This Thrifted Life

After two weeks of bed rest while I nursed a chest cold, I am way behind on the household chores. Now that I have most of my energy back and the sun is out warming up the world, it’s time to get back in the saddle. I have a lot I want to get accomplished before my in-laws arrive this weekend to help us fnish up the wiring (yay!).

–Deep clean the house. Do a thorough cleaning, as well as wash the shower curtain, clean out the “pantry” (my lazy susan cabinet), etc.

–Clean up the sunporch. It’s been used a dumping ground while we worked on the wiring and is a total mess. Now that the weather is nice and we are almost finished with that project, it’s time to clean up the area so we can start enjoying it.

–Continue cleaning out books I don’t read anymore. I’ve been doing this bit by bit over the past week; I found a used bookstore where I can drop these off for credit.

–Maybe clean out my wardrobe and jewelry a bit more. Some of the cold-weather items I thrifted to help me get through this exceptionally cold winter don’t fit anymore and need to be gathered up and dropped off at the thrift store.

Next week I hope to help Jason do some taping and floating so I can start painting the walls and trim. I also want to work on that nursery closet some more and clean up the spare room where Jason works on his music. That room’s been our tool headquarters and it’s also a disaster.

I hope spring has really sprung.

We have three smallish closets in our house: one filled with our clothes and shoes, one filled with Jason’s music paraphernalia, and one filled with miscellanous items like board games, wrapping paper, and our suitcases. These are pretty much the only storage spaces in our home, and the third closet has gotten a little out of control. This will be the baby’s closet, so clearing it out is now on the to-do list.

Eek.

(Painting everything in this house, including doors and trim, is also on the to-do list. The end of ths wiring project cannot come soon enough.)

Since Jason is apparently never going to write about this, I thought I’d let you guys know how our crawl space project went last month.

One of the first things Jason wanted to do when we moved in was fix up the crawl space a bit, since jacking up a sagging joist and rewiring were at the top of the projects list and we would need access to the space. He looked into hiring some help, but found out that having someone come out to fix up a “clean space” was in the thousands. So we headed to Lowe’s to purchase $100 of thick clear plastic, and Jason spent a long couple of days rolling it out and taping it up. Now the crawl space is still dark and cramped, but at least it’s a whole lot cleaner.

From this:

In progress:

And, finally, this:

Now didn’t he do an awesome job?

Now you see it.

Now you don’t.

Ok, you can still see where the flower beds were and where I’ll have to reseed this spring, but at least they’re up. I spent the days leading up to Thanksgiving pulling up brick and ground cover, digging up plants with a shovel (I saved the bulbs for my MIL), and hauling all the mulch out to the rear of the property to dump (hey, maybe I’ll have a little wildflower garden back in that spot this spring). Whew.

Around here we do our best to live by the adage, Reduce Reuse Recycle. This weekend was gorgeous and sunny, so we decided to head outdoors to work. The previous owner had maintained lots of pretty flowers and shrubs, but we’re out to maintain as little as possible. If it’s not feeding me, I don’t want to have to spend a lot of time on a plant. So while Jason mowed the backyard, I pulled up all the weedy bits and scraggly shrubs from a couple of the main beds around the house. But what to do about mulch?

Aha! Our driveway was covered  in pine needles, so we raked them up and spread them out all over the beds. It may not be the prettiest mulch in the world, but it was free from our own backyard.

See?

Ta da!

Our first big house project is going to be a combination: new wiring and a kitchen countertop replacement. Our current countertop is laminate with an attached backsplash, and our wiring is simply a little too old (and a little too much of a rat’s nest) for our comfort level. When we take out both the wiring and the countertop, there will be lots of sheetrock repair to be done. So we decided to do both at the same time and minimize time spent working on the same sections of sheetrock. Since we’ll be doing the labor ourselves, we just need to save up a decent sum for materials.

In the meantime, we are making improvements of the small, inexpensive variety to tide us over. We have a main bath and a mini-bath that’s part of our laundry/mud room. Both toilets sported unsightly wooden seats and bulky medicine cabinets. We prefer light, airy rooms, and all that wood in such small spaces was a little too much. So we took out the medicine chests and replaced the toilet seats with some streamlined versions from Lowe’s. And we’re into keeping as much out of the landfills as possible, so the toilet seats will go to the thrift store as they are still in relatively good condition. The medicine chests have already been claimed by Jason’s grandmother for extra storage.

Before:

After:

Before (during our home inpection):

After:

There. I feel better already.