Some New Year's Organizing

I just had a four-day weekend, because of the holiday on Monday, and I spent most of it at home, catching up on cleaning and organizing and dealing with everything that had piled up (literally) during the past month or so. The last two weeks of December and the first two weeks of January were very trying, with way too much time spent in hospitals and doctors' offices and stuck in bed, as well as a lot of time spent away from my apartment while Bill recovered from his surgery at his place. During that time, my brain had to recalibrate in terms of what tasks and errands around the house were really necessary, and what I could let slide so as to not overextend myself. Now that I'm feeling much better and more energetic, it was time to tackle all of the little things that had been let go.

First priority of the weekend, though, was to get out of town for a change of scenery. Portland had been having some very strange foggy weather, but the weather report for the coast was excellent on Friday. Bill and I headed west on Friday morning, and spent the day soaking up the sunshine and fresh salty breeze at the coast, admiring the incredible views from Ecola State Park, and taking in a gorgeous sunset at Cannon Beach.

Back in town, I felt very energized and spent Saturday working away on a variety of chores to get my apartment shipshape again. There was dishwashing and laundry and the usual chores, and in between those I tackled some other jobs. First, I cleaned out my desk. For the past month, my desk had been sitting open, and I had just been stuffing all manner of things into it, and leaving them there: medical bills, pay stubs, books, Christmas cards, etc. I cleared it all out, sorted through, filed away the things that were necessary to keep, recycled or shredded the rest, and organized what was left. Now I can actually close it, and it makes the front room look much tidier.

In the kitchen, I tackled something I think everyone has to face at some point: the dreaded tupperware cupboard. I had gotten a new set of good sturdy containers (mostly for freezing food in) with one of my Christmas gift cards, but there was no room left in the cupboard, which was also a total disaster zone, completely disorganized. One problem was that, having eaten through a lot of the food I canned this summer, there was a glut of empty mason jars filling up the shelves, and more taking up space on the counter. I shifted things around, and stowed away most of the empty jars behind the remaining canned goods in other cupboards. That freed up enough space to fit the rest of the jars and containers neatly into the cupboard. I got rid of all the odd containers and lonely lids too, and it all looks spick and span now. Hopefully I can make it stay that way for awhile.

The next issue was mold. My apartment gets a lot of condensation on the windows in the winter, but what with one thing and another, I had not been running my dehumidifier as much this winter as I did last year, and thus ended up with a horrifying amount of black mold on the windowsills. Ugh. So I tackled it with soap and water, scrubbed off as much as I could, wiped all the surfaces with vinegar, and then dried them and wiped on a coating of tea tree oil. Hopefully that will do the trick, and I will be much more vigilant about running the dehumidifier for the rest of the winter.

I didn't get the knitting done that I wanted to, but I did get the loose ends woven in on a baby sweater that's been sitting in my knitting basket for months, and then blocked it. I'm going to try and put snaps on this one (with a ribbon backing) instead of buttons.

 Someday I'll make myself a proper blocking board. Until then, a piece of a cardboard box, a dishtowel and sewing pins it is...

My final organizing job yesterday was to deal with my garden box. The majority of the seeds in there were packed for 2010, so they all got culled, and the remainder were organized and sorted back into the box. Then some garden planning, lists of seeds to order for this year, and a timeline for planting was made. I'm not going to be hugely ambitious with the garden this year, I have less space for doing so since a good quarter of my garden is currently taken up with garlic.

Last night, I dusted and scrubbed and swept, and got my apartment feeling sparkly clean for the beginning of the week. It's such a good feeling, especially for a neat freak like me.

Around Here Lately

I feel like without a full-on garden or animals or much space, I don't have nearly as much to write about as I used to. I miss the chickens like crazy some days. And the fresh, beautiful eggs. Someday again I will have that. But for now, I am valuing the simplicity of my life on my own. As I told my parents a couple nights ago, there is something very comforting and liberating about having your entire life contained within a 600 square foot area. All of my things fit in my apartment (even if they're wedged in weird corners), I have pared things down so I have only what I love and use, and I don't have anything tying me down (lease aside). I can be content and comfortable, but not feel trapped in any way by pets, gardens, or other obligations. Much as I love those things, right now it's nice to feel free.

My life is filled with simple meals, I'm getting a lot of joy out of cooking and getting creative with it (which is really just a fancy way of saying I'm seeing how far I can stretch my budget). It's been fun to be more aware of how one tasty ingredient can make an entire meal feel special. The other night, I splurged on a bunch of fresh cilantro at the store, and heaped up that night's simple tacos with it- that fresh tanginess makes so much difference. I've been on a major broccoli kick this winter, and last week I branched out from my usual steamed broccoli and chopped some up fine and put it in a quiche.

My space is small, so my chores are pretty simple. A good sweeping once a week is usually all that's necessary, and most of the time I do the dishes regularly, and wipe down the counters. On weekends I give the bathroom a once-over and take out the garbage and recycling. Often I can go two weeks before my kitchen trash bag is full. Lately I've had to put food scraps in the garbage, which feels terrible- but I accidentally overfed my worm bin so I'm giving them a  chance to catch up and eat everything that's already in there before I add more.

As one person, I can usually go two weeks between loads of laundry (the trick is to have enough socks and underwear to last that long). I only use the dryer if there are sheets or towels to dry, otherwise everything goes on racks in front of the heater.

I've got a new knitting project on my needles, the most complicated thing I've attempted yet. I'll get it up on Ravelry one of these days. I have another cotton dishcloth going too, small and quick. It's easier to do a few rows of that when I have a couple minutes to kill but don't want to pay close attention to what I'm doing.

On Friday night I broke out the potting soil again and got my tomatoes, peppers, brassicas, and flowers started under the lights. I forgot that I was out of planting tags, and went rifling through the cupboards to see if I had anything that would suffice- turns out a container like this one converts into tags perfectly:

Last but never least, I had my first dinner of microgreens last week! They've been growing away in their tray, and I cut off a pile to have with potatoes one night. I ate them plain and with my fingers- so delightful!

Spring Cleaning in the Basement

There's nothing like getting a big job out of the way to make you feel satisfied! Also, it's a really good reminder that big jobs often take less time and effort than you think they will, and that many hands make light work.

Last night Matt and I did a chore we've been meaning to do for quite some time, and finally cleaned and organized our basement. I don't think I've shown much of the basement on this blog, but it actually gets a lot of use, it's where our pantry shelves and laundry are and there is home gym equipment (which came with the house) that Matt and Elliot use to work out. We have really let the basement go over the last several months though, and it was extremely cluttered. We kind of just shoved things in corners when we moved in, and when Lisa moved in in October, we still hadn't organized much, and the only place for her to store her things was in a big pile on the floor.

Looking down the stairs to the basement (why someone decided to paint the stairs and floor that color, I do not know. Its attractiveness is only enhanced by the fact that it constantly chips off):

Before:

After:

Our pantry shelves and Lisa's things, before:

And after:

 I organized and shifted a bunch of things that were in the elevated storage space to the right (and also got rid of a lot of things), then Lisa's boxes and bags were shifted into that cubby as well. The pantry shelves were inventoried and reorganized, and the clotheslines were taken down (we used them once before discovering that it takes about two weeks for any laundry to dry in the basement, and started hanging the wash up in the garret). The small box to the left of the shelves is our "to donate" box that is now full and ready to go to a thrift store. 

Matt has been home brewing beer for several months now, and started collecting empty bottles a long time before that. But seriously, this is way more bottles than he'd ever manage to fill at a single time!

After:

The lack of shelves in our basement means lots of things stored on the floor (a technique Matt uses in every room, much to my dismay :). This is the area where his tools, our camping gear, and his outdoor toys are kept. Before:

After:

  Not hugely different, but more floor space and a good sweeping helped a lot!

Everything tidy now!

The whole job only took us about an hour, and man is it nice to have that done, and to see a clear, clean floor when we look down the stairs now! I wonder how long it will last....

Green Cleaning: Dealing With Mold

I just finished up a big research project on negative respiratory health outcomes related to mold and moisture in homes and how lack of inspection of rental housing is contributing to the poor health of lower income populations. And then I realized that not once had I actually looked around our house for mold.

See, the presence of mold or continuous moisture inside a home is pretty consistently associated with poor respiratory health outcomes like asthma, strong allergic reactions, sinusitis, bronchitis, common cold, as well as other issues like fatigue and problems concentrating. If we don't look around our homes, clean up mold when we find it, and make sure our landlords (if we are renting) are responsible for any larger maintenance issues, we run the risk of damaging our bodies. You would think I would have gone and looked around our house sooner, especially since I had a sinus infection a couple weeks ago followed by a persistent cough, but no, I was "too busy." Then yesterday I pulled up a set of shades we normally leave down in the bedroom, and I found this reminder to re-prioritize when it comes to health:

Eegad- I promise we're not slobs! We just weren't paying attention when we should have been.

Clearly, it was time to intervene. We only clean with vinegar, baking soda and other non-toxic cleaners in our house, and one of the ways that you can exacerbate respiratory problems is by using chemical cleaners. Fortunately, there are lots of good green cleaning methods for getting rid of mold. Plain white vinegar purportedly kills 82% of all mold, and tea tree oil is a strong disinfectant that is really good for getting rid of mold and keeping it from returning. That said, it is important to note that just cleaning up the mold doesn't necessarily get rid of the problem. Mold doesn't grow unless there is a moisture problem going on, and if you don't deal with the moisture problem, it will just come right back. Ususally it's a pretty simple fix, and often a seasonal problem. In our house, the place with the worst mold was this windowsill in the bedroom where we usually didn't open the shades during the day. That trapped all the condensation (from us breathing all night) between the shades and the window, leaving it nowhere to go. By opening those shades every day, the problem should mostly be solved. I did find minor mold growth on the living room windowsills, which get a lot of circulation, but moisture just gets trapped in the house regardless during the winter. It's a good reminder to open the windows for half an hour on the occasional dry sunny day to air things out.

Remember that mold isn't always obvious. Look in the places you don't normally pay attention:

• On top of/on the underside of windowsills that are above or below your eye line. 
• Behind furniture that sits up against a wall 
• In crevices that might retain moisture (I found some in our bathroom in the two-inch gap between the sink cabinet and the bathtub)
• In gaps between the lip of your kitchen sink and the backsplash- water collects here easily. 
• Behind blinds or curtains
• Inside cupboards that contain plumbing
• Under loose or peeling wallpaper

I did some reading on the safest, most effective ways of cleaning up mold, and went to work. I started by wiping off as much mold as I could with a rag soaked in pure white vinegar, using an old toothbrush to get hard-to-reach corners and cracks.

I started off using a rag cut from an old towel, but found I liked using flannel cloths better. Remember leave as little moisture as possible on the surfaces you are cleaning. I cracked all the windows as I cleaned them, to allow the vinegar to dry quickly on the sills.

You can use the method I did, or else put the vinegar in a spray bottle, spray it onto the moldy surfaces, and wipe it clean with a dry rag, then spray lightly again and let it dry.

The second solution I used was a dilution of tea tree oil, made with 2 teaspoons of tea tree oil and 2 cups of water. Again, you can spray this onto moldy surfaces to dry, or do what I did, and soak a flannel rag in it, ring it out, then wipe everything down and let it dry.

Please remember to wear a face mask or a handkerchief tied over your nose and mouth while you clean up mold. You are loosening up mold spores, and you don't want to breath them in.  It's also a good idea to wear gloves- vinegar can really dry out your skin.

Remember that taking measures to prevent mold growth is more efficient than cleaning it up after the fact (now I really sound like a public health advocate!). Here are things you can do to prevent moisture from accumulating in your home:

• Open all your blinds and curtains in the morning and leave them open all day
• Leave doors between rooms open during the day to allow air to circulate
• If you notice windows fogging up or condensation on the walls (this happens when I use the oven a lot), crack a couple windows to get some air circulating, and/or give the windows a wipe with a cloth to speed their drying. 
• Check your house regularly for water leaks, excess moisture, or standing water. Places to look are your bathroom, basement, laundry, and around and under your kitchen sink.
• If condensation is a constant problem in your home, think about installing a fan or two, or a more efficient heating system, or just use an electric space heater. If you rent, talk to your landlord and see what can be done. 
• Air out your house regularly. We live all summer with most of the windows open day and night, but in the winter I often forget to open the windows occasionally and get some fresh air in. Try to do this on dry days, though! 

I hope this is helpful- it's an aspect of household health that often gets overlooked, but I've just been reminded by my research how important it is to prevent mold growth. Cleaning up mold is a time-consuming and nit-picky job, but it's worth it to live in a healthy home.

Changing Habits for Fall and Winter

Now that it's truly fall here, and we're spending a lot more time inside and wearing warmer clothing, a few things are changing in our habits and around the house. First of all, we are welcoming a new housemate, Lisa, who is moving in this weekend with her cat, Maggie! We're all looking forward to living together, and think it will be a really nice fit. I'm also excited to have a kitty around the house!

Since I've been inside the house a lot more these last couple of weeks, I've been feeling like it has gotten a little bit cluttered up, and I want to do something about it. Somehow we managed to accumulate a lot of stuff since moving in (most of it for free), but we don't have anywhere out of sight to store it. I really wish we had some nice built-ins with drawers and cabinets in the living room, but no such luck. Instead, we have these two shelves, which are great, but which quickly fill up and look messy:

(Click on Photos to Enlarge)

Beyond just organizing these shelves to make them tidier, I might start keeping an eye out on craigslist for a cheap or free little chest of drawers or a small trunk or something that would be nice to look at and useful to have in the living room, and that we could hide away some of this stuff in, out of sight! It's all stuff we use on a regular basis, but I'm tired of looking at it!

I also want to see what I can do about this area by our front door:

It feels messy and crowded, and I want to make room for Lisa to be able to store coats, purse and shoes here too. The basket is full of shoes, maybe some of them can be moved into our closet.

With the transition to cooler weather, I went through my closet and dresser drawers a few days ago, and swapped out my summer clothes for the winter ones that had been packed away down in the basement. With our relatively small closet and the fact that Matt and I are sharing 5 dresser drawers, space is at a premium, so it makes sense to keep only what I am currently using in the bedroom, and put the rest in storage. I also took the opportunity to pull out the clothes I haven't worn in the last few months or ones I am tired of, and set them aside. My girlfriends and I are having a clothing swap  ("Naked Lady Party") next week, where we will all bring the clothes we don't wear, and come away with "new" ones for free! Through this method, I regularly get clothes that are new to me. I think that in the last three years or so, I've actually paid for maybe 10 items of clothing, apart from shoes, socks and underwear.

Now that we have entered the permacloud that is Portland between October and April, we are no longer able to hang our laundry outside to dry on a regular basis. This means transitioning to hanging our clothes on lines and racks in the basement.

Clothes definitely take a bit longer to dry here, but we'd still rather air-dry them than use the dryer. We usually turn on the fan to give them some airflow for the first couple of hours, when they are extra-damp.

We're beginning to adapt to my school schedule, and to some of the unanticipated challenges that came with my studenthood. For example, we have been sharing my laptop from when we left for New Zealand, which has worked out pretty well, especially since Matt's dad gave him an iPad as a gift this summer. However, now that I am in school and have a lot of writing to do, as well as a lot of reading of online articles, and Matt is constantly job searching and working on job applications, we have to carefully plan and juggle for use of the computer. The iPad is fine for job searching, checking email, and I can use it for some of my online readings, but of course it doesn't have any word processing programs and it can't open PDF files, so I need the computer reading PDF articles and for typing papers, and Matt needs it for completing job applications. On days when I need to take the computer with me to school, Matt has to anticipate what he needs finish and get it done before I leave.

I am developing a schedule that works for me, usually being on campus all day on the days when I have class, and usually one other day besides. I can bike or bus downtown in the mornings, spend the day in the library reading and researching, then go to class in the evenings and be able to come home straightaway when class is finished. One night a week I don't get home until 10 PM, and the other I get home around 7:30 PM. It's working out well so far, when I can get most of my work done at school, and Matt makes a dinner that produces leftovers, or starts making dinner so we can eat right when I get home on my early nights.


It's all an adjustment, but I am so happy to be where I am, and am so encouraged by how many people feel, like me, that our nation (and the world) needs a major systemic overhaul that makes good health and lifestyle choices easier than poor ones.

Glimmerings of Home

I am getting antsy to do some "Before and After" posts of the way the house looked when it was empty, vs. how we have set it up, but as we're still not completely unpacked, I'm going to hold out a bit longer. I'm sure you are getting plenty of glimpses in the other photos in the meantime. We are completely operational as a house, but there are still a few boxes that haven't really been touched, some sets of shelves that are just crammed with things that needed to not be in boxes anymore, we're still sleeping on our futon on the floor until we buy a bed, and we haven't touched the upstairs AT ALL. But nonetheless, we are set up to cook, clean, garden, shower, and do all the activities of daily life, so that's something. As of Monday night, we even have all of our clothes put away in the closet and dresser- three weeks after moving in!

So here are a few more snapshots of what has been going on around here recently:

(Click on Photos to Enlarge)

 I finally got a clothesline strung up! It took some figuring because our yard is so small and surrounded by greenery, and very few things to string a clothesline to! After exploring several options, I finally settled on stringing it diagonally across the yard, from an upright beam of the house to a juniper tree behind the compost bins.

 Matt is a knot expert, so I got him to tie the line securely to the tree, and then I tied the other end of the line into a metal hook, and put an eyebolt into the beam on the house- now we can easily roll up the line out of sight when we don't need it, and unfurl it and hook it through the eye when we need it!

 Matt spent an evening last week pruning back the tree in our front yard. I think it's a dogwood, but whatever it is, it was a little out of control, and it looks much much happier now. 

 Matt is getting a lot more confident in his cooking, and for good reason. He is challenging himself and almost always the result is fantastic. One night last week I had "Simple Pasta and Salad" on the menu plan for dinner, and he took it upon himself to learn how to make a true cheese sauce, made with a roux and everything. It was absolutely stellar.

This is a little salt pot I found at an op-shop back in New Zealand. It has taken the place of a salt shaker on our table, very nice since we use fairly chunky sea salt. The little spoon is an Air New Zealand coffee spoon :) Oh, and the beautiful tea towel/table runner was a housewarming gift from my good friend Rosa. 

 Mmmm, banana bread! On Saturday, when we went to the farm, Jessa brought us a couple very ripe bananas, because she likes hers green. I had a couple more that were about to go off, so voila- banana bread! 

The chicks really deserve a post of their own, so I'll have that soon. For now, it's time to go dip into the pot of lentils bubbling on the stove, then get out and do some weeding in the garden before it gets dark. I hope you're having a lovely week, and Happy Friday to everyone!

Scrambling, and a Sunny Weekend!

We finally got our first real days of summer here in Portland over the weekend, with it finally hitting 80 degrees (a record for us, the latest into the year to hit 80!) and things warming up and sunning gloriously after weeks of gray and almost nonstop rain. The weather turned a 180 over the course of about 24 hours on Friday, and Matt and I took full advantage. It was also the Portland Rose Festival here this week, so over the weekend we went to the carnival (I haven't been on any kind of ride in years- I balked a little at the cost, but it was actually worth it for the rush of fun), took in the Grand Floral Parade, visited the Ocean Watch yacht before it commences its final leg of its circumnavigation of the Americas, barbecued with friends, went to the farmer's market, walked through Washington Park and the Rose Gardens, and spent lots and lots of time in the back yard, eating at the little patio table one of my neighbors put out, and soaking up the sun. Whew!

Yesterday I found time in the afternoon to sit inside for an hour or two and finish up some mending for Matt (the final pieces that were in exchange for his helping pay for sewing machine repairs) and sew up some new napkins for my kitchen. I will post pictures soon! While I sewed, Matt made delicious fresh lemonade sweetened with brown sugar, and cooked down some more frozen strawberries. He separated the juice and pulp and froze them in ice cube trays, to go into lemonade and ice tea for extra flavor. I am so pleased with his endeavors in the kitchen lately- he has been very enthusiastic about learning how to cook (he didn't do it much before he met me), and he is honing his intuitions about food and flavors with lots of success!

I ended the weekend in a mad fit of work, staying up till midnight last night putting the final touches on Tighe and Lisia's wedding gift, which I officially finished on Saturday (six months after starting it. Ahem). Since they are coming to Portland today and will be here all week, I had to get it all finalized and wrapped and put away before their arrival. I was exhausted, but very pleased, and now it is all ready to go. The wedding is one month from today!

Tonight will be busy. Tighe and Lisia are not staying with me (no room!), but nonetheless some cleaning is in order- my apartment is an absolute shambles after a busy week last week and a weekend of hardly being inside or paying attention to the condition of anything indoors! I have barely ventured into my garden recently, with all the rain, so I really need to get out there and pull some weeds and thin some things. (I did have my first salad entirely from my garden last week- kale, snap peas and green onions!) So I have my work cut out for me once I get home from work, cleaning and organizing and gardening and preparing to have company over most of the evenings this week! It will be so good to see Tighe and Lisia, to get lots of good time with them before the wedding week, which I am sure will be fun but hectic, with them trying to see so many friends and family in from out of town.

So. I will post some pictures as soon as I upload them, and in the meantime I hope you have a peaceful, fun, and productive week!

Laundry Day

In an effort to use less electricity, I never put my laundry in the dryer. I prefer the feeling of air-dried clothes anyway, so mine get strung around the apartment, over the tops of doors and the backs of chairs, and hung on my collapsible wooden clothesrack, which is now in a permanent state of wonky semi-collapse. It's really on its last legs and will have to be repurposed soon, probably as a trellis.

In the reverse, here's the scrap cedar that Matt made my trellis from, being put to another use while it was still sitting around my apartment:

I would love to have an outdoor clothesline, but as I share my small backyard with three other apartments it does not really seem feasible at the moment. I look forward to the day when I have a house with a yard of my own, with a big clothesline or one of those umbrella-shaped clothes trees, and maybe a drying rack above the stove, which can be lifted and lowered by a pulley system.

Though sometimes my apartment feels a little cluttered with clothes strung about everywhere to dry, I feel good about cutting down on my power usage, and it also helps me feel domestic in the "old-fashioned" way that I love.

What is your (current and/or ideal) clothes-drying arrangement?