Spring Cleaning | Resources

After my first post on spring cleaning, your MatchGirl's Facebook wall was aflutter with tips and hints and resources to help one keep one's home a little more organized!

A few of my faves:

First, my friend Kate Payne wrote a killer book called The Hip Girl's Guide to Homemaking (yes, that's your MatchGirl mentioned in the sewing section). This book (pictured, left) shows you that anyone can keep an amazing home, you just need a little ingenuity and the desire to do it. From making a lovely space to overnight guests to throwing parties to canning your own food, Kate walks you through it all. Seriously. Buy it.

Spring Cleaning | Hall Closet

Ugh. Gentle readers, as I mentioned before, Boyfriend and your MatchGirl are not stellar cleaners. Not that, of course, we live in a sty, simply that we can both find a lot of other things we'd like to do aside from mop the floors and organize the closets.

But as spring is the time for a fresh start, I decided that we should get going with a spring cleaning, of sorts anyway.

And I decided to start in one of the most annoyingly messy places - the little closets in the entryway of our apartment.

Seating Arrangements: A New Chair

Your MatchGirl, many years ago, inherited a green velvet wing chair from one of her dear friends (who had owned it for years herself). And, while not my style, per se, I have loved this chair for a long time. When Jarvis was alive, he spent many hours sleeping in it, but, he also peed in it. Though I cleaned it and the smell was gone (and had it professionally cleaned as well) the smell suddenly reappeared as summer is upon us. Try as I might, I can't make the smell go away. So ...

I have decided that we must get rid of the chair.

It's a sad day for me, as I'm overly sentimental... but to clean it will be more hassle, time and money than it's worth. The chair, while it has good bones, is in dire need of re-upholstering and with the intense smell ... we just can't hang on to it till we're at a place to make that happen.

So we're on the hunt for the perfect chair ... you've been warned!

Purging: Stoop Sale

Gentle readers, your MatchGirl held a stoop sale yesterday, on her little street in the northern part of Greenpoint.

The Written Word

Gentle readers, something that your MatchGirl has a lot of is books.

And I love to have a lot of books. Art theory books from undergrad, loads of favorite dog-eared novels, cookbooks with gorgeous pictures and cookbooks with no pictures at all.

Purging

Gentle readers, your MatchGirl has lived in the same Brooklyn apartment for about 6 1/2 years now. It's the longest I have lived in one place since I was 10 years old. And, while I changed rooms and got rid of a lot of stuff when my old roommate moved out and before the current one moved in, that was still three years ago.

In short, there is a lot of stuff. A lot.

The amount of stuff that Boyfriend owns pretty much fits entirely in his car.