QUICK TIPS: CLEANING

Tidying up your space is also one of the best first steps you can take when you're looking to upgrade your space. Disclaimer: I find cleaning to be cathartic - it's also my number one form of procrastinating. Giving a room a good scrub can help you feel accomplished and give you a new perspective on just how much stuff you have (and how much you really need). I have been on a major minimalism kick lately after moving out of my little apartment. At least, I thought it was little but apparently I also lived in a black hole because the second moving boxes appeared suddenly so did ALL THE THINGS. Seriously nothing makes you want to give up all your worldly possessions quite like moving. Another thing about moving - at least out of an apartment - is leaving it all sparkly and shiney in an attempt to get back that elusive deposit. A normal person would hire a cleaning service (a normal person would probably also hire movers...) but since we're far from normal around here I thought to myself "it can't be that bad to clean it myself." Flash forward a solid 72 hours of non-stop scrubbing  and let me tell you if I weren't so dead set on my career as a designer I'd be a pretty great maid. I came out of that marathon of dusting and disinfecting with some serious tips for you guys. I'm not saying you all need to drop everything and dust your floorboards, but if you were so inclined here are my top 5 clean-the-house-top-to-bottom cleaning helpers.

1. Windex. No not just any blue spray. Windex. The brand. No this isn't an ad either but after cleaning all the windows and mirrors in my apartment twice because the first cleaner left streaks. Just buy the Windex. Someone help. Find me a greener glass cleaner? Does vinegar really work? Until then, Windex just works so well!

2. All-Purpose Cleaner. I love Method's stuff bc I feel good using it around the house and it smells great and I'm pretty sure it won't give me cancer or make me grow a second head. Clorox also makes a green all-purpose cleaner that I think is really spectacular. Use this for all things: wiping down countertops, non-wood/laminate furniture, etc etc. Quick and easy. 

3. Two words: Magic. Eraser. How have I never used these? Yes maybe I sort of thought my finger skin was slowly being melted away by who knows what black magic is in these (gloves ftw.) but oh my goodness. The tile floor that took me an hour to scrub on my hands and knees a year ago? Clean in 15 min. That soap scum on my tiles that clearly only demon fire could remove? Clean! (For shame....I totally had soap scum, and I openly admit it. I'm only human.) Spotted chrome? Clean! Smudged walls? Clean! CLEAN CLEAN CLEAN. While I am 110% committed to switching myself to a greener less toxic cleaning regimen, I openly admit when the job really calls for it, I will whip one of these bad boys out of my back pocket. (While google-image-searching this I found out that washing your face with a magic eraser is a thing. I'm not doctor, but I would advise against this.)

4. Clingy Duster. I went with a reusable fluffy thing. Nothing dusts the dust off those ubiquitous multi-paneled apartment doors better. And ceiling fans and baseboards and anywhere dust could lurk! Gone! Yes, perhaps it's just shoving it onto the floor, but thats why you dust before you vacuum. Anything that doesn't stick to the fluff gets sucked up into the vacuum.

5. This is my favorite thing I have ever learned. You're saying to yourself, "A squeegee? But we already cleaned the glass!". NO. This is for your carpet. I have a dog and this dog is cuter than all get out, but he's also a giant fur factory on legs. While I hope to never again have wall-to-wall carpet, sometimes it's a situation that cannot be avoided. By running the rubber squeegee over the carpet, particularly around the edges where the carpet meets the wall you can start to scrape together all the hair that gets trapped along the baseboards - a place vacuums have a real issue with. Picking up the hair this way ahead of time also cuts down the burden on your vacuum and keeps you from emptying the vacuum bag nearly as often. If you have a fur-baby this will change your life.

I hope adding these products to you cleaning arsenal helps you get your space spic and span in no time - and one dust-free step closer to a space you love coming home to. So tell me, what are your favorite cleaning tips? How do you green your cleaning routine? Do you have a product you love? I would love to hear from you all - let me know in the comments!  

PS: Again, let me say this isn't an ad, no one is paying me to say anything - this is just my experience with cleaning up after myself and trying to be an adult. :)

KITCHEN INSPIRATION

UPDATE: This post was written in 2015. We have since finished the kitchen! If you would like to see finished images click through to my portfolio.

Wrightwood is coming up on a pretty serious deadline: I’m moving in! The house will be far from done...but moving in holds some amazing opportunities. I will be getting my hands into the doing at the house: tiling and painting and sanding, oh my! There is something about getting my hands dirty that helps me balance my days. Lately a lot of the hands-on work has been in the hands of the contractors - I will never claim to be an electrician, though it might be pretty cool to learn. Another thing I am not is a woodworker. Ever since that fateful day in the woodshop under the architecture school where the professor outlined every way I could kill or maim myself with power tools, I've been a little shy when it comes to band saws and belt sanders. While this is something I should probably get over,  I feel very lucky to have some amazing millwork and finish carpentry people in my life. This brings me to the kitchen: ALL of the cabinets are being delivered tomorrow! You may have seen a sneak peek of the west wall of the kitchen in my Fourth of July instagram last weekend (just wait 'till you see whats at the end of this post!). Having a working kitchen will go a long way in making a construction site feel more like a home...

A kitchen is first and foremost a place of function and the kitchen we started with I'm not sure you could even call a kitchen. Small, cramped, dark, and dingy all come to mind thinking about the original downstairs kitchen. We tore out walls, removed some windows *gasp*, and completely revamped the flow. We opened the kitchen not only to the rest of the house, but opened the rest of the house to the kitchen, allowing for views straight out to the expansive backyard and letting light flow into the heart of the house. The small space at the back that held the washer and dryer was most likely at one point a porch that was enclosed to create a laundry/mudroom/refrigerator space. When we took off the old drywall there was original exterior waterfall siding underneath, confirming our suspicions. Instead of a pantry we have a wall of floor to ceiling cabinets for all your storage needs, a massive four foot wide fridge counter-depth fridge, and we squeezed in an island that houses the sink and the dishwasher.

Through out the process I've been collecting inspiration from around the web, cabinet styles and colors that spoke to me and where I felt the style of the house was going. I almost hate to include this first image in the collage because we ended up with something so darn close to it! I think the kitchen in the upper left is absolute perfection. While the kitchen we ended up with is a bit more polished, and our island is a solid, cabinet filled workhorse, we took a lot of the color and light and material inspiration from this image. The next image is maybe a little out of place but truthfully I'm just looking for a reason, any reason to paint the island green. Everything in this house is going white and I'm itching to infuse something a little more risky and exciting. What do you think? I think that gray in the lower right is also really gorgeous and a little more reserved. I adore the look of two tone cabinets like this but our space is still pretty small so we're sticking with white cabinets on the two side walls, top and bottom, but with the island we could get a little crazy.

From all my inspiration (and let me tell you, this is the tiniest sampling of images) we started shopping around for exactly what we were looking for. Per the usual, a neutral palette started to take shape, which I think is perfect, the next owner of this house will have no problem infusing their own personality into the space, and kitchens can get so cluttered a simple palette can help keep the visual mess at bay. We also let what we found while shopping inform our decisions too, like the 2" by 4" mosaic subway tile we found at Home Depot. I cannot wait to see it installed, the smaller tiles have a really "cute" aspect to them that is missing with the ubiquitous 3" x 6" tiles...my mom keeps referring to the little tiles as "chiclets". Speaking of tile, the tile floor has been down for a while (probably the first new thing is the house in this whole process). I want a cleaned up farmhouse look in the kitchen - the cabinets are simple with shaker-style paneling. While my parents couldn't quite get behind full-on brass fixtures, we compromised on some Delta fixtures in their "champagne bronze" finish - a softer, but still warm finish I can totally get behind. One of the greatest challenges at Wrightwood is balancing my more modern, eclectic, mid-century-leaning style with my parents' more traditional, historically accurate point-of-view. I like to think we're striking a happy medium. 

1 | Dovetail Gray - Sherwin Williams 2 | Daltile 2" x 4" Subway Tile Mosaic 3. Brass Drawer Pulls 4 | Ikea RANARP pendant 5 | Custom White Shaker Style Cabinetry 6 | Walnut Butcher Block Countertop 7 | Delta Trinsic Faucet 8 | Porcelain 12" x 24" Slate-Look Floor Tiles via Thorntree 9 | Carrera Marble Countertop

I will leave you with this progress shot of the kitchen. The next time you see anything about the kitchen on this blog it will be all done. I can hardly believe how far it's come, and I'm deeply in love with everything thats happening. This past weekend we started sanding floors to prep them for new stain, and as soon as all the sanding is done we'll start painting walls. Our next big push after the kitchen is the bathrooms, as of right now only the powder room is (somewhat) done. So much is happening all at once I'm not sure what I'll be sharing with you next, but be sure to tune back in, it's just starting to get good!

SPRINGTIME COLORBLOCKING

I have been silent for far too long and I can't be kept quiet anymore! I want to talk about color blocking. Ya'll. You're probably seeing it everywhere, accomplished with varying degrees of contrast and ingenuity, and you will soon see it all over the yoga studio (that is so so close to being done I can taste it. Or well, not taste it. I'm sure yoga studios don't taste great....and if a yoga studio DID taste great, this one would. Get excited Houston.) With that being said I thought I'd round up a few of my most favorite examples of color blocking from around the web. When done right color blocking adds instant impact, defines space, and can be so unexpected yet PERFECT. And it's just paint. What I'm trying to say is that it's amazing and you should try it ASAP. (Plus if you stick it out to the end of this post you get a sneak peek of some of the color blocking I've been playing with in the yoga studio....)

Clockwise from top-left: color blocked workspace from Simply Grove, drop shadowing a window via Remodelista , sneak peek-through via IKEA, pop of color on a column - image via Frenchy Fancy

These first images really get my color blocking juices flowing. The first image is BOLD - teal and grey and ceilings and walls and doors, oh my! The teal being painted almost a quarter of the way down the wall gives the impression of extremely grand crown moulding while simultaneously taking full advantage of the already soaring ceilings. Next is the bedroom image. I love me some serious white on white on white, but that pop of yellow is just so much fun, breaks up the room, and plays with your perception of the window as an object. The image from IKEA (love the Kallax units that look like they've had a little toe-kick built out under them). This might not meet a strict definition of color blocking since we're looking through one room and into another, but suddenly the opening in the wall goes from negative space to positive and creates a layered effect similar to painting a big teal rectangle on a wall. The final image shows how color blocking doesn't need to be a wall-only commitment. Painting the column turns it from a functional obstruction in the room to a piece of furniture or art! It plays nicely with the color scheme and is so much fun. We did something similar at Big Memorial and it's one of my favorite moments.

Clockwise from top-left: Drama x1000 via Lonny, some springtime dining via Inside-Out, a focused office from Chez Larsson , this pretty pink bedroom via The Life Creative

I am completely obsessed with the full range of spring hues - childhood tomboy be damned: I love pastels. They're so fresh and surprisingly modern. I think possibly my favorite color blocked room ever is the traditional green one. So bold, so fantastic and yet so livable. I could spend all day everyday in that sun drenched, playful, beautiful room. Purple though, might just be my favorite color (of the moment). A month ago I was seconds away from begging my hairdresser for purple hair exactly this shade. This dining room makes me so happy. White and bright and modern and avocado toast instagrammed everyday. This green workspace on the other hand would really help me focus on keeping this blog consistent - and is great for any of you who may feel a WHOLE wall is too much. Also green is a color known for inspiring innovation (via a great study by my alma mater and past professor) - a great color for all the creatives out there! And finally completing my pastel-trifecta: PINK! When I was little my mom used to tell me that pink rooms caused people to go insane. So what did I do? I painted by bedroom pink (thanks Mom!). And I loved it. And I like to think I'm not insane, but rather well adjusted and happy!

So you made it through to the end of this somewhat wordy post and heres your reward! A Big Memorial sneak peek! Want to see more? If you're in Houston we're scheduled to open THIS week - otherwise stay tuned! As soon as I find a great interior photographer in these parts (or find some faith in my own photographic abilities) I'll post a full, color filled tour!

I know I'm feeling inspired to splash paint on everything! If you could throw some paint up on your empty walls right now which room would you pick and what color would you choose?