Zero Waste

A comment on my previous entry made me think of this article from Sunset Magazine.
Did anyone else see this?
What do you think?
Am I the only one who feels like maybe this woman has a problem? Like, it's pathological the level to which she's taken her values?
I am all on board reducing the level of waste in my home. I am even on board about not buying anything new, or anything in unnecessary packaging. Totally get it. And, I even totally get the desire to not have a bunch of stuff in my house. I would love to have a clutter-free life. Totally get it.
But, to not have hobbies or participate in activities that require "stuff" just blows my mind. It seems so limiting! I admit, I may have too many hobbies and participate in too many activities. But what do they *do* with their time? Actually, I probably know the answer to that. They spend *all* their time trying to figure out how to get around some of the necessary clutter and waste in life. It must be exhausting.
P.S. Sending the trash that comes with your Netflix subscription *back* to where it came from does not mean you don't generate any trash. It just means someone else has to deal with it. TOTALLY doesn't count.

As promised ... the "after" pictures

The whole closet fiasco has turned out to be really one of the best things we could have done. Granted, the sun has come out, so the upturn in mood may be not solely attributed to the great cleaning/purge, but I like to think of it as the turning point of my winter. Everything looked bad until that day.
So, yes, attached are photos that prove that my husband rules.
:)

In the spirit of full disclosure, I must admit that I liked the closet best when there wasn't any stuff in it. But even now it's still all nicely and neatly arranged. All my shoes are in boxes, all the bedding is in bins, sweaters are in bins, clothes are hung up. I'm not sure how long that will last. Hopefully because it's so *easy* now, it will last forever.
Oh! Bonus! My vacuum now lives in the closet! It used to not have any place to live, so it stayed in a corner in the living room. Now, it has its own nook in the closet, right next to the step-ladder that used to be shoved into a corner in the kitchen. Yay for places to put things!

Inspired!

Not so long ago, a friend shared these amazing coats with me. I fell in love, and my craving for one of those coats was crazy-huge. I told myself, "No matter the cost, I totally will get one, because they're amazing, and I deserve it, and the artist deserves to be selling these like mad." And then I saw the prices, and changed my tune entirely. Well, not entirely. She still deserves to be selling her coats like mad. Just not to me, because that's mad amounts of money. I can't do it.
It's the same sort of thing that happens when I go into Fiona Bleu, my most favorite store (and the owner is THE NICEST guy) in Morro Bay. I always say to myself, "Hey, it's probably a good idea to buy some art. I want to support these amazing artists, and I want some amazing art on my walls. I bet they could do some layaway for me." And then I go in there and think, "Hm. That's more money than I make in a year. Maybe not." But then I leave the place all crazy-inspired, and totally ready to start making art myself.
So, yeah. Those Katwise coats did it to me. But I don't have the skillset (or the right tools!) to do something like that. So I thought. Just yesterday Mother Earth News shared this book on their Facebook page (coincidence? I think not!) So I checked out The Sweater Chop Shop on Amazon and decided that maybe I could do it. Maybe I should try. It looks like just another huge mess I could make, no? Ah, but it would be pretty fun.

Unexpected projects

Well, I may have not been feeling creative, and I certainly wasn't feeling energized, but when I asked friends "what to do on a rainy day?" and someone said "Clean out your closets!" the thought stuck. It was the perfect project for a person who's been feeling like getting rid of stuff. Also, it's been a pretty damp year, and that means mold sometimes builds up on some of the stuff in the back of the closet. Whoa, was I in for a surprise though, when we finally pulled everything out.
Black mold. All over.

I was pretty upset. And then to find it all over the bedroom, yuck.
This actually was good to find out, because after doing some research, we learned that all the symptoms I've been suffering from all month (headache, not able to breathe well, depression, being tired all the time) are actually symptoms of black mold exposure. And here I thought I had a virus that I couldn't kick. Or that I needed to go see a shrink or something. But it makes sense, and to know what it is makes me feel a lot better already.
So, we scrubbed it all down with bleach (which is awful, the bleach stench makes me feel worse than the mold), and then we decided that we really need to prevent this from happening again. There are two big problems with this closet that are contributing to the problem, as well as making the closet not as functional as it should be. One is that there is a window (because it didn't use to be a closet), but the clothing racks were in the corner smooshed against the window, so the window had to be covered to keep the clothes from getting bleached from the sun. If the window could let light in, and if it could be opened, then the moisture problem wouldn't be as bad. Also, having the clothes in the corner made them hard to access. So we took out everything, and decided to re-arrange the whole closet to allow for air flow, to allow for better access to the clothes and also to allow for better organization.

Of course, this means that everything that was in the closet is now on my dining table. And it will be there for a while, because we had to make a trip to the hardware store in order to construct the new shelves. It was 3:30 or so when we decided to head to the hardware store, and by the time we got out, it was POURING rain, and we didn't get home until late and of course the rain meant that the creek had risen and we couldn't drive across it to get home. The joys of living in the sticks. Sigh.
All our lumber spent the night in the back of the truck and progress on the closet project was halted.
No matter. We made kiwi sorbet instead. Because we had a TON of kiwis from our CSA box that we needed to do something with.
BUT, I did spend part of the evening with the label maker and a stack of plastic bins. Yes, everything is going to be organized in bins! I'm so excited about this. It feels like the best thing in the world to happen to my closet. Bedding in one bin. Sweaters in another bin. Bellydance bras in another. Belts in this one, hats in that one! Oh, hooray!
Hopefully, I'll remember to take pictures and you can see the rest of the progress. I think this will be good. Yesterday morning, I was so upset I was ready to move ASAP. But now I'm feeling a bit better. I have Nitro to thank for that, really. He sorta talked me out of my panic and frustration and helped come up with a solution and helped make the solution start to happen.

Winter.

It's been a while. I know. And I've been such a slacker these days ... I didn't even make Christmas cards this year. The biggest hurdle, and you'll laugh when you hear this, I'm sure, is that I don't want to make a mess. I'm having a phase, you might call it, where I can't stand the clutter in the house. I've been going around, filling boxes with stuff that is unnecessary. Unsentimental knick-knacks are outta here. The crafting supplies for crafts I no longer make the time for are outta here. Part of it, of course, is that the tree takes up a lot of space, so the room feels smaller than normal. Another part is just that I'm forced to be indoors more ... we've had a lot more rain than normal, and so our cozy little house is feeling extra-little (and yes, extra-cozy as well). But honestly, we just have a lot of stuff. And I'm finding it so tedious to always be hauling mountains of stuff from the table every time we want to eat, and from chairs when we want to sit. You get the picture. But these things don't have homes, so they just float from one flat surface to another, depending on which one we need to use.

I have, however, been working on this lovely, snuggly, fun scarf. I found the pattern here and you can probably tell what it looks like better from her picture. Since mine's made of fuzzy yarn it's a bit more difficult to see the way it's done. It started out quickly, because we were doing a lot of driving to visit family and back, and what else does a person do in the car? But then it's tapered off now, because my hands start to hurt if I spend too much time knitting, and then I can't work. So I've taken a little break, or I'll just do one section at a time. Regardless, it's going slowly. That's okay. I'll still wear it throughout the spring. And I'm really excited about variations. I've got a plan to do some fun things with the next one, playing with color, and playing with ribbing. I'm excited to experiment. Especially since I have some really YUMMY yarn that I bought about a year ago when I was still all gung-ho on making and selling hats, but that I couldn't bear to part with. And eventually, I'd like to splurge, and buy some yarn from LunaSea someday. She's the one who introduced me to spinning a while back, and if I could bear to start another hobby, or to have more stuff in my house I'd be doing that, too. But I can't bear it. The idea of more stuff in my world just makes me go crazy.
So yeah. It's winter.
And I'm not getting all crafty and inspired as normally I would be. Instead I'm just going insane, as the people around me will attest. Oh well. Hopefully my much-needed birthday trip to Yosemite next weekend will cure me. I'll come home happy, refreshed, and ready to start making stuff!

Holiday Cards

I have the time, and the inclination. It's too cold, really, to do other stuff. I really should start making my holiday cards. The only problem is they have to represent me, the person, and me, the business. They have to be fun, funky, pretty, and universally adored. And that's too tall an order.
Not to mention that I keep looking around online, you know... for inspiration? And I come up with 30,000 ideas, and 1,000,000 cards that I absolutely love love love. And I think "Well, I should just buy those cards!" but that sorta goes against the whole graphic designer sending out holiday cards as a self-promotional item sort of grain. But if I end up sorta copying someone else's cards, then that's not right either. But I see these and simply can't imagine doing a better job than that.
Or this stuff and I know that I just about suck as much as anyone could suck when compared to that.
So I guess what I'm saying is I'm stuck. I'm in the creative tar pits. And I can't get out.

On to more impressive stuff ...

I mentioned before, I'm sure, that Nitro tends to build way more well thought out and complicated and useful things than I. What? You don't think my crocheted hats are as useful, or impressive as the back deck? Whatever. I'm over it.
This next project of his is FANtastic. I'm really excited. He's making a hot tub. Out of a water trough and a beer keg. I kid you not. The water trough (pictured) is big enough for us both to sit in, legs straight out ahead, water up to our necks. And there will be some sort of a tube at the top and at the bottom, and cold water will go out one tube, get warmed by a fire (that will be in the modified beer keg) and then the now hot water will go back into the hot tub. Apparently, through the magic that is physics, this whole circulation of the water will happen automatically.
Don't ask me how.
It's magic.
The basic concept is presented in Mother Earth News, a favorite publication around here. But I'm rather fond of the beer keg boiler creation that Nitro came up with. That's a class act right there. Oh, and the stovepipe? Why, it's made of the old exhaust pipes from his Chevelle of course. Pictures to come, I'm sure.