Cozy Minimalism

Day 2

As an early birthday present, I signed up to take the Nester’s Cozy Minimalism course. It was the name that drew me in. “Cozy” has always been my favorite word. My family uses it a lot, and it’s my ultimate goal for my house. But over the last couple of years, trying to make living in a 2 bedroom condo with two kids work, I’ve really been drawn to minimalism. I loved the idea of being able to marry the two concepts, and during one of the first classes, Myquillan said something to the effect of, “Minimalism doesn’t have to be cold and modern, and cozy doesn’t have to be cluttered.” I loved that!

I decided to makeover our living room for the class. It’s just never felt quite right to me, and I wanted to make small, inexpensive changes.

Our first task was to “quiet” our room, meaning take everything out. When I first heard that, I thought, no, I don’t have time for that, I’ll skip that part and move on to the next assignment. But by the end of the webinar I was convinced it would help, and I’m glad I did. As soon as I took everything out, I felt a physical lightness in the room. Seeing it empty helped me identify the three biggest changes I would make to our room – I finally painted our entertainment center, I moved out our ottoman and made over our old oak coffee table, and I rehung the artwork in a gallery-like cluster.

Here is the entertainment center before. It has always bugged me so much. Like, I would try and watch TV and be distracted by all the clutter.

Here is the entertainment center after. It looks so much calmer and holds (almost) the same amount of stuff.

I painted the laminate using the same Dutch Boy Cabinet and Trim paint we have used throughout the condo to paint our cabinets, trim, doors, and fireplace. It seems like it will hold up decently well (it probably won’t be as durable as on real wood, but we only plan to keep this unit until we move). I also replaced the hardware (the old pulls were plastic), and got baskets for the bottom to hide all the wires. I think that change made a really big impact, because it helped give the unit more presence while also looking less cluttered.

The other two big changes were the artwork and the coffee table. Once the room was quieted, I realized two things – our old coffee table might look really nice in here, but it’s an ugly orangey oak. And two, our artwork is too spaced out and hung too high. Here is the before.

And here’s the after!

I added a couple of paintings to the artwork grouping that we had in other spots, and made one new painting (the small square). The coffee table is my favorite though. I used Polyshades in a darker walnut color (I believe it was called Royal Chestnut) to make over the top. And then I painted the legs turquoise (I used Devine Paints from Target in Pond). The best thing is, the table is so much more functional. The kids can spread out coloring, or snacks, or a board game, and we can hide remotes in the drawer. The ottoman moved to the playroom.

These were all pretty small changes. I’d say I spent about $70 overall for paint, stain, new hardware, and bins. The room feels cozier to us and much more functional for our family. I’m so thrilled with the process that I’m going to try the same method to spruce up our bedroom.

The main takeaway is that you can create more of an impact with larger pieces than lots of small clutter, and to try and remove everything from the room and bring back only what you love. For the bedroom, I’m planning to try and do it for free, since we’re trying to save all our extra money for a house. 

Project 365 - One year until buying a house

Day 1

I am back from another blogging hiatus (that was a year long.. how did that happen??), this time with a big project in mind. Things have been changing pretty dramatically in our local housing market. We’re very close to no longer being underwater on our condo. It’s taken us nine years to get to this point, and as you know, it’s been a roller coaster. I’ve fallen in and out and back in love with our condo more times than I can count. But as we are seeing light at the end of the tunnel, something has hit me. We’re going to be leaving here someday, sooner rather than later it seems. In many ways, I am really excited and motivated, and in other ways I am uncertain and scared. This has been our home for almost ten years, and it’s been a great little home. It’s where we brought both of our boys home from the hospital, where we learned to become parents to these wonderful little guys. It’s where we’ve hosted parties, had struggles, played, made memories. And as much as I’ve moaned and groaned about being stuck here, and lamented the struggles of raising a family in a condo, I am going to miss these days… probably more than I’m even aware of.

It probably wouldn’t be completely impossible to buy a single family house now, but we are going to be in a better position next year. M and I have had many conversations over the last few weeks about our “plan,” and today, while on a sunny spring walk, I had an idea. What if I set a goal that exactly one year from today, on May 1, 2016, we will be preapproved for a mortgage and be shopping for our new home? And what if I blogged every day about this process – about saving up for a down payment, about readying our condo for its next inhabitants, about my excitement over this next chapter of our lives, and my sadness about the end of this chapter? It would be a neat way to not only motivate me to keep saving and keep getting ready to buy a house, but it would also be a good way to chronicle our last year in the condo.

So, I’m going to jump right in and get started!

They say that a goal is a dream with a deadline. My goal is to be preapproved to buy a house by May, 1, 2016. My other goal is to make the most of our last year in the condo, and practice gratitude. Experts say that the best way to achieve a goal is to set actionable, specific tasks. I think the best way to achieve my goal is to create a handful of smaller monthly goals. Here are the tasks I plan to achieve in the month of May:

• Up the amount we are saving monthly. I’ve already changed our automatic savings plan, and the first larger savings payment comes out today. Right now, we are 7.5% of the way to our down payment goal. It is NOT much. But I look forward to watching this number grow.
• Stick to our budget and live within our means. This one is a bit vague, but this month, I am setting our goal to no eating out for the first two weeks of the month, and only eating out once per week after that until the end of May. I will also stay out of stores during lunch time by walking instead.
• Talk to our condo association about the possibility of renting out our condo to family. They are very vague in the bylaws and the actions of the association on rentals. Basically, it is subject to approval. I want to know what our options will be next year. But I’m also really conflict-adverse, and despite being on the board (I know!), I really don’t want to deal with the association. I might make M do this one.
• Look into ways to earn extra income. M has a few freelance gigs going, and I am going to look into taking on a few writing jobs.
• Declutter our master bedroom closet and “quiet” our master bedroom. I’ll go into this “quieting” business later, but basically as an early birthday present this year, I signed up and took the Nester’s Cozy Minimalist decorating course. I totally loved it, and we really made some nice changes to our living room as a result of the class. I loved it so much, I’m going to go through the same process with our master bedroom. I don’t want to fall into the trap of thinking that because we plan to move in “only” a year we shouldn’t work on our space. If we try to sell the condo, we will want it to be looking its best. And it’s always a good idea to pare things down before moving!
• Host family and friends at our condo. In May we’ll be hosting a family dinner, my son’s 6^th birthday party, and an informal gathering of friends for a BBQ. This one should be fun and easy to achieve!

I can’t even tell you how excited I am writing this all down and getting started on this project. It’s going to make a process that could be a little bit emotional and stressful a bit easier on me. Tomorrow I’ll share my progress so far and talk more about my decluttering plans.

Project Recap

So I didn’t blog for almost three whole years. That’s sort of astounding to me, because it doesn't feel at all like it was that long. Time flies so amazingly fast. Obviously a lot happened personally, but we did do some tweaks to our house as well. Here’s what’s changed.

Please excuse the horrendous mish-mash of photos. I took some of these last night, while the kids slept. Others I grabbed off of Facebook from when we first completed different projects. It's really hard when the only time I have to work on this blog is when the kids are asleep!

Playroom

I didn't clean this up much. This is after the kids have gone to bed, but before spring decluttering.

The blue chair that we reupholstered here didn’t hold up to the cats or kids. We passed it along on Craigslist to someone who was very excited about revinyling it, and bought ourselves a chair from Ikea. That also isn’t holding up well to the cats.

We swapped out the homemade train table with a regular train table. It’s not that the homemade one wasn’t adorable or didn’t hold up, but it wasn’t big enough for the more elaborate tracks S wanted to make. So we got a larger surface that’s more conducive to playing, even if it’s not quite as cute.

We ditched the Ikea rug. M never liked it, and I finally had to admit he was right. It wasn’t good in the space for a variety of reasons.

We added more baskets and bins for storage, and a whole heck of a lot more toys.

Oh, we also swapped out the light fixture for a flush mount fixture, so M would stop banging his head into the chandelier. The chandelier moved to the kitchen.

Kitchen

We made one of our biggest improvements to the kitchen: we put in a back splash. Isn’t it gorgeous? I love the white subway tile so much. We went with an accent tile in the center as well, to harken back to our original concept for this kitchen - we’d always wanted black and white checked floors. I’m glad we went with the wood laminate instead, though, as I really think the black and white floors would be too busy and juvenile.

Oh, we also swapped out our old table for my inlaw’s oak pedestal table. I like the more solid feeling of it, although with a high chair it feels a little cramped in the breakfast nook.

Living room

Not much has changed here. A new lamp, new pillows, and a couple new throws have been added to the mix. I might swap out the fluffy white pillows and all the cable knits in the spring, though. These feel awfully wintry to me.

Instagram filters make even my living room look hipster.

I’m also attempting not to kill this adorable succulent.

Laundry Room

I never blogged about this laundry room before, but we got a new furnace! And it’s not avocado green! Spending such a huge chunk of change on something completely un-fun prompted us to try and organize the chaos in this yucky little room. We got some wire shelf organizers to corral cleaning products, some hooks to hang paper and plastic bags, the ironing board, and spring-hooks to hang up all the mops and brooms. 

Oh! And I also found a great idea on Pinterest. I hung up one of those cheap $1 plastic bag holders from Ikea on the wall and am using it to store wrapping paper. 

It's still not super pretty, but it is a little more organized and functional. I will blog about this room in more detail once I'm done fixing it up a bit. 

Organizing makes me want to clean!

This photo makes me want to get a cuter ironing
board cover, even though I never iron.

Hallway

My last post was about the gallery wall. We still love it, and still add to it often. Here’s what it looks like now.

On the other side of this narrow hall, we swapped out the bifold, dark wood doors, for a curtain. When we went to Ikea last week with this project in mind, I immediately began to scope out the white curtains. But M wanted something with color. I’ve been leaning more toward neutrals for a while now, but he still really likes bold color. So, on this one, I gave in. It’s growing on me.  Another post will outline this closet and what we’re using it for soon.

Boys’ Room

Obviously, our biggest change in this room is that we added another person! To accommodate him, we moved S to an Ikea Kura bed (that eventually both kids will sleep in) and turned the toddler bed back into a crib. 

Then, we took down the doors to their closet and made a little book nook and storage area. I seriously love it. I don’t know what it is about closet doors, but I don’t like them! Once I take the doors down to a closet, suddenly, the room opens up and things seem so much cleaner and easier to organize. The upper shelves are a great place to store bins of out of season clothes and S's outgrown clothes for M to grow into. And with the amount of books these two have, we needed an additional bookcase.

This photo is from before M arrived. We decided this arrangement of the crib didn't work. Updated photos when I have a moment when they are awake. 

Our Room

Perhaps this was one of our biggest changes? After a lot of back and forth, we finally decided to repaint the master bedroom. The orange just was not doing it for me anymore. I wanted something airier and lighter. I obsessed over this room on ApartmentTherapy for months, and grabbed a sample pot of the color featured, Benjamin Moore Harbor Gray. I put it on the walls, and it looked nothing at all like the photo. After grabbing billions of gray/blue paint chips, my friend pulled up the Benjamin Moore website and the AT inspiration photo side-by-side and in five minutes picked the perfect color: Benjamin Moore Iced Slate. I wanted something that was gray with a strong hint of blue, and this was perfect. In some light it is a true gray, in others very much a pale blue, and other times looks a little periwinkle. It looks fabulous with the white trim and cream comforter, curtains, and book wreath. The whole room is definitely more traditional and maybe even a little country, but it is soothing and more grown up, and I just love it.

Master Bathroom

Once we repainted the bedroom, I decided we needed to repaint the master bath to better coordinate. It was once painted a tan called “Puppy Paws.” Now it is painted Sherwin Williams “Sensible Hue.” If there’s a better metaphor for how my taste has grown up and calmed down since we first bought this condo in our mid-twenties, I’m not sure what it is. The Sensible Hue has a little more green added to it. I basically wanted the green counterpart to the blue bedroom - something gray with a hint of green. It’s a touch darker than I originally wanted, but I actually got this paint for $5 as a mistint, and the guy at Sherwin Williams was awesome, so I won’t complain. We also bought a framed mirror for this room, and we repainted the grout in our shower. This room looks way less builder basic than it did last year, and while I still would love to gut it, it’s a much more pleasant place to be.

Two Kids in One Condo

So, the biggest thing that has changed since I last kept this blog is that we have another kid! It’s weird for me to look back at my old posts, because S was so little... he was about the same age as our new little one, M is now! Now instead of this blog being the story of a couple raising our toddler in a condo, it’s about us living with two busy boys, ages 1 and almost 5 in a condo.

We didn’t let our housing situation affect our family planning. Originally, we always thought that the condo would be where we lived as young newlyweds, and then we’d trade up when we decided to start family. But then the market tanked in 2008, just when we were starting to think about kids. So, we decided that while perhaps not how we’d originally planned, the condo would be a lovely place to have a baby. Then maybe we could move when he was a preschooler, we told ourselves, before having our second child. You know the saying: life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans. The whole moving thing just kept getting put off and put off. We’re still underwater, we’ve had more than a few financial setbacks that kept us from saving for another down payment, and maybe to some extent inertia kicked in. But we still wanted another child, so when the timing was right with everything else, we went for it.

It might not be how we planned it, but we are so happy with how it’s turning out. M is such a funny little guy. He was a mellow baby, and then suddenly got his sea legs and started tearing around the house at only 9 months old. Now he’s a little over a year and doing all those super cute young toddler things - babbling with inflection and purpose, following simple directions, pointing at everything, dancing, giving hugs and kisses. S has turned into quite the big brother as well. While he is sometimes annoyed at M for taking his toys, it seems like their favorite thing to do is wrestle around and give each other “love attacks” like two rambunctious puppies. It’s pretty fantastic.

This little starter home of ours has stretched to accommodate our now-nuclear family as best it can. I can’t say it’s been entirely easy­­–some things are awesome about small space living with two kids and some things less so. But here are some thoughts about how it’s working out for us so far:

Sharing a room actually made sleep better. My number one fear when contemplating living in this small, two bedroom condo with two kids was how were we ever going to get any sleep? We had M in our room in a Pack n’ Play bassinet until he was 5 months old. Once he started sitting up, we knew it was time to move him into the crib in what was to become the boys’ shared bedroom. But I was a little terrified. S has always been a bit of a night owl, preferring to bring toys to bed to play with, to sing songs, to call out to Mommy and Daddy for some more water or a snack. Was he going to wake the baby? And of course M was still getting up many times a night at that stage. Would the baby wake up S? But, for better or worse, we decided to go for it, and it has been so wonderful. S realized he needed to actually be quiet at night, so a lot of that nighttime silliness just stopped. It was kind of like magic. Now he’s realized that he can grab the baby monitor to “page us” when he wants something, but still: he’s whispering, he’s being respectful of M’s sleep, and he’s now falling asleep more easily. And M’s sleep improved a little bit when we moved him to the crib as well. It was great getting our bedroom back, and there’s something very sweet and almost old fashioned about the two of them sleeping peacefully together in their shared room.

Toys. So many toys.This is where we are struggling. I look back at this post of our playroom when we first converted it from a dining room, and I don’t know whether to laugh or weep. There were hardly any toys! So much open space! We still stored our glassware on the Expedit! The toys are taking over. The whole Expedit is devoted to toys, and we still don’t have enough room. There are toys spilling out from behind the leather chair. There are toys under the train table. There are toys in the adjacent bookshelf. There’s a toy closet in our hallway. There are toys in the boys’ room. I thought we had it under control, we had just done a huge toy purge in the fall, but lately I feel completely overtaken by toys (Christmas with two kids and a first birthday will do that I suppose).  I’m trying to get a system that will allow the kids to help clean up more easily on their own, and that will keep my sanity intact. Toy storage is definitely a work in progress. One thing I keep reminding myself of is that it could always be worse. I think overall, people realize our space limitations and don’t give us as many toys.

Condos can actually be great with small children. Hands down the best part of condo living for me is not having to shovel snow. Winter of 2012/2013 was snowy, and we had a teeny tiny newborn. It was so nice getting to hibernate inside and not worry about who was going to go clear the driveway and sidewalk while we were exhausted with a new baby. This year it has been bitterly cold and S’s first year of preschool has brought home many illnesses. It’s been nice to just let someone else deal with the snow when we’re too busy or sick or tired. And while the thing I personally hate most about condo living is not having my own yard, last year, S, M, and I spent a ton of time outside – using sidewalk chalk on our driveway, exploring the yard behind our condo buildings, and playing with the neighbor kids on our nice, safe cul de sac. I think I finally just embraced our house, and used the outdoor space we do have, instead of wishing for private outdoor space we don’t.

Safety and peace of mind. This might not apply to everyone living in a condo, but ours is all one level. That means no stairs to baby proof. This is a good thing for me, as kids and stairs freak me the heck out. The small size means the kids are always in ear shot, and I can get to them in a flash. I don’t worry as much about their safety in our house because I’ve been able to baby proof (cabinet locks and furniture straps) and then let them explore without having to hover as much. I may need to hover a little more though, judging from how many things M has dunked in the toilet lately...

Small spaces=more time. Living in a small house has its advantages. Mainly, what I lack in space I make up for in time. It doesn’t take as much time to clean up our small space. I can vacuum nearly the whole house from one outlet. We can clean it from top to bottom in a couple of hours. My husband likes to tease me that it can go from being what I call a “disaster” to clean and cozy in 20 minutes. And, as I mentioned before, not having to spend time on outdoor maintenance means we can spend more time playing with these little guys.

I Can't Have a House Blog

This phrase runs through my mind fairly often, mostly when the house is messy or a project didn’t turn out like I’d hoped, or I read critiques of other bloggers, who have way nicer homes than I do.

“I can’t have a house blog. Just look at that drip of paint on the tile.”

“I can’t have a house blog. Look at how many toys are shoved behind the chair.”

“I can’t have a house blog. Look at this shitty hem I just sewed into these curtains. That’s it, I’m using some hem tape.”

“I can’t have a house blog. My house is nothing special.”

My insecurity is probably the main reason I stopped blogging. There are so many DIY and decorating blogs out there, why would anyone want to read this one? I need to get over it. Maybe no one will read this blog, and that’s OK. Maybe someone will read this blog and think it sucks. That’s OK too. There are no rules when it comes to blogging, so who says I can’t have a house blog?

There are so many things I want to say about houses, the idea of home, my home, etc.

I think where I really got thrown off last time around was that I was trying to be something I was not. I was trying to post room re-dos and inspirational DIY projects, and sometimes I would succeed and other times I would fail, and those failures always made me question whether I should continue blogging. But that’s not all this blog is to me, or all I ever thought it would be when I started it. I wanted to explore small space living and its joys and challenges–not just those how to posts about making our living space work better for us, but also how I feel about being stuck in a bad investment, how I envy those who have bigger houses, how I get over these bad feelings and make our house into a home.

There’s more to home than perfectly styled bookcases and on-trend colors. There’s the story behind decorating choices, the interactions we all have when setting up and living in our houses. There’s the children we raise in a house and how they feel about it. The meals we cook, the people we host, the memories we make.

So yeah, my house isn’t really that special when it comes to its design. But I don’t care. I want to write about it anyway.

Reboot

When I was young, I wanted nothing more than to be a writer. I was always holed up in my bedroom, working on a story. More often than not, these stories were glorified fan fiction (ah, the amount of time I spent devising creative ways for the characters from Hey Dude to come hang out with the gals from the Babysitters Club), but they still gave me a creative outlet.

I went to school to be a journalist, which was not exactly the wisest move in the early 2000s. I pretty easily became an editor and at least worked with writing, even though I was not actually writing myself. A few years after being an assistant editor at a textbook company, I landed a marketing job where I got to write. I was in my mid-twenties, and professionally, those were some of my best years. Sure, the company produced glorified junk mail, but looking back, I really enjoyed doing that work, and wrote some pretty great articles. I made my next career move based on a variety of factors, many of them quite practical, but I miss writing those articles a whole lot.

I thought I’d be a novelist, or a journalist, or a ... something. But then I realized that while I’m a competent writer, I’m not a great one. I was perfectly suited for writing short marketing pieces, and helping spiff up an author’s bad writing, but not really good enough to publish something on my own. And I feel like I might have missed the boat on this blogging thing. There are people making oodles of money blogging about really fun subjects - their kids, or remodeling their houses, or trying out new recipes. But the blogging market is pretty saturated right now, and I just don’t have the resources to figure out how to take fantastic DSLR photos and photoshop on pithy sayings that will get them pinned and drive traffic back to my website. I don’t know much about SEO or keywords.

But here I am. I kept this housing blog for about 2 years from 2010 to 2011. I gained a few readers, and there’s even one of my DIY projects on Pinterest! But when I took my current job, my practical, stable job, I kind of felt the wind come out of my sails creatively, and I stopped blogging. Even though I actually had a lot of experiences with my house that would have been great blog fodder! There was my failed attempt at community gardening, a couple of room re-dos, and the angst over bringing home another baby to a tiny, two bedroom condo.

I feel the twinge to start over again, and so I am going to. I’m not sure what direction of this blog will take. I’m going to keep the core focus my home, as I think I have a somewhat unique perspective there (trying to raise a family in a small house, making the best of being underwater on our mortgage), but branch out to be a little more “lifestyle” (even though that category makes me twitch a little). I would like to explore simple living on a larger level, such as my feelings about working and parenting, schedules, consumerism, etc., family life, such as raising our two boys, my husband making the shift to be a stay at home dad, and probably some other random topics as well.

So, here we go! I hope you will join me on this new adventure of mine.

Joining the Gallery Wall Party

I spend a lot of time looking at design blogs. Like, a lot. So sometimes when I fall for something I see over and over, I wonder if it's too trendy. But then I remember that most of my friends and family don't log the same kinds of hours I do looking at different shades of gray, Ikat prints, white antlers, Moroccan poofs and Keep Calm and Carry On posters, and would probably hail me as totally original if I brought any of these items into my house.

So I decided to do a gallery wall.

 Yeah, they're kind of everywhere right now, but I don't care, I looove them. I decided to blatantly rip off  take my inspiration from Young House Love's gallery wall and go with all white frames. I'm glad I did, because I love the cohesive, light look, but turns out I'm not a great spray painter and some of them came out a bit drippy or bubbly. But you can't really tell now that they're on the wall, and I saved loads of money by stocking up on super cheap thrift store or clearance frames. I probably only spend $10 or so.

I laid out some different arrangements on the floor before putting it up, so the photo above is actually an earlier iteration, before I found a cute print at Target already framed for $4 of some antique keys on bright colored bands that I had to have. Some of the items we have in the gallery wall are:
-The "Hi I'm Art" print my husband bought for me on my 18th birthday, which is also the day we officially became a couple. Aww.
- An amazing pastel my mother in law did of Sebastian. That pic on the left of him looking into a pond... that's a pastel, not a photo. Incredible.
-Two prints we got on trips we took. One is a bird we bought in Canada, another is a print of Pike's Place Market from Seattle.
-Two frames have some cute fabric and wrapping paper. I thought the fabric one I did was kind of genius. I just grabbed some sample swatches of fancy Dwell fabrics I liked from JoAnn's and matted them. Free!
-There are three or four photos of S, as well as a photo of M and a photo of me as 2-year olds.
-For our wedding, nearly seven years ago, we had guests sign little cutouts of fall leaves in lieu of a traditional guestbook. I always wanted to do something with those, and I found a cute image of a tree, and I glued all the leaves overlapping one another on top.

So all in all, super personal, meaningful stuff.

It's pretty asymmetrical, but we did that on purpose, since we think this will be an evolving project. We already have a new image to frame and hang soon.

I can't express how much I love it. It just makes me happy.

I definitely don't mind following the crowd on this one.