The Burrow Relapses

Okay, maybe that's not true, but I did have to put the cure aside so I could focus on school and trying to get over allergy and asthma problems. I don't feel too badly about it--I've done a lot of clearing, cleaning, downsizing, and rearranging. I won't get the place anywhere near done, though, unless I cram this weekend since I have to study for a big final on Friday. That said, I did read this bit (see below) today that gave me some food for thought. Plus, Maxwell did a post about Calvin Tomkins' Living Well Is the Best Revenge. Making my place better isn't about buying things, that's for sure. It's about making it work for me and for the people I want to feel at home here. It's definitely not letting people make rough comments about things and places I care about, as I've seen happen again and again during the Small Cool competition. Certain people with taste might have well-edited homes filled with beautiful things, but without grace and manners to match, their homes aren't places I'll ever care to set foot in. So, I'm going to charge along and try to improve my home for me, and for my friends who I love to have here. I'll have to do it on my own schedule, though.

***
Americans unload prized belongings to make ends meet
By ANNE D'INNOCENZIO, AP Business Writer Tue Apr 29, 6:04 PM ET

NEW YORK - The for-sale listings on the online hub Craigslist come with plaintive notices, like the one from the teenager in Georgia who said her mother lost her job and pleaded, "Please buy anything you can to help out."

Or the seller in Milwaukee who wrote in one post of needing to pay bills — and put a diamond engagement ring up for bids to do it.

Struggling with mounting debt and rising prices, faced with the toughest economic times since the early 1990s, Americans are selling prized possessions online and at flea markets at alarming rates.

To meet higher gas, food and prescription drug bills, they are selling off grandmother's dishes and their own belongings. Some of the household purging has been extremely painful — families forced to part with heirlooms.

"This is not about downsizing. It's about needing gas money," said Nancy Baughman, founder of eBizAuctions, an online auction service she runs out of her garage in Raleigh, N.C. One former affluent customer is now unemployed and had to unload Hermes leather jackets and Versace jeans and silk shirts.

At Craigslist, which has become a kind of online flea market for the world, the number of for-sale listings has soared 70 percent since last July. In March, the number of listings more than doubled to almost 15 million from the year-ago period.

Craigslist CEO Jeff Buckmaster acknowledged the increasing popularity of selling all sort of items on the Web, but said the rate of growth is "moving above the usual trend line." He said he was amazed at the desperate tone in some ads.

In Daleville, Ala., Ellona Bateman-Lee has turned to eBay and flea markets to empty her three-bedroom mobile home of DVDs, VCRs, stereos and televisions.

She said she needs the cash to help pay for soaring food and utility bills and mounting health care expenses since her husband, Bob, suffered an electric shock on the job as a dump truck driver in 2006 and is now disabled.

Among her most painful sales: her grandmother's teakettle. She sold it for $6 on eBay.

"My grandmother raised me, so it hurt," she said. "We've had bouts here and there, but we always got by. This time it's different."

Economists say it is difficult to compare the selling trend with other tough times because the Internet, only in wide use since the mid-1990s, has made it much easier to unload goods than, say, at pawn shops.

But clearly, cash-strapped people are selling their belongings at bargain prices, with a flood of listings for secondhand cars, clothing and furniture hitting the market in recent months, particularly since January.

Earlier this decade, people tapped their inflated home equity and credit cards to fuel a buying binge. Now, slumping home values and a credit crisis have sapped sources of cash.

Meanwhile, soaring gas and food prices haven't kept pace with meager wage growth. Gas prices have already hit $4 per gallon in some places, and that could become more widespread this summer. The weakening job market is another big worry.

Christine Hadley, a 53-year-old registered nurse from Reading, Pa., says she used to be "a clotheshorse," splurging on pricey Dooney & Bourke handbags. But her live-in boyfriend left last year, and she has had trouble finding a job.

Piles of unpaid bills forced her to sell more than 80 items, including the handbags, which went for more than $1,000 on a site called AuctionPal.com. Now, except for some artwork and threadbare furniture, her house is looking sparse.

"I need the money for essentials — to pay my bills and to eat," Hadley said.

At AuctionPal.com, which helps novices sell things online, for-sale listings rose 66 percent from February to March, much faster than the 25 percent to 30 percent average monthly pace since the company was formed in September, CEO Maureen Ellenberger said. She said she was surprised to see that most of her clients desperately needed to sell items to raise cash.

For LiveDeal.com, a classifieds and business directory site, for-sale listings for January through March rose 10 percent from the previous year.

"We can definitely detect economic stress on the part of the consumer," said John Raven, the site's chief operating officer.

On Craigslist, Buckmaster said, three of the four fastest-growing for-sale categories are tied to gas — recreational vehicles like campers and trailers, cars and trucks, and boats.

Raven noted more and more listings for furniture, particularly in areas around Miami and Las Vegas and other regions hardest hit by the housing crisis.

Baughman, who runs eBizAuctions, said that over the past four months she's been working with mostly desperate sellers instead of mainly casual ones. Most are middle-class customers who can't pay their bills and now want to be paid up front for the items instead of waiting until they are sold, she said.

The trend may be hurting secondhand stores too. Donations to the Salvation Army were down 20 percent in the January-to-March period. George Hood, the charity's national community relations and development secretary, said that was probably partly because people were selling their belongings instead.

And secondhand buyers want better deals now as well, driving prices down. Secondhand merchandise online is going for 25 to 35 percent below what it commanded a year ago, estimated Brian Riley, senior analyst at research firm The TowerGroup.

"It won't hit the saturation point until the (economy) hits the bottom and right now, we don't know when that is," he said.

In Alabama, Bateman-Lee said that she only received $30 for her TV and $45 for her DVD player at a local flea market. She doesn't have too much left to sell, but she's going back to "sort through more things."

Her $30 water bill is due this week.

April 16

Yikes, I hadn't realized it had been two weeks since my last update! To be fair, it's been about that long since I've done any big jobs for The Cure. Aside from paint my front room ceiling, anyway. Foolishly, I decided to start prepping and painting at about 9:40 on a Thursday night, and I finished just after midnight. I was dead on Friday during work and school, but it was a huge relief to get it done.

This cut-in pad really came in handy! I really wasn't looking forward to climbing up and down a ladder to brush in all the edges.


It's amazing how big a difference a white ceiling makes. I love it!


And as I noted in the photo caption on flickr, it's going to get worse before it gets better.


Last week was Office week. I tidied up my home desk a little, but was hard-pressed to do any big work on it. I refuse to move on with any part of the cure until it's done, though, since it's my condo's biggest trouble spot. I'm going to pick up some cabinets for all my paper stuff. I don't feel too badly about cutting into the bathroom week, since my bathroom is almost exactly how I want it, except for painting it. I plan to get that done this weekend.

April 2: Food and paint, but not all at once

Tonights dinner: Braised lamb shank, roasted veggies, and brown rice with pan sauce.


Last week: Aspragus chowder.


Weekend breakfast: Hawaiian bread French toast.


Today, I bought VOC-free (VOC means volatile organic compounds) paint for my ceilings and walls. Good for the planet, and good for me and my asthma- and allergy-ravaged respiratory system. The ceiling paint is a little thicker than regular paint so it won't drip as much. The ceiling will be off white, the bedroom will be "Nightfall," and the bathroom will be "Crisp Morn." The customer service guy at the Home Depot was awesome. He looked my supplies over and strongly suggested I put just about all of it back in exchange for a $10 kit, an extension pole, and some tray liners for the tray that came with the kit. He saved me about $30! Very nice considering I questioned his color-matching job on my bathroom color. I told him it looked whiter than the blue-gray I wanted. He patiently popped the can lid, smeared it on my paint chip, dried it, and showed me that it would, indeed, dry the exact same color. He said that since it was a semi-gloss (my bathroom color), it would look a little lighter.


I'm seriously hoping to paint tomorrow night, but of course, I'm behind on my time line; my room is still a disaster. Ceiling painting may have to wait until Saturday!

Timeline: I think I can, I think I can ...

Monday: Seriously—clear out the bedroom shelves and closet.

Tuesday: Vacuum/mop. Go shopping for front room color—chair pads, table runners, etc. Design kitchen storage and arts/craft storage of my dreams. Consider front room stencil.

Wednesday: Buy ceiling, bedroom, and bathroom paint, blue tape, tarps, and extension rollers; and research how to and prep front room to paint the ceiling (gulp).

Thursday: Paint front room ceiling.

Friday: School

Saturday: Hang art back up on front room walls. Decide on additional shelves for cookbooks (possibly over sideboard). Prep other rooms to paint ceiling, and paint as much ceiling as possible.

Sunday: Finish painting ceilings. Possible trip to IKEA for ideas on realizing storage dreams. Prep bathroom for painting.

Monday: Paint bathroom, maybe prep bedroom for painting, or clean up for next day’s day trip.

Tuesday: Vegas

Wednesday: Prep bedroom for painting, prepare to sleep in front room until fumes clear, start painting.

Thursday: Finish painting bedroom.

Friday: School

There's no way around it.

First, the good: I've been able to keep everything clean, at least. I've been making my bed every day. I make sure all my dishes are done before going to bed. It really does feel better.

I need a timeline. I mean, having a general timeline from the book helps, but I'm so equally overwhelmed and uninspired with the state of my room, that I don't want to do anything with it. Yet, it's the room I spend the most time in. Granted, changes I've made to the front room have drawn me out to it more often, but there are still some questions I need to answer for it. Mostly, am I happy having the TV as the focus of the room? While it made for a good conversation space, it was unavoidable at my last lunch party that the thing to do was turn it on so we could all watch it. Granted, it made for good conversation, but I don't want me and my guests to be sucked into it. I should set a deadline to be decided by the time living room week comes around. Wait ... is that this week? Already?? *sigh*

So! Timeline.

Monday: Make timeline and post it in blog ...

3/23/08 update: the kitchen after

Today, my house is full of flowers--both buds that have hung on from last week, and new flowers I've gotten in the past few days. They really do make my home happy!


My post-cleaning Friday fridge. It's almost always this bare on Friday, after I've cooked everything up to eat as the week's gone by. Saturday mornings, I fill it up with produce and groceries from the Public Market and store. I'm also a bit of a neat-freak about my kitchen, cleaning it frequently, so this week's kitchen focus was fairly easy.


Butter, fake butter, mustards, sweet pickles, apricot preserves, plain yogurt, a hunk of ginger, some black bean sauce, a couple of bottled waters I picked up at a recent foodie event, flaxseed, hoisin sauce, some gluten-free bread that I made into croutons today ... and that concludes our tour!


Some shrimp, posole from my friend B, frozen spinach and raspberries, a couple of lamb shanks, a couple of chicken backs I'm saving for stock, ice ...


The little cupboard over my microwave.


I don't use a lot of self-rising flour, so that bin is empty. If I don't plan on using my wheat flour within a month, I put it in the fridge so it doesn't get rancid. I really love my knife bar. I always wonder why some people hang them blade up, and others blade down. I like them blade up so I don't accidentally stab myself when reaching around behind the sink to clean, and so if the knives fall while I'm pulling them off the magnet, they don't land blade down. Also, it just seems safer this way when reaching for the knife.


Random dry goods.


The awkward back wall of the kitchen is clean, but still just a pile of random storage furniture. I'll figure it out, I'm sure. I had friends over for lunch today and got their opinions on a wall treatment. But I need to figure this storage thing out first.

Maybe I'll just design something from the ground up that fits my exact requirements, like the storage of my dreams, then try to flesh it out with stuff I can find at IKEA and Goodwill and whatnot.

Today was my first real test drive in the new front room arrangement. I like it for small groups, but I still need to see how I'll manage with sit-down dinners when I open up the folding table.


My outbox, or outpile, shrank when I invited my friends to take whatever they wanted home. One friend joked that she felt like it was her birthday, and I laughed and said I felt like Oprah Winfrey doing her Big Gift--"all of my guests today get to bring something home!"

March 15: still fussing around in the front room

I'm definitely not a pro when it comes to arranging flowers. I just haven't really had to do a lot of it. When I'd do event coordinating work for my friend, CP, the flower arrangements we'd do for banquets were pre-planned, so it was just a matter of following the plan. When I'd get flowers, I'd just stick them in a vase. Splitting bouquets the way I have been for my weekly flower therapies, I've at least made an attempt. I like seeing their sculptural values, trying to even out colors, heights, and shapes, then trying to design them for the rooms I plan to put them in. They're not fancy, but I usually just go for the mixed bouquets that Maya's Farm sells at the Public Market, and if she doesn't have any, I hit the grocery store cold case. None of my bouquets ever cost more than $10, but I think the flowers are always beautiful. I used to be so opposed to having cut flowers around, watching them slowly die, then having to toss them afterward. Now, I love being able to have them in front of me, filling my place with their beauty. Personally, I also think they just wouldn't be any happier wilting away on their home plant.

Counter flowers--it's simple, but I love this arrangement; it's the sort of thing I'd stencil on a wall. I tried to bring all the flowers to the "front," away from the wall behind it.


Bathroom flowers


Bedroom flowers


One of the reasons I was opposed to getting rid of my CDs was because I like to listen to them in my car. Hun helped me find a good mp3 player on eBay for a price I was willing to pay for it. I bid for it on Monday, and it came in on Friday. It's a little small at 4G, but I'd have to drive a really long time to listen to 4G of songs ...


I finally sorted the books I most wanted to keep, yet I still have a few that won't fit. Two shelves of cookbooks, one shelf of poetry, one shelf of fiction, one shelf of resource/nonfiction, and one shelf of art, architecture, and craft books. I actually took the photo boxes and albums out of the top shelf of the left case to fill with cookbooks. Now, the photo boxes are on the coffee table shelf and on top of the table.


I picked up paint chips from Home Depot. Happily, they actually have some eco-safe paints in the colors I'd like to use--a sort of periwinkle for my bedroom, and a light sage for my bathroom. I've checked the chips on all my walls, under lamp light and daylight, and am getting close to narrowing something down.


I also did another full-out clean. The condo people should be coming back after work on Monday to double-check the AC, and if all is well, we'll schedule time for them to come patch the hole they made in my bathroom wall.

I really, really need to make a trip to the used bookstore to sell books, the indie music/movie store to sell the DVDs I downsized out of my collection, and to Goodwill to donate the latest batch of stuff. I still haven't hauled out the debris from my book case tragedy; I keep thinking I can DIY something out of it. It's just pressboard, though, and may not even be worth trying to salvage. I like that it has a maple vaneer, since that's my choice wood (fake or faux), but trying to finish the edges might not be worth the time.