On the Eve of a Move: Part Two

Now that you have all the supplies and a clean apartment it’s time to start packing!  Well… not quite yet.  Before you start packing up all those boxes you want to make sure that each box that your packing is filled with items you actually want or more importantly need.  So make sure before you start tossing items into boxes that you have thought about where it will go in your next home, will it be useful and used, will it be sentimental and an item to cherish over the years… or will it most likely just collect dust or take up room in another closet.  If it’s a dust collector be strong and toss it!

Next you need to have a game plan.  Which room you want to begin in and which items need to be packed last.  You don’t want to pack up every last plate and fork when you still have three weeks left in your current home.  Start with the items in storage or office season clothing and work your way towards the kitchen and entertainment center.

When it comes to actually putting items in boxes there are a few helpful items to keep in mind.  Make sure you don’t pack the boxes too heavy, whether it’s you, a loved one or a hired mover no one will appreciate the box I like to the term “the back breaker”.  The rule of thumb for box size is that the smallest boxes should be used for books, and the medium and large boxes should be used for clothes, bedding, pillows and kitchen goods.

Remember you want to keep boxes filled with items from the same room so when the movers bring them to your new home and you begin unpacking you aren’t running from room to room.  Last but not least make sure to label! It helps when unpacking that you know what you’re getting into.  You want to be able to unpack the most important boxes first- like bedding and bathroom items.  Good luck!

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  The Carpet Pad Disaster

Oh my, did I ever have a disaster leading up to my move.  I had purchased a beautiful 9×12 mountain grass rug upon my departure from Atlanta to Boston.  When buying the rug the manufacturer let me select the linen bindings and asked if I wanted a carpet pad bound on the bottom.  I thought, sure why not!  Biggest mistake of my design career.

I then moved up to Boston and laid my beautiful new rug out on a wide plank pine floors and then lived in the fluctuations of New England weather and through a few rowdy parties for just about five years.  When it came time to roll up the rug for the move we found that it wouldn’t budge.  Not even an inch.

What came next was a total of 7.5 hours of intense manual labor to not only remove the rug in good condition (I wasn’t ready to toss that money out the window) but then remove the carpet pad from the floor so as not to incur the wrath of our landlord.

After a few false starts we found a tiring but very effective method to get the rug and pad up.  You will need the following tools; plastic paint scrapers (the wider the better), 4-5 rolls of paper towels (the good kind), vast amounts of water, hours worth of movies to provide distractions and a lot of upper body strength.

Step one was separating the rug from the pad.  This was not easy.  You need a partner and you each take a corner and just start pulling and ripping as hard as you can.  Eventually the rug will come up.  Although the rug is now a bit misshapen it’s starting to look better after we’ve been living and walking on it for a month.

Step two, pour as much water as you can on the carpet pad.  You will want a puddle of water to sit and soak into the pad.  The water can be warm or cold, temperature will not make a difference.  Then you need to start working the paint scrapper under the pad and hopefully after a few hours your work of removing the pad will be done.

Final step is to get that little layer of glue that was on the bottom of the pad off the floors.  I know this will sound a bit disgusting but this layer reminded me of peeling a sunburn, yuck!  You will want to roll out the paper towel one layer thin over the entire remaining glue and then pour a generous amount of water of the paper towels and let the water soak through.  You can then you use the paper towels to wipe up the water and glue chuncks.  Once done make sure you wipe up all the extra water (these are wood floors) and then give the floor a quick a vacuum and you’ll finally be done.

I have to say that as exhausted as I was I’ve never seen those floors looking so shinny and bright!  Too bad I didn’t actually own the place.

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  I Found Some Drool Worthy Pretty

The WorkPod which is a backyard office by Ecospace is divine.  It encompasses all the things I find pretty; clean architectural lines, efficiency of space, and an eco-friendly story.  Just think of having a home office separate from the noise and distraction of your home, but just steps away.

Head on over to The Office Stylist to read her entire post on the product.

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  On the Eve of a Move: Part One

This post is close to my heart since I just recently went through a move.  I had been living in the same apartment for the past five years and in those years I’d not only grown as a designer and expanded my worldly possessions but I’d also met, married and moved in with my husband.  As you can imagine doubling the inhabitants of the apartment meant almost doubling it’s contents.  After three years sharing the space we had outgrown every nook and cranny.

After many months of talking about moving and one weekend of looking at new places we found our new home, and we only had to move a few stops out of the city and into Cambridge on the Red Line. Finding the apartment was easy, the difficult part came next… packing.  Coincidentally I had planned a stay at home vacation for the week prior to our move, and while my original plan for that time off didn’t include packing up our apartment I took advantage of the time and slowly got us packed up.

It was during this time time that I realized I should share my experience of moving with my readers. Well…tackling a post on Tips For Moving is no small feat, and I quickly realized that one post was was not going to be enough.  So here is post number one of Tips For Moving focusing on the first steps- stocking up and cleaning.

Before you can even begin to start packing up your apartment or home you will need supplies and a game plan.  The supplies are the easy part and they include; a variety of boxes, packing tape, bubble wrap, packing paper, scissors and a few thick black sharpies.  You can swap out the packing paper for newspaper, but beware you will end up getting black ink everywhere and will have to wash or dust all your belongings when you unpack!  We found a local U-Haul retail store and we were able to select and pay for all of our supplies online and then just stop by the store to pick them up.  It saved us a lot of time not having to wander around the aisles contemplating how many boxes we may need.

Tip:  Even though people may tell you that stopping at your local liquor or grocery store for empty boxes is a great way to save money we found that creating a moving budget and picking up all our supplies at one time saved us a lot of time and energy.  At the end of the day it’s all about weighing cost against your time and labor and deciding what is more important.

Next you need to take a deep breath and pull out all your cleaning supplies.  There is no point in moving dirty belongings and it will only end up frustrating you if you are packing and organizing a dirty home.  So go ahead and clean every nook and cranny one more time.  Now you are ready to start packing.  Good luck!

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  C.O. Bigelow

I thought I would share a link to my new favorite hand wash.  As a practice I am not a fan of bar soaps for anything other than practical uses in the shower and on occasion for decorative purposes in a guest bathroom.  But for your every day hand washing needs in both your kitchen and bathrooms a liquid pump hand soap is the way to go.  I have been a fan of the C.O. Bigelow Menthe products for a few years now and they have the most wonderfully invigorating mint hand soap.  I felt that I had gotten into a bit of a rut after I went through my tenth bottle, and that it would be fun to take a chance and try something new.  I decided to start with the Rosemary Mint Hand Wash.  I couldn’t be more pleased with my choice.  It has the same pleasant invigorating mint scent with just a hint of soothing rosemary, but the packaging is understated and attractive.  It can work in both a kitchen or a bathroom… and due to it’s packaging even a bachelor’s pad!

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  Keeping Things Shiny

Well give a girl the week off and all those piled up tasks finally get done.  I took a full week off from work last month and made it a stay-cation.  I have a hard time relaxing or at the very least sitting still so I decided to tackle a number of tasks I had been putting off for years during my break.  The first of which was cleaning our fan that I recently wrote about.  I also decided to polish our brass lamp.  This was a lamp I proudly bought upon my graduation from college and it has been sitting pretty next to my sofa for a few years (well maybe more than a few).  Needless to say it had become quite tarnished.  Since I had some time and Netflix Instant up and running I decided to finally put some elbow grease into the project.

The lamp was the Port-o-Call table lamp from Crate and Barrel, they no longer carry the polished brass version but you can get a sense of the style of the lamp:

I used Goddard’s Brass & Copper Polish and was very pleased with the outcome.  The instructions told me to wipe the polish on in a circular motion and let sit for a few moments and then wipe off with a clean cloth.  Well… I started off following those instructions but quickly found out that it was much more effective if I just put a bit of polish on a cloth and scrubbed the lamp hard and until the shine came through the tarnish and I then wiped the lamp clean, no waiting.  The end result was a shiny lamp that identically resembled the lamp I bought those few years back.  One less task on my home improvement checklist.

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  Newest Love Affair

Meet my newest love affair… well love affair from a far.  I am in the market for a new entry mat and I keep coming back to this wood block rug from West Elm.  I don’t have a huge budget, but I want something that feels unique.  I think this could be it!

Check out the detail shot, just lovely… .

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