life detritus: downsizing and donating

Excited about the prospect of our new couch, Husband and I attacked the living room with gusto over the weekend.

And the hall closet. (Details forthcoming.)

The amount of unused belongings hanging around our apartment is a symptom of growing up in a house and having to adapt to the constraints of an apartment later in life. We grew up with basements, crawlspaces, and spare rooms. Now we don't even have a spare closet.

Added to the problem is the fact that I'm a bibliophile and Husband doesn't much like to throw anything out. (I'm not a huge fan either, to be honest. Ticket stubs from ferries taken on our honeymoon? Still have them. I use them as bookmarks!)

I once dreamed of having bookcases instead of walls. I almost got there in this apartment. We have about 22 feet of bookcases in our current apartment. This does not include the cookbook annex in the kitchen. Recently our crowded bookcases began to suffocate me. I am attempting to live as green a lifestyle as I can, and being surrounded by dead trees did not help my karma.

Problem: I studied literature in school (undergraduate and graduate), so 95% of the books I have read (and thus 85% of the books I own) are underlined, annotated, flagged, and generally beat up. I’m not gentle on books. I worked in mass-market publishing for a couple years and know exactly how little books cost to make. I don’t feel bad about breaking the spine on a mass-market title, nor do I have any issue with doing the same on a Penguin Classic. No one hand-crafting these books. I leave the dust jacket of a hardcover at home, because damaging that is just silly. You can damage the cover all you want and then cover it with the pristine jacket.

I digress.

In order to sell books, they need to be in pretty good condition. The condition that mine are definitely not in.

I have resigned myself to donating a huge percentage of my books with full knowledge that I spent thousands on this library and I’ll never see that money again. If someone else reads these books, I’m happy.

I have also resigned myself to the fact that I’m going to the dark side. The e-reader side. I love the concept of a physical book and have resisted this change for as long as decent e-readers have been around. But…when you’re done with an electronic book, it simply disappears. It was never physical to begin with, so there’s no waste. No trees had to die.

And maybe I can put a few decorative objects on my half-dozen bookshelves. Or replace them with lighter, airier ones.  Like these:

CB2 (obviously)

I could never have gotten these while still addicted to books, for fear the books would fall off all the time. And I'd have to invest in bookends. And I don't think I'm bookend-y.

I boxed up a couple dozen books over the weekend. Mercilessly. The fiction and literature section of my library is alphabetized. People, I boxed up Jane Austen without batting an eye. I could not do the same for Paul Auster, likely out of guilt for not having seen him speak on Friday. I am able to keep on living because I know Jane Austen ebooks are free. Paul Auster, on the other hand, might hunt me down and kill me if I bought him in ebook form.

While I did this, Husband took to the reference shelf and threw out LSAT and GRE books.  Why did we keep them? He then stared at my Disney VHS tapes and remembered that we'd boxed a crap ton of them in an earlier overhaul.

I admit this to you: In high school and early college, I was an aficionado of The Goo Goo Dolls. What? I’m from Western New York. I can’t help it. And their albums before “Dizzy Up the Girl” were amazing. I taped every single television appearance they made. I have like, a dozen tapes of various television appearances, videos, and concerts. My love for them fell out of fashion around the time video tapes fell out of fashion.

I also taped Legends of the Fall from HBO and put hearts all over the tape. I'm not proud.

Video tapes, my friends, are freaking hard to dispose of. NYC Waste Management doesn’t want them. I’m not donating crap I taped off the television. NYC wants me to use this service to dispose of them. Um? $9.95 to send my VHS tapes somewhere? …I guess I’ll have to suck it up and do it.

The various electronic appliances (old phones, a zip drive, chargers for things we no longer own) can be dropped off at Best Buy, who will happily recycle them. Best Buy doesn’t want my VHS tapes. They are missing out.

Husband looking through my old tapes of course lead to him finding the video taken in my high school public speaking class. And watching it. And making fun of my (former!) Rochester accent.

We later watched a tape of a variety show he emceed in high school. He is exactly the same, but with better pants.

Cleaning our life detritus is dangerous, folks. You can discover embarrassing pasts…or just how difficult it is to dispose of outdated technology.  I bet I could recycle an old Kindle more easily than I can get rid of these VHS tapes.

the philiraos sit on a couch

I am happy to report that living room overhaul is in full swing!

Husband and I took a trip to CB2 last week to sit on our couch again. And Husband asked a lot of very good questions about the couch while he waited for me to arrive. Sometimes train delays are a good thing. They get the hard questions out of the way before I get there, so I can focus on fun things, like throw pillows.

The hard questions included:

• Do you have a swatch of the fabric?
• Answer: Yes!
• What is the lifespan of the couch?
• Answer: Seven years.
• Should we stain-proof it?
• Answer: Nope. It comes already scotch-guarded!
• How many throw pillows do we need?
• Answer: A ton. But we have down pillow inserts for $14.99 that you can cover any way you like!

By the time I got there, husband had a swatch in hand and had decided we needed six throw pillows to cover the back of the couch. We left the store with six down inserts and two of these. That lovely lime green/citron color in the center of the starburst will be the inspiration for how we accent the room. Yay! Inspiration!

I called my mom--aka: my sewing machine--the next day to gush about the big project we’ll be doing over Thanksgiving. Making covers for six 23” square throw pillows. With zippers! Thankfully my mother loves such projects and is thrilled to help out. Except for the zippers, which she hates. We’ll see how I do with zippers.  

Mom is more excited that I’m planning to go to fabric stores in New York. Usually I chicken out of going to the big fabric stores in New York because I don’t understand them. I don’t know how to find my trusty cottons and it always seems like everything in a million dollars. Hopefully a little research--and Husband’s ability to ask for help in stores, whereas I would rather leave empty-handed than speak to a human--will help us out. I really just want three shades of solid broadcloth. Probably the citron color, a linen/beige, and if I can manage it, a bright blue. I would love to have a mix of prints, but I swear that I have a glandular problem that prevents me from thinking any prints match with each other. At least when I try to combine them. Other people can combine them with great aplomb, but not me. It has to be a glandular problem. I should have it looked into. It will make my living room less bland. 

Once we purchase the couch (later this week!), the hunt for the perfect rug begins in earnest. We intended to go to Flor after CB2 but discovered they closed at 7:00. And it was 7:00 by the time we finished at CB2. What? I needed placemats for the bright yellow table I painted over the summer! Because my mother has not sewed me four sets, which all match the bright yellow table! 

Stay tuned for the rug saga!

business casual (or: dress for the job you want?)

The other day I had a conversation with a coworker about dressing "better" for work. I consider this coworker very fashionable and generally well-dressed. I consider myself often dressed in jeans, and I think jeans might constitute the major part of my work "uniform."

I grew up in the 90s. Denim and I cannot be separated.

Yesterday, however, I decided to defy both the weather report (rain) and my higher-ed administrative surroundings (something more casual than business casual--probably just casual). I wore a pencil skirt, striped ¾-sleeve tee and ballet flats. And I flat-ironed my hair in an attempt to keep the rain from beckoning its natural curl to come out. (Note: I do not always mind my curly hair. I mind my curly hair when my current haircut is a pixie, with which curls don’t always jibe. [Second note: I do not have such a punky haircut. It wouldn't go with my pencil skirt, ever.])  

I felt cute and therefore a little better about myself than usual.  I’m not exactly sure how to treat the fact that my opinion of my appearance so strongly correlates with my self-worth. I am certainly not someone who spends hours in front of a mirror every day, nor do I change outfits multiple times before deciding on one (I have almost always decided on my outfit prior to getting out of bed, and in fact I sometimes refuse to get out of bed until I know what I’m going to wear). But I do like to look put-together and “pretty.”

Of course I got compliments on my outfit yesterday, because it wasn’t my uniform of skinny jeans, nice top and sweater. Which, if you work in a casual office, is more than acceptable. I try to wear sneakers pretty rarely, since I consider the shoe to be the deciding factor on an outfit’s casualness level. You can really dress up a tank top and jeans with a cute ballet flat, bootie, or pump. Not that I own pumps. I should work on that.
So my coworker and I discussed our desire to dress nicely for work. Skirts and heels were keywords in our discussion. Perhaps even a splash of lipstick (a noticeable shade of which I was also wearing yesterday). But our office environment doesn’t really invite such outfits. Such outfits, in fact, invites questions as to what the special occasion is. Questions like, “Are you going somewhere special after work?” or “Do you have an event today?” In many cases, I do. I always dress professionally on the day of an event. I’m not going to wear jeans when a guest speaker I booked a hotel for is coming in to present a paper. Ironically, these are always days I run around more, in my heels and pencil skirts. When you generally wear flats, running around in heels for a day is less than pleasant.

But whatever happened to the mantra “dress for the job you want?” Don’t get me wrong. I like and appreciate my job. The people I work for are top-notch scholars in their field, but they are also down-to-earth individuals who truly appreciate the behind-the-scenes administrative assistance I provide to help them do their job better. But do I want the word “assistant” to be in my job title permanently? No. So let’s say assistants wear jeans. And coordinators, managers, and directors wear pencil skirts. (Technically I am also a coordinator. And when I coordinate, I wear a skirt.) By the “dress for the job you want,” mantra, I should wear an outfit that does not include jeans daily. And such a job will obviously fall into my lap.

This, of course, necessitates that I know what job I want. And I haven’t fully determined that yet. But maybe it involves less jeans. By knowing what I want to wear, do I know what I want to do?

This is all crazy backward and turned-around thinking. But I have to relate an anecdote that just might prove me right.

Yesterday, the day of the pencil-skirt-just-because, was also the day I began planning the largest event I’ve yet coordinated. Event planning is by far my favorite part of my job, and I have been anticipating this event for quite some time. The dates were just set yesterday, and I began reserving space and branding the design for communications. How can I not think my coordinator outfit somehow influenced the influx of coordinator work?

Dress for the job you want, or even just dress for the task you wish you had to do today. 

kitchen vs. living room: priority check

The two items on top of my real-life to-do list are living room and kitchen. Just about everything about them. I want to start with the kitchen because I consider its disorganization and misuse of space the most pressing problem. And, as Husband and I are avid cooks, we spend a lot of time in there. And we’re constantly frustrated by how badly we’ve organized it.

Or I am. Kitchen with a capital K is on the top of my to-do list.

At the top of Husband’s to-do list is living room.  Every time he cleans it, he bemoans the number of posters we have bought that we haven’t yet framed. Then I bemoan the fact that we haven’t framed a single wedding picture yet, and we’ve been married for more than a year. We end by not framing anything.

Husband also, more desperately wants a new couch. We have a loveseat. We are tall. Neither of us can comfortably lay on the couch. When company comes over, only two people can sit on it, unless we are very cozy and comfortable with each other. We reserve it for couples who have been together less time than we have. You know, people who are really in love (not that we aren't!).

When I bought the couch, I lived in a 300-square foot apartment. Alone. I didn’t mind bending my knees to lay on it, and in fact I felt such accomplishment at having made such a large purchase (my only furniture purchase since buying a mattress and box spring), having the money to buy such a large purchase, and having evolved from a butterfly chair to an actual couch (no futon transition period) that I figured I would keep my couch forever.

A few years ago we bought a chair to augment the seating in our living room. It coordinates with the couch, but in shape rather than color. They definitely work together, but my recent adoration for CB2 has introduced me to modern furniture with clean lines. Read: not the giant round arms on both the chair and the couch.

Husband loves the chair—even though we bought it for me to sit in and as soon as I did so when we watched movies together, he missed me and beckoned me back to the love couch—and wanted to buy the matching couch. I could not stand the idea of more round, space-wasting arms. 

I love this couch. We sat on it at CB2 and even Husband agreed that it is crazy comfortable. I think he is 95% committed to buying it. It is not leather, but I’m okay with that. My parents have leather sofas, and while they are amazingly comfortable, I also had a tendency to slip off of them. That may be a personal problem. The polyester microfiber-esque fabric of this will be cozy in the cooler months without being overly stuffy in the warmer ones.  And at 88” (over 7’ including arms), Husband and I will be able to stretch out on it both separately and together! We're not really into personal space, but we appreciate the option to have it.

A few years ago, in a more convenience-oriented  part of my decorating life, I would have feared this couch’s lack of a padded back. But now I am excited at the prospect of using flexible, customizable throw pillows for both comfort and decoration.  And look at all these options! (Of course, when I finally move away from my “using orange and red to decorate every room” phase, Pier 1 has almost exclusively orange-tinted throw pillows.) 

I really appreciate the flexibility of using throw pillows. They are less expensive to replace when your taste changes, so if you have a basic enough piece of furniture, you can easily change the whole feel of your room with just a change of fabric. And someday when I invest money and space in a sewing machine, I will be able to make new covers for throw pillows (and new curtains!) whenever I please. We have throw pillows now, but they include the ones that came with the couch, meaning snooze, and actual throw pillows that are nowhere near the couch 99.9% of the time because the couch is too small for people and pillows. 

The depth of this couch will accommodate a number of throws without overwhelming it or people sitting on it, and it will look just plain awesome. I hope to mix some geometric patterns with something funky. If I can pull it off, one crazy piece would be a fun addition!

We even have a deadline for this purchase: November 9th, when CB2’s free in-home delivery ends. Seriously we need deadlines, so this is a good thing.

This redecoration will also include the eventual purchase of a new rug.  More on that, my mixed desire and fear of light neutrals, and the intriguing concept of Flor in a future update!

intro: finding a project

I have come to a turning point in my life. Unfortunately, I have no idea which way to turn. In fact, I don’t even know where each direction might lead. In documenting this juncture, I am attempting to find the inspiration that will label the signs at the crossroad and help me pick a direction to follow.

I don’t have the ambition to embark on a more defined project. This will not become a regurgitation of The Julie/Julia Project, although I am tempted to cook my way through the vegetarian recipes in Madhur Jaffrey’s An Invitation to Indian Cooking. I have attempted to start a food blog, and I certainly take enough of pictures of my cooking to fill one, but as you’ll see, I haven’t gotten much further than an introductory post.  (Note to anyone who stumbles by that link:  Husband and I have since graduated from our respective programs and live together. We eat out a lot.)

I also have a history of starting blogs and giving them up. I used to write in a journal on a regular basis, but that has lagged in recent years as well. I simply forgot to write or post, or more accurately, I felt I had nothing to say. As evidenced by earlier posts on this blog (which I may or may not delete), its previous iteration attempted to tell funny stories about my quirky life. My life has gotten no less quirky. In fact, I have an unfinished manifesto on Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark sitting in my drafts. I will probably still post anecdotes about my quirky life. They may or may not entertain anyone. I may even finish my manifesto about the U2/Broadway/comic book conglomeration that is Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark.  I still have strong feelings about it, and they do not include shame for having seen it.  In order to complain about something, I figure you have to experience it, and experience it I did.

Yes, I go on tangents. Anyway.

The best description of this project is a “virtual to-do list.” Hence I titled it that. Creative? Not hugely. But by publishing my to-do list on the internet and sharing it with my friends, I suppose that commits me to accomplish these items.   

Here are some of them in no particular order:

1. Redecorate my living room
2. Organize my kitchen
3. Redecorate my bedroom
4. Find the perfect eyeliner
5. Put a dent in my novel
6. Revise my thesis and prepare it for submission
7. Minimize the amount of life detritus in my apartment (read: clean, organize, and make a lot of donations to the Salvation army, because no one needs two VCRs or any video cassettes at all)
8. Find a career path
9. Find my signature shade of lipstick
10. Cook my way through Madhur Jaffrey
11. Improve my wardrobe and, perhaps even my fashion sense
12. Hop on the disability studies train
13. Pare down my extensive library
14. Live a greener life
15. Successfully transition from pescatarian to vegetarian

They have a slightly self-improvement, homemaker-like flavor. Maybe I just want to feel like I'm living in an issue of Real Simple.  Blame my subscription (which goes directly against the idea of living a greener life by being a waste of paper. But online magazines still have a long way to go. Or at least Real Simple does.) Taking care of my home and myself are important to me, and I have been neglecting them as of late. I hope that if I organize my outer space, stylize my outer person, and otherwise refine my surroundings, my inner world and self will follow suit. Perhaps if I pare down the books around me, my writer's block will ease up and I can finish my own. Maybe, with the outside order improved, I will be better able to focus on my inner self.