expect that this will be a growing problem around the world. It's no longer, "Turn off the television!", it's "Turn off the computer!").
In last year's Week 5 Cure Post, I went on about the concept of "fasting" or reducing "calories" and linked to this great article on Monkey life expectancy in the NYTimes. Between the remarkable media stimulation that we are subject to and the amount of stuff that we often think we need, filtering our intake on many levels has never been more important. I urge you to check it out if you haven't already.
This Week's Assignment:
In the Deep Treatment, among other things you are diving into the home office and tackling all the computer and electrical tangles that you may have. You are also considering a Media Fast, which is a rather radical part of our household cleaning binge.
As for wireless technology, this simply offers a tremendous design advantage that eliminates wires and clutter for those who work at home on laptops, which is also now easy and inexpensive to set up. Our Home Tech site was started specifically to aid in this area.
In the One Room Workout you will be getting into real color, painting color that is. We had a great time writing this part of the book and remembering all that we had learned over the years about painting. In particular, we were happy to be able to lay out some healthier paint alternatives, though we've found it hard to integrate these choices into NYC life. We'd be interested to hear any tips on this subject.
Info:The Cure posts will go up twice a week on Mondays and Thursdays (or sometimes Friday or Saturday), allowing for plenty of comment space. We will be pulling comments and pics to the front page post each week and everyone is urged to take pics and post them to this great Flickr pool or simply tag them with "apartmenttherapycure." See our old pics here too.
The Fall Cure is live in all four of our Home city sites:
• Chicago & their Flickr group
• San Francisco & their Flickr group
• Los Angeles & their Flickr Group
• New York & our Flickr group
• Green Home & their Flickr Group
Please choose the site nearest your home to join, but feel free to browse on all!
Other Info:
The Cure posts will go up twice a week on Mondays and Fridays, allowing for plenty of comment space. We will be pulling comments and pics to the front page post each week and everyone is urged to take pics and post them to this great Flickr pool or simply tag them with "apartmenttherapycure." See our old pics here too.
(The last post is here - all Worksheets are here - The Book Blog is here)
Wo0t! Thanks for the pic luv - again! I just ate dinner on my new table. I was going to sit on my butt tonight, but you've just motivated me, ehehe!
view Eve in Hochelaga's profile
Holymoly there's my living room. Eeek!
:)
The office is a stalemate for me, since it's also a guest room and we currently have a guest in it. I've purchased American Clay for the walls, though. It's looking like the spring Cure for that one.
view Opal's profile
Opal - your fireplace is GORGEOUS. I am seriously jealous!
view cat's profile
Eve - your table is lovely. Entertaining with that will be great.
I also love Dianora's landing strip - if only I had the room for something like this.
view zooza's profile
so many awesome apartments! much respect to everyone for working so hard.
view olya's profile
Love everyone's pics! Eve, that table is fierce. I like the table I have that belonged to my grandfather's wife, but I think right now if I were to buy another table, it would be one of those!
view Christine (the one in DC)'s profile
Any idea where I can find those shelves behind the featured table?
view amisare waswerebeen's profile
amisare, they look like the benno shelves from ikea. You can adjust the shelves to fit cds or dvds. Very handy.
view gray lady's profile
Gray Lady is right, these are Benno behind my table. Right now, they are full of DVDs.
view Eve in Hochelaga's profile
"I just love this picture of Ramonah's bf's flat."
His sister painted the walls like that and I bought and hung up that lampshade.
Happy to be on your site -
(let me know if there is AT Germany or -Europe.)
best wishes,
Ramonah!
view gunstreetgirl's profile
does anyone have any suggestions for sources for attractive and affordable bottles appropriate for the shower...
i want to replace all of my branded bottles for a more streamlined look (and a continuation of the bottle-ban from AT Kitchen)...
view Jess2nola's profile
Thank you all! I'm closing in to the finish line, having picked up a coffee table and the ikea expedit bookshelves. I haven't been able to assemble the shelves just yet, but very soon. Will post photos of the space when I get it all set :) Thanks AT for all the help and suggestions!
view Yardsale's profile
Eve, you must be thrilled with your purchase. I applaud you for spending the cash.
I made two separate trips to europe in the last 3 weeks and have fallen behind. Argh! seeing a pic from my style tray above reminded me that I am not working in a vacuum here. . . gulp.
I remind myself that I have made progress in so many rooms, but I have a LOT left to do. wow. I thought I would be much further along before having to send out invites. small kitchen improvement from yesterday: http://www.flickr.com/photos/bellasarinha/1543181312/in/set-72157601874955793/
Heading out to buy my weekly flowers now and brainstorm Landing Strip ideas for my skinny hallway/entryway.
congratulations to everyone who is doing so well and thanks for your support!
Bellasarinha
ps I would be interested in suggestions for kitchen/bath bottles, as well
view uptownsarah's profile
Wow, are we all terrible about posting updates or what?
I've felt like I haven't had any curing time this week, but I have been keeping things cleaner in general - dishes getting washed on time, newspapers getting picked up, so I guess that's progress. Last weekend I did a bit of much-needed retail therapy. I got a canvas bin for recycling paper and a small plastic waste basket for recycling bottles and cans - both of these have been a big help in dealing with clutter, before papers and cans would sit next to the trash bin or next to the door before being taken out, and I didn't recycle any non-newspaper paper, b/c it was too much a hassle. Much better now.
We also took advantage of the Columbus day sales to get a $400 wireless printer, marked down to $150. So far it's working really well, and it's more compact than the old one, plus it eliminated one more cord from the living room floor. Also it's totally fun to be able to press print when I'm sitting anywhere in the apartment, and have it happen immediately.
I'm still waiting for our exchanged filing cabinet (in the dark wood) to arrive, that should get here by Monday, and then I will do some purging and reorganizing of the files.
The outbox needs to be outed, as it's taking over the front closet, but I have very little time during the day to get out to the Goodwill, so that may be one big trip towards the end of the cure. I did empty a bit of it by taking the books to the library (DC people - branch libraries don't seem to want book donations, but the MLK library does take them for its used bookstore).
Still to do -
Re-caning one dining chair (I got as far as un-caning it a few weeks ago), Hanging a bunch of pictures, Scrubbing (with a brush, not the swiffer) the kitchen floor, trip to Ikea & the hardware store to deal with the bedroom shelf situation (cloth collection is to go on shelves in to-be-purchased decorative boxes), bedroom closet, under-bed area, hall closet, bathroom.
Also coming up in the near future is mid-term exam week (extended out over the next 3 weeks), so that may put me out of commission for a while...we shall see...
Good luck to everyone, I hope the quietness here is a sign of productivity (and maybe the media fast?), not despair!
view Rosie's profile
Rosie- congrats on all the progress! As for book donations, the Chevy Chase branch up on Connecticut Ave near Chevy Chase Circle takes them for their annual book sale (they were the recipient of hundreds of paperbacks when I purged during the spring cure...)
view CQ in DC's profile
CQ -
Hmm, it must depend on the branch then - the West End library definitly did not want any donations, so I called MLK before bringing them over there...
view Rosie's profile