Making a Home: The Beginning

“You can never go home again, but the truth is you can never leave home, so it’s all right.” –Maya Angelou

The first home that I made for myself was when I was a college student twelve short years ago. I lived in a blue house on Gorman Avenue in Waco, Texas.

The house was old, built in the ’20s, and it was divided into four apartment units. My roommate and I shared the apartment on the upper right with big windows surrounded by trees that when the leaves were green made me feel like I lived in a treehouse.

The rent was $350 a month, which we split, and for $175 each we got a big apartment with hardwood floors and run-down charm.

There was no dishwasher, no laundry, and of course no central heat or air conditioning. My bedroom had an air conditioner window unit that didn’t work at all, and the other bedroom had one that worked too well, so depending on where you sat in the apartment you could either sweat or freeze your buns off. The heater was an old gas unit that roared when I turned it on in the mornings. The old plumbing had a rag stuffed in it to stop leaks. The plumber just shook his head.

The kitchen had glass cabinet doors, a pile of dirty dishes in the sink because we had no time to wash them, and a wide staircase outside the screened back door. I loved living there. That neighborhood felt like a different era. We sweated in the humid Texas summer, ate $2 burritos from down the street, and sat on the back stairs when it rained. I had a life-changing moment the day I realized that if I never owned more, I could be content.

Our neighbors were an eccentric bunch. One man wandered up and down the streets talking to himself and asking for cigarettes. The neighbor on the other side of the fence liked to mow his grass while wearing a bandana on his head and little shorts. The old men who lived across the street sat on the porch all day and yelled Good Morning at us when we left for school.

I always had full days at school but I came home whenever I could.

My roommate watched Days of Our Lives weekdays at 3:00 p.m. with a Diet Coke. The screened windows would be open to catch the breeze. Our couch was a garage sale find for $10, and the pink chair was $5. (Small town garage sales are the best!) The coffee table was $5 as well. We often rearranged the furniture at two in the morning, because what else do you do?

That home was where I wondered who I might marry someday, where I panicked over career paths, and where I dyed my hair to see if I would look better as a blonde. (I don’t. And always do the small test section first. And be sure to rinse it out when the instructions say, don’t just leave it in there because it seems like it hasn’t worked yet.)

We thought nothing of inviting thirty people over for dinner. With the small table commandeered as a buffet, our friends found places to sit in our apartment with plates of spaghetti balanced on their knees. We went to Kinko’s to print fliers to pass out to anyone who wanted to come over and watch the football game with us.

With some close friends, I’m the second girl from the right.

It was good to have friends, and we dropped by each other’s apartments with ease and welcome.

Back in those days, my cell phone was as big as a one-pound breakfast sausage, and I never used it because the network coverage wasn’t built yet. Home internet access was another luxury no one had. We had to talk in person, and it was no problem because we saw each other all the time.

Home was a place where I could grow community.

Then I graduated, got a job, and moved to a town north of Houston, and suddenly…

I was completely alone.

–To be continued. –

Don’t Try This at Home: The Organizing Tip that Won’t Help You

As I browsed through online articles about organizing, I came across a “quick and easy” tip that would help you to be more organized.

It left me, frankly, troubled.

The advice was clear: you should make a catalog of your stuff — specifically, your books, music, and movie collections. Then if you want to know what you have, you can look at your list. Keeping such a list could help you remember and prevent you from buying duplicates of a book or a movie that you already own.

Dear readers, if you need a catalog of your stuff to remember what you have, then you have too much. A glance to your bookshelf should be enough of a reminder of the books that you own.

If you’re thinking about buying something but you can’t remember if you already own it, don’t buy it. If you do own it, it’s obviously not useful or memorable enough to justify buying it again. And if you don’t have it yet, it wouldn’t hurt to wait a couple of days. Don’t let an interesting hobby of reading books, listening to music, or watching movies turn into a habit of buying and owning.

There might be a couple of instances when a list could help. Maybe a list of the stuff in your attic, since you don’t go up there much. Or maybe a list to help you remember what’s wrapped in tin foil in the bottom of the freezer. Even for insurance purposes, a photo of a collection will generally suffice.

Maintaining a catalog means sitting at your computer typing it up, formatting it, and updating it regularly. This is not true organization! Why keep a list of stuff when you can just look at your actual stuff? The list will keep you busy, yes. But productive? No.

Every effort to organize should start with the question, “What problem will this solve?” Please don’t make lists of your stuff. Let’s make sure all of our endeavors are worthwhile.

Lane & Tom’s Shared Nursery Tour

In our two-bedroom apartment, Lane (age 3) and Tom (5 months) share a bedroom. We call it the nursery.

If it looks big in the photos, it’s because we kept the furniture to a small scale to save space. (For example, Lane has a toddler bed instead of a twin.) We wanted to maximize the open floor space so there could be plenty of room to play.

Our home is grounded in shades of brown — wood, leather, baskets, and linen — and the nursery has its share of brown too. We balanced it with white curtains and bedding to emphasize the light that pours in the southern window. The kids’ toys and accessories provide the bright colors without being too much.

Colorful outfits on wooden hangers announce who lives in this room.

In the center is an iron mantle I found at an antique junk shop. It had an amazing patina, but rusty bare iron isn’t well-suited for a nursery, so we had to paint it. I’m still not sure how I feel about that.

If you’re counting, I have three mantels, but no real fireplace. (The others are the one in the living room and the one we use as a headboard in the bedroom.)

In one corner is the play kitchen, and it’s set apart from the rest of the room by a heavy brown sewing cabinet I bought at a flea market 10 years ago.

Over the years the sewing cabinet has been storage, a diaper changing table, and most recently, a hiding place. A couple of years ago we put a light, a bench, and a secret shelf inside.

The dresser is a Craigslist find. The kids’ clothes fit in the dresser, which makes their closet available for general household storage (the back room).

We turned vinyl rain gutters into book shelves. They can be cut to any length, and these are mounted on the wall behind the door. It’s an efficient way to use space that would otherwise be empty.

Details

The simple chandelier is a single lamp cord with 11 small glass balls from CB2 suspended around it. I made it in 20 minutes, and the instructions are here. Total cost: $30.

We made the bed canopy by hanging a pair of sheer curtains from IKEA on a big embroidery hoop. I wasn’t sure if it would last, but we hung it up about a year ago and it still looks nice. Total cost: $8.

There’s no fancy toy storage here. The shelves are just two boards and a couple of brackets. The baskets are from IKEA.

Lane uses the top shelves and Tom gets the bottom shelf.

We keep only half of the toys available at a time, and the rest of the toys go in a storage box in the back room. It would be better if this box wasn’t see-through.

The dollhouse is the first thing kids are drawn to when they come over to play. Doug built it for Lane from a kit. The furniture is from my vintage Little People dollhouse.

The magnetic boards are great for a child’s room or a homeschool classroom. They are found at IKEA also.

Under the crib makes a nice reading spot. We pile a bunch of pillows and blankets under there to make a nest.

The much-loved cardboard robot was shared here.

~ The End ~

DIY Glass Bubble Chandelier

When we desired a new light to go over the dining table, I wasn’t thinking about making one. Then I remembered designer Jean Pelle’s instructions to make a chandelier at ReadyMade.

A chandelier would be much nicer than our old light fixture.

The original design for the chandelier used porcelain sockets and coiled string. We used galvanized pipe and IKEA.

Materials

• 18 4-inch glass bubble balls from CB2 ($2 each)
• 4 cord sets from IKEA ($4 each)
• 20 gauge floral wire ($1)
• fishing line ($1)
• galvanized electrical conduit and fittings ($12)
• 4 25-watt clear bulbs ($1 each)

Total cost: $70

Method

1. Use scissors to cut the floral wire into 1.5″ lengths, and then bend a small loop.

2. Tie fishing line through the wire loop, and push it into the hole in the glass ball. Now you can hang it.

3. The cords run through the pipe and join at the top.

Is the light off-center over your table? No problem, you can extend it as far as you need. You can also paint it. We like the industrial look.

(Don’t be confused by the change in wall color. Our lease says we can only paint one accent wall per room, so the ceiling and other walls are apartment-beige.)

4. You can see how the lamp cords come out the bottom. Start tying the glass balls to the end of the pipe.

5. Keep adding more until you think you have enough.

And that’s it! We like it, so we made a smaller, easier version for the nursery too.