Mission Simplification

In an attempt to inject a bit more of our life into this blog (rather than just crafts and pictures of my dog), I thought I would tell you about my night last night.  I woke up at 2:30am and was WIDE awake.  It was one of those nights where you instantly begin stressing about everything you have going on in your life.  My plate is pretty full right now and there are a lot of things on it that I feel like I am doing half-assed (pardon my French). For me, work and my relationships (friends & family) have always been priorities and probably the only things I have managed to stick with whole-heartedly.  Everything else tends to be a phase for me and I really wish I could fix this.  So it hit me: if I stand any shot at juggling the plateful of things I am involved in, I need to simplify.  Simple as that!  So I am going to share my February resolutions with you.  I never do New Year’s personal resolutions (but see my home goals here!) because they don’t work for me.  But a lot of these things are crucial to my health and happiness so I need them to stick!

  1. Make health a priority- Not that I am unreasonably unhealthy but I need to make sure I am disciplining myself with good exercising and eating habits now.  Walker and I need to go back to cooking our dinners more often like we did before the holiday season ruined the world’s eating habits.  We aren’t dieters but we are good at “everything in moderation” when we put our minds to it.  As for exercising, I know I will not stick with going to a gym for more than a month or two so I need to find a fitness solution that works for me to make sure I stay healthy. I think I have some ideas that make it convenient and effective so more on that later.
  2. Guitar practice- I have been learning how to play guitar and go to lessons once a week.  I love it but I feel like I am falling so far behind on practice and beat myself up over it.  While I was tossing and turning last night, I realized that I know what my hold-up is.  My teacher is amazing and is so great at pushing me to get better quickly… but that means assigning over an hour of material to practice each night.  I just don’t have that kind of time.  So I need to talk with him this weekend and ask to slow the pace a little to a half hour a night (plus fun playing time of course but that’s different) so I don’t get overwhelmed.  It should be fun and right now I am just stressing about it.  Simple fix!
  3. Organize, Organize, Organize- Ok, I know this is the same as my house resolution from January but let me refresh your memory: “When Walker moved in we found a place to put everything and have ignored it since. But in the next few weeks we will be getting a detached garage space (YIPPEE FINALLY!) and can stash some of our stuff in the extra storage. Sounds like a good excuse to do some weeding out of the excess and give us some breathing room.”  I know we have made some progress on this but I really want to finish up the main closets.  Visual clutter = mental clutter for me.  So I can breathe a little easier knowing we have some wiggle room in the apartment.  Plus it will make it easier to keep tidy and that makes me feel great!

So there we go… 3 ways I need to simplify my life to make it more manageable. And since no blog post is fun without pictures, here you go. If this doesn’t make you relax and enjoy life on a gorgeous Friday afternoon, I don’t know what will! :)

P.S. This was $1.50 at World Market!!!

 

Chiles Deciphered

Thanks to the one and only Rick Bayless, Walker and I have really gotten into making our own salsas and cooking with various types of chiles.  So when we are at the store we buy packs of dried chiles and store them in jars for future use.  One problem… once we started buying more than one or two varieties we started to lose track of what was what.

We came up with a quick and easy solution: tag labels.  But rather than write the names of the chiles on the tags, I decided to use a fancy little stamp to give them a more unique look.   We loved the way it looked on the chiles so we decided to label all of our jars (thus the brown sugar tag below… there isn’t a brown sugar chile).

Now I just need to find a stamp with a picture of a chile and we are golden! Maybe like this one? :)

New Workspace: The Plans

We spent the weekend recovering from being sick (or injured in Bo’s case) and watching our Giants win the Superbowl!  WOOP WOOP! So now that the fun is over, it is time to get back to business. I have been working on cleaning and sorting our closets to bring things to the garage so I haven’t had time for many other projects… but a lot of time for daydreaming! Here’s what goes on in my little brain:

For a while now (really since the day Walker and I moved in together), we have been aching for a better workspace for our apartment. Converting my existing desk to make room for a second person has been tolerable but certainly not convenient or aesthetically pleasing.  Creating a new desk was even one of my New Year’s Resolutions, remember?

So I have started plans on a new desk that will give us more room and flexibility in the small space.  We do not have room for two desks in the apartment so I started brainstorming ideas for an effective dual workspace.  I saw this picture from Young House Love and loved how they built a custom desk out of a few cabinets and a couple pieces of wood.

I wish we had enough room for a desk like this!  But alas, we only have 60″ of space to work with and we need some of that to be storage. So a plan started forming in my brain… what if we were to do half of this and keep the one chair/two computers thing we have going on (we are barely ever on the computer at the same time so having one shared workspace is fine)?  Let me help you visualize:

I love it!  I grabbed my measuring tape and started brainstorming what this was going to do for us.  Please forgive my terrible drawing skills…

After some research, it seems like 12″ cabinets are the narrowest standard cabinets.  So I decided to have two of these as legs/storage (yay we each get our own desk storage!).  Storage space will be increased by 2-3 times! Also, because the top will be one continuous 60″ countertop, we be gaining about 18″ of useable counter space… THIS IS AMAZING. Right now the top unit on the desk really limits how we use the space.  So with one giant desktop, we will have a lot more flexibility. Lastly, the leg space remains about the same at 36″ between cabinets. This gives us enough space for a new comfy desk chair… like this one maybe from World Market?

The final question becomes where do we put the printer?  Walker came up with the answer: a single floating shelf for a printer and some knickknacks like the one above our couch.VOILA: New desk space! Now we have to figure out where to get materials.  Lowe’s sells a basic 12″ base cabinet for $71, which is a little out of our price range.

So we are scouring craigslist and will also take a trip over to a local Habitat ReStore outlet and see what they have as well.

As for the desktop, Ikea’s desktops are the wrong depth so we are back to square one on this.  I would like one continuous surface (rather than boards across the top) so it is seamless for writing. So I am keeping my eyes peeled for a roughly 60″x24″ish countertop. Perhaps the ReStore will have something we can use.

Anyway, the plans are in motion and I can’t wait to get started. I think we are aiming to get this project moving within the month! :)

Erika

I’m Erika, an interior designer with an aesthetic that is a mix of California Bohemian, Mid-Century, and Scandinavian influences with pops of fun color and loads of natural materials. Plus plants, plants, and more plants!

My sweet family (Walker, Juniper & Hank, as well as pups Arlo & Guillermo) just reloacted from Los Angeles, CA, to Lincoln, NE. We would love for you to follow along with us on this journey!

 
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