Amber's Bedroom with new sheets from Design Public
Quote of the week from Pixie: "I am getting so much done on The Cure this 3-day weekend, as well as doing social things, going to movies, relaxing, etc. Today especially I woke up early and got started on going through a box of old files I had in the closet and trashed so much stuff. The box is gone!"
You have finished week seven. This is your final week. This is a very important week. It is a week in which you close up your projects and prepare yourself and your home for the arrival of guests.
About 90% of my clients say that the one thing they would like to do more of (and which they don't do) is entertain. Entertaining is the highest accomplishment of a successful home. And it does not require lots of space or money. What is does require is that you have done some work so that the overall beauty, organization and health of your home is shining through. [more below]
Aghh! The ugly (and oh so not-feng-shui) picture!
Also, just to clarify, the sheets are cheapo BB&B, the wonderful quilt & shams & throw pillow are Design Public.
I luaghed out loud at the title "Throwing a Party" with a shot of a bed.
This Cure thing is getting MUCH more interesting! ;)
I'm am out of step with the apartment therapy, but still in the swim. Accomplishments: many, many bags of old paperwork shredded, tossed, or otherwise recycled; one entire collection of many years of one magazine, clipped or tossed; most of my loose tech now in one pile; cd's gradually coming together from nooks and crannies and bags to be sorted, filed, or downloaded to an external hard drive; two paintings now framed and ready to hang. I can now walk in the "outbox" without having to step around bags of stuff that needs attention. I love Apartment Therapy; I am really digging deep and working with a professional organizer is my gift to myself. It's amazing what a lot of stuff I don't need.
Patrick, I think that would fall under "other" on the poll, hmmm?
Haha.
Depending on one's intentions, Patrick's notion *could* be a small cocktail party...
Yay, quote of the week!
I checked "other" because I think that I'll have a party for one of my favorite times of year, the summer solstice, later in June.
I'm still cranking away on the bedroom closet and bookshelves. Everything will probably be done this weekend (maybe not all the repairs-still in progress). I've emptied out the IKEA cabinet http://tinyurl.com/mc4zm
and will put it on Craigslist this weekend. I also must admit that I haven't scrubbed the tub/shower yet - ugh. Thinking about it is worse than doing it, however.
The end is in sight! I have really found the Cure to be unbelievably useful - deadlines get me moving.
ebrown, my hearty congrats and keep going!
I should add to deadlines as a motivator, accountability to my web society.
Week 8 already. Time flies.
Room & Board delivered my bed and mattress this morning. Yahoo! The kitchen curtains should be delivered by the end of the week. Then the only missing piece will be the table and chairs I ordered, which should be delivered by the end of June. Yahoo!
And I talked to my building manager this morning about removing the plastic wall stuff around my bathtub and maybe retiling, depending on the condition of the tile beneath the plastic. I offered to help with the labor. This is the bones repair I want done most of all.
Don't have the pictures with me at the mo', but my cd sleeves worked out beautifully and I highly advocate them for those who want to keep the CD art but not the jewel cases and not have a binder. I stayed up later than I should have last night taking them out of the Jewel cases and putting them into the sleeves. SOOOOO much less space (pretty much less than a 1/4) It's amazing. As I threw down those icky clanky jewel cases, I wondered why I had lugged them around for so many years (it's been, what, at least 15 years since I got my first CD...my how time flies!).
Arrgh. Other. I hoped I'd make more progress last week while I was on vacation from my office job and catch up on my "cure". I'm still struggling with my paper clutter mostly containing account numbers, etc. which needs to be shredded. I managed to fill 3 plus outdoor garbage size cans of shredded paperwork and it still doesn't seem to have made a dent. A very tedious process. Also defrosted my fridge which is a half a day project in itself along with a few other odds and ends. In the meantime my sole plant died and the cord in one of my window shades broke and is now non-functional. Since its not repairable I will have to replace all three shades on my windows (its a studio and they need to match). They were expensive custom shades but several years old and getting a bit dingy. Uncertain whether to go with something cheap and temporary or more custom (which also may take longer to find) and expensive. No party for me anytime soon at this rate. Besides I need to buy some seating as well.
I'm also behind on the cure. I still have a pile of crap in the outbox and a lot of little things that still need doing...
i am giving a big tip to the person @ the pkg store, for carrying out all the alcohol to my car!!! I am going back to work 6-1 after being off 2 weeks. i will have surgery to fix my right knee and hope to be out n about by july. My cure has been crushed for now. I have been doing small things. I can tell you where all the bills that need to be paid NEXT month are! I hope i will be able to finish by 2007.
more to the point guys, how are we going to talk to one another next week?
Will there be a new round of the group cure for another batch of ATers?
Perhaps we can call this current group the Class of June06 and start recruiting people for another round.
It's not like the book will disappear after the majority of folks who started have finished. The book will always be there, and this IS Apartment Therapy and the book is called Apartment Therapy, therefore I propose an on going thread called The Cure or whatever ties into the book.
This would be there for NEW people, as well as people who have more to tackle. For some, decluttering will be a continual process. It's not like the world stops, once the home is decluttered. The dust continues to mosy on in, and we may rethink some of our current items. We might move, needing more or less for the new apartment. Our circumstances might change, like marriage, divorce, births, deaths, kids moving away, meaning that our space has to be altered. Or becoming disabled, and needing to cut out certain things that we don't need/use anymore.
The Cure thread could still have pictures of new people's homes as they join. Show before/after shots of current Cure participants. And have the first batch of Cure folks helping to guide new people on their journey, including pointing them to the old threads and helping them with sources.
It's different than the Open Thread. It's Cure related. Secondly, those who did the whole apartment may wish to go into the One Room Remedy in the future. They may even HAVE to do the One Room Remedy, if something in their lives changes, like the current baby-glut. I swear, if I see one more pregnant celebrity...
But, anyway, you HAVE to have a place for baby. You just can't put the dear one in a papoose and hang them on the back of the door like a backpack.
love the papoose/backpack image....
I'd love to see some sort of continuing thread, along the lines of Andree's suggestions... Though we accomplished a lot, two weeks of vacation knocked out some of the later weeks... and the cats apparently entertained themselves by seeing who could clench the most litter in her paws and walk the furthest, so I feel like we're back to Deep Cleaning in Week 1.
I'd feel less crabby about household stuff if I just started over in Week 1, and I probably will.
Of all the steps in the book, it seems to me that decluttering is turning out to be the most time consuming. I started decluttering months before the book came out, when I got interested in the Simple Living movement. It took ages, and I still have a couple of stacks of CDs I need to haul to Amoeba. And I agree that decluttering is an ongoing physical and mental process. It is getting easier for me to part with things, and I'm sure I'll be doing more purging.
When I got back from my weekly Amoeba CD selling trip last night, I walked into my apartment and thought, "For the first time, I have a home." And I'm 40 years old. All of the different steps of the Cure--decluttering, deep cleaning, making repairs, replacing furniture--have added up to a space that feels lived in but not too full, calm but not too sterile.
P.S. Jim, have you considered curtains instead of blinds? I'm a big fan of curtains. Not frilly window treatments, just vertical panels.
P.P.S. Wende, I've been meaning to tell you that I tracked down lemon mousse Pim's, and they are delicious, especially with a pot of very strong English Breakfast tea.
Maxwell is planning to have another Cure on AT in the fall.
wende, cats are so competitive.
Jeffery -- "Simple Living"? What is that, exactly? I googled it and got a bunch of pages...
wende -- that's exactly why I have a roomba. No more kitty litter!
mary -- The best explanation I've seen of "simple living" is that it is about discovering what is enough in your life and discarding the rest.
I think Russell hit the nail on the head. Here's a link:
http://www.simpleliving.net/
I think an Apartment Therapy messageboard is way overdue. There are free solutions and they aren't hard at all to set up (easier in fact than installing Wordpress or MovableType or whatever runs this site).
That way there could be a whole "cure" forum and people could post to it whenever. Easier to read than one long open thread too.
meanwhile what do the "alum" do?
I don't know what you alum do--and as my order for the book will take another week and a half to be delivered--I have barely started! I am, however, decluttering!
Hope the MB is up and running sdoon! I'll need you alum, for sure!
(And I'm in a house with a family! Not a nifty little apartment, though sometimes I wish! :))