In these days of endless quarantine, we are finding hope in the small things. Like a cut-off celery bottom that, in water, sprouts. All credit to friend M.
Hope
Category: Home
Work station
When D and I started both having to work from home a few weeks ago (slash forever ago), it soon became abundantly clear that the single desk we had been using as a work space would not suffice for both of us. If I worked at the desk, he could sit in an armchair with his laptop, but he didn’t have access to his (hard-wired Cisco) work phone. If he worked at the desk, I felt unmoored and unhappy about not having a designated work space.
Enter three things:
- A new Chromebook to replace my tiny-screened and way outdated Macbook,
- A small TV we weren’t using and that D repurposed to become an external monitor for me, and
- Ikea
We reworked a corner of our bedroom to become my work space, and I am relieved and pleased about how it came out. Here are the Ikea pieces we used:
- Alex drawer unit ($79)
- Linnmon table top ($30)
- 2 Godvin table legs ($10 apiece)
- 2 Skadis pegboards — this one and this one ($17 and $15)
- various Skadis accessories, including the cups, a shelf, the lidded sliding containers, the hooks, the clips. the bar thingies, and the letter holder (various prices under $10 for multiples of each item)
I grabbed a lamp we were only sometimes using in the living room and a chair I bought (maybe also at Ikea) yeeeeears ago that was languishing in the basement.
And here is the result:
Bedroom upgrade
A Christmas gift from my parents has got me thinking about size. That’s right: this post is about size in the bedroom — insert joke here. So many to choose from! But seriously, folks, having things be The Right Size For The Space is key.
Earlier this year, D and I replaced our queen bed with a king. We were getting ready for the arrival of the twins and needed (a) more under-bed storage for clothes, as the room where D kept his clothes was slated to become the nursery, and (2) enough room in the bed for a family of five (us) to pile on and, for example, open Christmas stockings together.
Upgrading to a king bed involved a new bed frame, a new mattress and mattress pad, new sheets, a new duvet and duvet cover, new bedside tables (the old ones no longer fit), and new lamps (wall-mounted in order to maximize utility of the smaller bedside tables). It was a big project and, for us, expensive.
What we didn’t buy: new pillows. The old ones were perfectly functional, and spending yet more money just to upgrade to king size pillows seemed extravagant.
I bet you can see where I’m going here. My thoughtful parents gave us king size pillows, pillow protectors, and pillow cases for Christmas. Are you ready to see the Big Difference?
So much better! So. Much. Better. Pillows that are The Right Size For The Space improve the look of the whole bed, right? Thanks, Mom and Dad!
Cork Strip Art Wall
Long before their small motor skills are minimally developed, kids in daycare bring home a lot of art. A lot. Of art. And by art, I mean concoctions of construction paper, glitter, popsicle sticks, marker, glue, paint, yarn, crayon, rips, and tape that sometimes defy description by even the artists themselves. (We could have a whole discussion, of course, about whether any artist is truly qualified to describe her own work, but that is BSTB – Beyond the Scope of This Blog.)
Art wall, take 1:
What does a loving parent do with all of this treasure? Well, this one tried a few different strategies, and the second to last strategy was a kid art wall. Husband D is a little twitchy about tape on the interior walls (as I discovered the first Holiday season during which we cohabited, when I scotch taped all the cards we received to a door frame and he had a verrry quiet conniption. Now I use painter’s tape. Much better.), so I surfed Pinterest (briefly — I am a bad Pinterester) and eventually settled for stringing wires on the wall and clipping the projects to them. The available wall was mostly vertical, however, so I did something I hadn’t seen on Pinterest: I mounted the wires vertically (with Command hooks at the top and bottom). It ended up looking like this.
Cute, right?
I might have known, however, that craftier Pinteresters than I had rejected this system for a reason. My smug sense of self-satisfaction faded over the subsequent months, when the wires occasionally but persistently failed to actually stay on the wall. I came to realize that the Command adhesive (in the size hooks I used — no offense, adhesive monolith 3M) was insufficiently strong at the key points. Sometimes the wall’s failure was exacerbated by the dog’s tail’s hitting the whole setup as she trotted by. Thanks for nothing, dog.
I made this gif with GIPHY. Never did that before.
Art wall, take 2:
The next and final version of the art wall involved these cork strips and this Gorilla tape. (Sorry, honey. I love you.) I lined the cork strips up vertically end to end, trimmed the two at the bottom (This involved a cleaver. It wasn’t pretty. Did I mention that I am really not that crafty?), taped the ends of each strip to the wall et voila! Art wall! I then mounted the art on the cork with clear plastic push pins.
EDIT: M saw her family portrait on the wall and chided, “It’s upside down!” Of course it is. Sorry, M. Here’s the corrected image, which does actually make more sense.
