Good Habits for 2016

I won’t call these resolutions or goals, but I’m planning a few good habits I want to cultivate at the start of the new year. All of these fall under the umbrella of reclaiming some of my sanity and personality. Since having Edith, I am always sleep-deprived and therefore a little crazed, and I’ve realised Read More…

Pantry Organisation

I feel about our pantry much the same as I feel about our bathroom cabinets. Hooray, we have a pantry! But it’s kind of an awkward space. It has a narrow single door opening onto a very deep closet of shelves. Even at a generous estimate, only half the space is accessible enough to use easily. Read More…

Laundry

Here is a common sight in our home: my British clothes airers, lifting our laundry up to the Texas sun. I brought these clothes racks with us when we moved, on the advice of some American expat friends who warned me that if I had grown to love my clothes airers (I had), I should bring Read More…

Me, My Stuff, and I

Lately I have been slowly undertaking a project of sorting out my belongings. This is because, at age 30, I still have never moved all of my possessions out of the house where I grew up. Like many people, when I ‘moved out’ from home during college, I didn’t permanently move all of my belongings. Nor did Read More…

Getting Cleaning Done with a Baby

I can tell you, figuring out how to do housework with a Little Someone in tow has been a huge adjustment for me. I started out writing this post in a ‘how to’ voice, with three tips I’ve learned, but scrapped it as inauthentic. It gave a false impression of my efficiency and success, and, Read More…

Baby

Here, on a wild hair-day, is Edith. Her name was actually chosen before I was pregnant. It was a name both Mike and I liked, and whenever we talked about what we’d do if we had children, the imaginary child was always ‘Little Edith’ – ‘When we have Little Edith we’ll bring her here,’ etc. So Read More…

Improving a Rental Bathroom: Part 3, Serious Business

(Part 1 of the bathroom improvements) (Part 2 of the bathroom improvements) Today I’m sharing the more involved bathroom improvements we’ve done. These are the kinds of things you probably need your landlord’s permission to do, but it’s worth asking. Replacing a shower head Our shower head was a standard rental blah white plastic type. Read More…

Improving a Rental Bathroom: Part 2, Grab a Screwdriver

(Read Part 1 of the bathroom improvements if you aren’t caught up.) These next three bathroom improvements aren’t difficult, but take ‘a bit more doing’, and might need some basic tools. The spruce-ups from last time might be the kind of thing that’s intuitive to do, but I feel like these projects don’t always occur to Read More…