sprucing up
i need projects in my life. whether it’s knitting a new hat or constructing a different necklace or figuring out new textiles in the bedroom or hunting for furniture, i need something to occupy my time.
though i love our place in SF, i recently couldn’t shake a nagging feeling that we needed to redo something about it. perhaps it was the overload of HGTV yet again and the dreams of someday owning a space, but i wanted to change something. anything.
i think the origin really came from wanting a proper place to store my beading stuff that wasn’t just under the bed or my dresser. we had no spare storage. then i looked at the black eames chairs in the corner. what purpose did they serve? and what about that bench at the base of our bed? why do we have that? and how come we never utilized the small space above our armoires?
on a whim, naz and i decided to go to ikea on easter sunday (yay for free breakfast!) just to saunter through all the fake rooms. this certainly didn’t help my wandering mind—if we owned our place, i’d totally put a backsplash in the kitchen! and that entertainment center? gone! built-in bookshelves would replace it! and how about some dark hardwoods in the bedroom instead of that dreadful carpet?
oddly enough, though, we left ikea without the purchase of any particleboard furniture or other unnecessary upgrades. our main purchase consisted of plant goods, a few new bowls, and a couple new shades for our bedroom lamps. amazing. stuff we actually wanted and needed. but i struggled with unrest regarding our storage situation.
naz started moving a couple things around, and suddenly my beading supplies found a home. and that bench in the bedroom? in our walkway with some of our most-used shoes. and the coat rack? also in the walkway. that area actually feels like part of our home now, and not just empty space outside our front door. (we benefit from having a solitary hallway that the other units don’t have access to.)
a quick trip to bed, bath and beyond in the sideways rain got us what little storage we truly needed. rearranging some shelves in the bathroom resulted in the discovery of some long-forgotten curtain panels. and voilà! our place looked like new again. i think a few more plants out on the patio and perhaps one in the walkway will be all we need. at least for another few months before i get another creative hair up my butt to rearrange/rethink/buy more crap for our space.
