January Cure #20 Out with the old

Remember the outbox? And lightening the living room? It is time to revisit both of these ideas and make som decisions. 

I removed quite a few items from the living room to lighten it up, and today we were asked to evaluate and decide if anything should go back. I have to admit, I don't miss any of it, so the candle holders can stay in the cabinet till I actually use them. 

The second task of the day was to empty the outbox. Earlier this week I took all the clothing (2 full bags, in addition to 5 from our closet cleaning) and dropped them off in the Salvation Army delivery box. It is right around the corner, and very handy. For all the other stuff I need to figure out if there is anywhere within walking distance that would want to take it. If not, we need to get help from a friend with a car... Or! Writing that last sentence prompted me to look up a local second hand store, and it turns out that they can pick up donations! I will have to call them next week. Perhaps they will take the mattress and chair we are trying to give away on Finn as well, that would be perfect.

During the Cure I have kept a suitcase for books and a box for things in the living room for things that we don't want to give away, but can be stored for later (when we have more space). So what we actually did today was to put those away in our storage loft. It is only accessible by ladder, so I wanted to make sure I  was done with the purging before moving them. Now, the hallway closet and the loft room are still not finished, but it felt so good to get those messy items out of my sight, so I am happy with today's progress. 

January Cure #19 A 3 minute miracle

Here is a secret to keeping your home from overwhelming you: The surface sweep. How? Set a timer for 3 minutes and clean a room as fast as you can for only those minutes. Pick up and put away dirty dishes, straighten up pillows or sort the mail. Whatever is the problem in your room, pick things up and put them back where they belong. It is amazing how much you can get done in three minutes. Try using a commercial break or turning on a favorite (fast-paced) song.

Our house is looking pretty good right now, but I still took a few minutes to tidy up little odds and end: a cardigan, a couple of blankets, an empty tea cup, some shoes by the door. You know your own mess best, but I promise that this little trick will accomplish more than you think.

January Cure #16 Bathroom

The Cure is coming to an end soon, and I think that's good. I feel like all I do is clean.... In other words, my motivation isn't on top. This weekend was dedicated to the bathroom. A good deep-clean of this room happens only when the Cure tells me to, so it was definitely due. My husband usually cleans the bathroom, so he did parts of it. My job was to get at all those areas that are neglected the rest of the year: dusting shelves, cleaning the walls and the washer. I skipped the ceiling this year, to not overwhelm myself.

Again, a few things got added to the outbox, or thrown away, and the room feels a lot lighter. I hung a few pictures as well. The photograph above is new, taken by Michaela Potterbaum, who also shot our wedding. Isn't it pretty? In a room without a window, this view feels like such a breath of fresh air!

I had also planned to spend some time on the loft room, but never got around to it. Except I managed to give away a mattress that has been taking up too much space. It will help a lot with improving the space when we get it out of the house.

A different project that should make a much bigger impact in our daily life is changing the weatherstrips around the windows and front door. It's been really cold here lately. With temperatures down to -18C, our old apartment is hard to heat up properly. Hopefully this will be a real home improvement and energy saver for us.

Just a few more days with the Cure! I am pretty pleased with the results, though we do have a few more things left to do, but they are all pretty small. I just hope I manage to get them done, and not postpone it till January rolls around again...

January Cure #14 Bathroom cabinets

My plans for tonight were very ambitious, perhaps inspired by the media fast the other day? I wrote down everything I wanted to accomplish, including estimated time for execution, and made a good order. After eating dinner I cleaned the silverware drawer, studied for a while, and it was all good until I started baking crackerbread (knekkebrød). It's been a while since I last did it, and in my memory it takes next to no time, apart from the long cooking time. It messed up my whole schedule... The only thing I had to skip was yoga though, and that was partly because Mike convinced me to watch the latest episode of New Girl - our favorite show!

The Cure challenge was to clear out medicine and bathroom cabinets, getting rid of old or unused items and clean everything to enjoy less cluttered mornings/evenings. You know those lotions that sit in the cabinets for years and never get used? They had to go. Most of them were probably expired too. When it comes to medicine, I actually looked through it a couple of weeks ago, and took the expired stuff to the pharmacy, since it needs to be deposited safely. Mike still has to go through his own stuff, and I have hair products to sort through, but we are definitely getting somewhere.

Because of the Cure I have done this bathroom detox regularly for a couple of years, but there are still a few things that are hard to let go of, especiallly more expensive products like makeup. They make those things in way too large sizes, don't you think? I recently threw away an 8 year old eye-shadow palette, and it wasn't near being empty. Anyone know that feeling? Well, enough about my old toiletries, it is night time.

DIY Green kitchen cleaner

For Christmas I put essential oils on my wish list because I have been curious to try making my own cleaners. The last months I have been reading books and websites about a greener lifestyle, and I realized I want to be more conscious about what we eat and the products we use. Making cleaners is one of the easiest things to do to make your home a little healthier and minimize the use of harsh chemicals. 

I ordered spray bottles on ebay, and used the following three ingredients to create kitchen spray: vinegar, lemon and essential oils. Vinegar prevents bacteria growth, removes odours and discoloring, and lemon removes dirt and stains. In addition, eucalyptus works well against grease, which you find plenty of in the kitchen. 

For these 300 ml bottles I used 

- 1,5 dl water

- 0,75 dl vinegar

- the juice of 1 lemon

- 10 drops essential oil. I used lemongrass and eaculyptus

Mix everything in the bottle, shake well, and you're done!

There are plenty of recipes online for window spray, bathroom spray and more, 

January Cure #6 A realistic kitchen refresh

I like this years approach to the Cure, as it seems more managable than the previous years. Even in our small home, the kitchen takes me a full day to deep clean! This time around, we are encouraged to choose either an inside or an outside track, and save the other part for later.

I picked the outside track, mixed with a little bit of the inside:
- Cleaning the outside and top of the cabinets
- Clean the counters and sink
- Clean all appliances and everything else on the counters
- Clean the ceiling fan above the dining table

My husband's job:
- Clean the inside of the fridge/ffreezer
- Clean the microwave
- Clean the inside of the stove
His tasks are definitely needed, and I am glad we can share this job!

Since I did the pantry earlier this week, a few of my cabinets have been cleaned inside as well. The only thing left on my kitchen to-do list is the dreaded Tupperware chaos cabinet... I did not got flowers this weekend, the tulips are good for a few more days. I also managed to remove some things from the cabinets that can either be donated (going in the outbox), or stored.

A not so realistic kitchen refresh involves a new backsplash, new cabinets and new appliances. Basically a new kitchen. I like the floor, but the rest of it could have been used in a better way. Not to complain, we do make it work, but I look forward to one day having a larger kitchen.

Kitchen design by interior architect and designer Joanna Laajisto‘s for classic Finnish furniture company Lundia. 

January Cure #3 Purge the pantry

Thanks to yesterdays assignment, my head is spinning with ideas for how to reorganize different areas of the apartment! Hopefully some of them will actually work and be an improvement to problem areas.

I gave Mike a TV for Christmas, and it arrived yesterday, so we also rearranged the furniture in the living room. It took  the place of our large bookshelf, which was emptied and put up for sale online yesterday. We already have a buyer, and she picked it up tonight! So great to have someone pay to relieve me of furniture I dont need anymore. Right now there are books everywhere... We need to assemble our new bookshelf, but it will have to wait until tomorrow.

Today's assignment is actually to clean out the pantry. We don't have a real pantry, but that would be great to have one day. Two kitchen cabinets, one drawer and a box for the spices is what we use to store our food. I took everything out, tossed expired things (not very much actually), and stuff I know we won't eat (boiled chestnuts, I'm looking at you!), cleaned and put everything back. I had TV-shows on our nice big TV to keep me company, so it wasn't half bad actually.

I haven't been able to take good pictures because of lack of light during this season, but hopefully I can get it done on the weekends.

January Cure #1 Floors and flowers

When January comes around I have made it a habit to join Apartment Therapy's January Cure for cleaning, organizing and fixing things at home. January is not an otherwise busy month, and therefore a great time to get stuff done that has been postponed for a while.

I am looking forward to the results of this cure, and have decided to really invest in two areas that I never got around to during the last cure: the hallway closet and the loft bedroom/craft/storage area. It's gonna be a big job, so I might not be so thorough with other tasks.

As the new year started I had a bad cold, but luckily I felt well again by Saturday and managed to clean all the floors (except the loft. The loft always gets left out...). For Christmas I received a gift card for my favorite flower store from my husband, and it was spent on some beautiful tulips and a replacing a small zebra house plant that  didn't survive Christmas.