Bear & Honey

Into the fuuuutuuuuure!

Ok, done singing now.

This week’s Girl Talk Thursday topic is “How Do You Save Time?”

Magazines sell us on it every day, HGTV and Food Network seduce us into believing it is possible, and Martha Stewart has made an entire career out of shaming us into it:    Easy, Quick Homemaking!    Just Five Minutes a Day!  Homemade Wreaths/Biscuits/Furniture at the Drop of a Hat!    Sister, I ain’t buyin’ it.

I manage to cram what some might see as a herculean number of tasks into my average day.  I work full time in an office, have a music career outside of that job, make appointments, write blogs, and try to have a social life.  I’m not home very much in a given day.  So how do I manage to keep a lovely home amid my busy schedule?

I don’t.

The way I make time for all of the things on my schedule is essentially to completely ignore any chores until they threaten my well-being.

When my allergies get so bad that I can’t walk into my house without sneezing?  Time to vacuum.

When I run out of clothes to wear?  Time for laundry.

When I…Jeez, what is that smell?  Time to take the trash out, clean the kitchen, clean the bathroom, etc. etc. etc.

Look, I know that these things are “so much easier” to do if I am maintaining them on a weekly basis, just a few minutes a day.  Believe me, I get that concept and I think it’s dandy.  I’m just not likely to be able to implement that kind of system any time soon.

Despite how I live right now, I don’t actually enjoy being messy.  A messy home is hell on my consciousness.  I get frustrated and agitated, I snap at Greg.    It’s not pretty.    Whenever I am home for more than a couple of hours, I actually do start to clean or work on some home improvement project.  I don’t mind cleaning, it’s just not how I want to spend my only free time during the week.  I’ve got priorities, and they usually include margaritas.

How do YOU save time?

One of the things Greg likes about me (and that our wallets love about me) is that, while I have fairly expensive taste, I’m not willing to spend top dollar on something I think I can do myself.

Typically, I’ll find something I absolutely love at an expensive store, and then scour the internet, craigslist, Home Depot, and craft stores for ways to buy or re-create it on a less expensive scale.  ( I think I get this from my mother, whose favorite place to shop is Tuesday Morning.  She loves to pick up really lovely things and then ask me to guess how much she paid for it.)

When I find something for a great price or realize I can make it at home for very little money, I call it a “hey-I-can-do-that” moment.

Recently,  I saw a “distressed” dresser at a fancy schmancy furniture store on sale for $1750.  I loved the way this thing looked.  It was rustic yet elegant, with cute hardware.  It would be a perfect addition to my office, but there is no way in heck I am going to shell out almost two grand for something that will be holding office supplies and a laptop.   Instead, I can buy some sandpaper and paint and fix the broken dresser I already have for a lot less.

Instead of money, I’m choosing to invest time and effort.   Yes, I will have to delay my gratification and wait for the thing to be done, but in the end I think it is worth the wait.

Aside from saving lots of money, it can be much more satisfying to have a hand in creating the pieces in your home.  I feel more connected to a room if I have put personal effort into the items decorating it, and proud when someone asks me where I bought something and I can say, “Oh, we made that.”

Do you have items in your home that you built or gave a makeover?  Have a “hey-I-can-do-that” moment you’d like to share?

I would love to hear about it in the comments!

This week marks the first time in a long time that most of my possessions are in one place.   Growing up, my family always had things stored away in the basement.  Then, in my twenties, I moved around from dorm to apartment to rented house…with a lot of my stuff staying at my parents’ or brother’s places in between moves.   Until this week, I didn’t truly realize how much stuff I had.

This is what our garage looked like at the start of Moving Day:

Once we unloaded the truck, it looked like this:

So, the first item we’re tackling on our To-Do List:  PURGING & UNPACKING

We’ve started the slow process of going through everything and while it’s a lot of work, it feels good to let go of things that no longer serve our needs or represent who we are right now.

For instance, there are no less than three television sets in our possession…and we hardly ever watch TV.   We tend to opt for rented movies or Hulu.com to catch up on stuff we like.   We will definitely be getting rid of at least one of those TV sets.

I’m also getting rid of a lot of kitchen stuff.  I love to cook and entertain, and now we have three people’s sets of silverware, dishes, cookware, etc.  (Mine, Greg’s and his mom’s) to deal with.  I am consolidating all of them and only keeping the pieces I know I’ll use a lot or that I just love.

I feel like I have the potential to be an organized person, but I was raised by a packrat and am trying to shed the layers of stuff that have followed me around everywhere.  It’s definitely a lot to deal with, but this house feels like a fresh start.

What have you let go of recently?  Do you have any “purging” techniques you can recommend?  I need all the help I can get!

Many wonderful stories start with something tragic, and this one is no different. Last December, Greg’s mom died suddenly, just before the holidays.  We were devastated but also suddenly swamped with all sorts of things we needed to do to take care of the estate.  Greg is an only child, so all of this was up to him.  I tried to help as much as I could.

One thing that we kept putting off was how to deal with her house.  It was pretty far away from the area we lived in, and not an easy trek to our respective workplaces, but we really liked the surrounding area, with its space and peace and short distance to the mountains.

Greg kept suggesting, responsibly, that we get it sold, and I kept suggesting we rent it out to a family (thinking that eventually we could afford to keep it as a weekend retreat.)  Neither of us said out loud that what we really wanted was to keep the house and move into it full time.  It took us eventually getting into a debate about it for us to say, “You want to live there? But I want to live there!  You mean we both want to live there?!”

So finally, a decision was made, paperwork was filled out, and here we are in our Little Green House.

As of this week, we’ve gone from being city-dwellers to country folk, officially.  We’ve moved about an hour away of Atlanta, Georgia to the foothills and farms up North.  So far the transition has felt natural.  The city is still in driving distance, but up here we have lots of space to run with the dogs and grow things.

As a songwriter, I was in some serious need of space and natural light, and we have plenty of it here.  I’ll even have my own little office nook to work in for future blog posts, instead of writing at the dining room table.

Our Little Green House is charming, to be sure, but it’s definitely a “fixer-upper.”  It took almost no time for us to realize that there is a LONG list of items and projects that need to be taken care of here.  We’re on a super-tight budget and consider ourselves to be fairly capable folks…so we’ve decided to “DIY” whenever possible.  Thus, this blog was born.   We’re going to keep our list up there, in the navigation bar, out in the open for everyone to see, and then post about each project as we tackle it.

Since neither of us has had a lot of experience with home improvement projects, we’re going to be learning as we go along and hopefully sharing some tips we pick up along the way.

You can also follow us on Twitter @bearandhoney.

Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoy!