Apartment Progress

These may not be the most glamorous shelves in the world, but they make a world of difference in my little sewing nook (that's the top of sewing machine cover peeking out in bottom left of the photo) - and they were only $3. I had Lowes cut an old (really really really old, from Misha's elementary school days) Ikea shelf into two pieces (50 cents), covered it with 50 more cents worth of white contact paper, and finally Lara helped me pick out four 50-cent "backets" at "Ikee!"



They took probably an hour all told, and I'm super psyched about them.

In other apartment news, the greener-living project continues. We don't even miss paper towels. They are occasionally still used for napkins if there are a bunch of people over (I have yet to whip up some cloth napkins, but it's on the to-do). The flannel rags are great for cleaning everything, as far as I'm concerned, and make for excellent dust wipes. Good-bye, Swiffer family of products!

I'm slowly switching to non-toxic detergents. After a few why-doesn't-this-actually-clean-the-dishes bottles of Trader Joe's dishwasher liquid, I finally bought Seventh Generation powder and let me tell you, people, it is awesome. Nay, SUPER awesome. And even better, it comes in a cardboard box, not a plastic bottle.

The Ecover laundry detergent has yet to wow me with either its cleaning power or its slightly too powerful eucalyptus-like smell. I'm going to try Seventh Generation next, since their dishwasher stuff rocks so hard.