And God said, “Let there be light.”

And with a four man crew, two ridiculously sized ladders, 3 weird chain saws on poles, a wood chipper, and a pile of branches, leaves and debris 6 feet high that extended the length of our driveway, there was.

Today is the first day I haven’t had to have the lights on in the middle of the day since the weather changed.

This may be another one of those state-to-state differences we chuckle about in the comments, but I thought I would pass on this money-saving tip The Mister and I happened upon through no ingenuity or brain power of our own.

I’ve complained often enough about the poor natural light in our home that I am sure several of you are now rolling your eyes, waiting for me to mention, again, that two towering trees flank our property.  Not one to disappoint, here I go:

We have two towering trees flanking our property and they suck up all our natural light.

But wait, I have more to complain about!

They are now so big they are encroaching upon our neighbors’ property, and with winter just around the corner, one of our next door neighbors delicately suggested we consider having the beasts trimmed before the leaves dropped all over her pool and created one of those boobie traps you see in the movies where the sidekick walks across an innocuous pile of leaves and falls into a pit with a flesh eating mole the size of a Winnebago.  Or maybe she was just worried about her pool sweeper getting jammed.  Either way, we picked up what she was laying down and called some people.

Some people gave us some bids, which gave us something to wince over and reminded us why have we put this off for so long.  The tree in the front, alone, would cost us $350 to have it properly trimmed.  Or, 1/3 of an IKEA sectional, which is how I determine cost lately.  You don’t even want to know the quotes we received for the woolly mammoth in the back yard.  Any money we save on air conditioning by living in a constant state of nightfall is exceeded by the cost of keeping these trees manageable.

(Don’t worry, I’m getting there.)

One of the people we had out to bid the project thought the tree in our front yard might be a city tree.  Modern neighborhoods have a sidewalk (here in southern CA; we’ll see what you all have to say about this in the comments), and city code states anything preceding the sidewalk is city property and, therefore, the city’s responsibility to a certain degree.  Homeowners are still responsible for keeping the area neat and maintained.  We do not live in a modern neighborhood and do not have a sidewalk.  The tree is positioned in a gray area, so before embarking on a 1 1/2 IKEA sectionals project, we decided to have a representative from our city’s Urban Forestry department come out and settle the issue.

They came out quickly and three days later my doorbell rang with good news and bad news, according to the inspector.

The good news is the tree sits on city property, and is the city’s responsibility to keep trimmed.  The bad  news is the tree does not need to be trimmed at this time.  (Uh-huh.)  But, the inspector said I could employ city trimmers at the resident-city rate if I was so inclined.  The rate?  $39.  That is a savings of $311.  $39 to have a towering tree trimmed, a near 90% difference from the $350 we were quoted.  THIRTY NINE DOLLARS.

My math might be off, but I am pretty sure that’s the middle-left cushion of an IKEA sectional.

Mikey started walking not long after The Mister and I completed 90% of our kitchen remodel (someday we’ll have a backsplash). The cabinet installers agreed to put in the safety latches, but bailed 13 seconds after they hung the last cabinet. I guess they were tired of our little old house with it’s crooked walls and uneven floors. I asked The Mister to do it a couple of times (17–who’s counting?) but something always seemed to come up. It didn’t help when I took away his motivation and started storing all the cleaning supplies on the top shelf in the pantry.

One day I decided I was tired of grabbing the step stool every time I needed to wipe down the counters and started researching recipes for homemade cleaning supplies. I found one, bought all the ingredients, and made it despite The Mister’s scoffs and jeers and crunchy-granola-California-hippy-Birkenstock-mama proclamations. I’ll admit I was a little worried I had fallen into some deep, dark, stay-at-home-mom place I might never crawl out of without a pile of glad rags and Patchouli oil, but sonofabitch it worked better than anything I had ever used. I’ve even found a way to use my homemade concoction in front of others without feeling like a wayward Jack Kerouac groupie. I just start spouting off about the environment, chemicals, mention a landfill every now and then, toss in a well timed sniff and shoulder shrug and before you know people look interested. Guilty, but interested. I usually seal the deal when I mention it costs about $0.30 to make. So, are you feeling interested and guilty, yet? If so, here is the recipe. It’s a modified version of Alice’s Wonder Spray from Clean House, Clean Planet, which in all seriousness is a fantastic book. Great cleaning supply recipes without the crunch of granola.

All Purpose Household Cleaner

2 TBS White distilled Vinegar
1 Tsp Borax (this is mildly toxic, so be sure to keep the final product in a safe place)
1/4 cup Dr. Bonner’s liquid soap (I have peppermint scent) or 1/8 cup liquid detergent
1 16 oz. trigger spray bottle
essential oils

Mix 2 TBS of vinegar with 1 tsp of borax in the 16 oz trigger-spray bottle. Fill the rest of the bottle with very hot, purified/distilled water. Shake until the borax dissolves completely.

Add the liquid soap or detergent last. Follow with 20 or so drops of an essential oil. I like lemon and lavender, or lavender and tea tree.

It’s very important to keep the order of ingredients as they are. Adding vinegar to the soap will cause it to clump, and if you don’t first add the hot water to the borax you will have a tough time getting it to dissolve.

I use this on all of my soapstone counters, my kitchen table, range, sink, and faucets. There isn’t much this recipe hasn’t been able to tackle. In fact, over Christmas when I knew company was coming, I went out and bought the most popular product on the market to clean my kitchen cabinets. I thought for sure I needed something commercial to clean a year’s worth of grime. I threw it away after the third cabinet–it just greased up the cabinets even more! I ended up using my homemade cleaner to clean the cleanser and the grime off the cabinets. I should have never doubted my homemade cleaner.

If you try it out, tell me if it works for you. If you have a recipe of your own, please share!

Fast forward three years and we still haven’t child-proofed our cabinets.

Can someone explain to me the allure of appearing on a show like Design Remix? The premise of the show is to redesign a room in your house with furniture you already have in the room “plus surprises from other parts of the house.” I don’t get it. Was Candice Olsen busy? Why would you want to use your own furniture? You picked it! And you applied for a design show! I’m going to guess that what you picked most likely sucks, or at the very least doesn’t work well in the room because, I repeat, you applied to appear on a design show. I thought the whole point of essentially admitting on national television that you have no style was the promise of a newly furnished room. You give them permission to humiliate you, and they give you free stuff. Seems like a fair trade, no?

By the way, I should talk. I shouldn’t be too rough on HGTV. The show’s concept inspired The Mister and I to remix our own living room in hopes of reclaiming some adult space from the boys and their toys. Two years ago, we moved from a newly built tract home to a mid-century ranch. We had all sorts of renovation plans that we quickly put on hold after I decided to quit my job and stay at home with Mikey.

One of those plans included a new fireplace and furniture for the living room. Our old furniture looked lovely in our previous home, but in our older, more compartmentalized ranch house the furniture is the wrong scale, color, and style. The fireplace? Well, it’s a bit imposing. We put the mantel in right after we moved in so we would have somewhere to hang stockings for Santa, thinking it would be a temporary fix. We placed the furniture in the room and left it, hoping to replace everything soon. It never happened, and before we knew it the entire living room and entry way was overrun by toys.

Who’s house is this, again?

A total redesign is currently out of the question so, right before Christmas, The Mister and I set about moving some furniture. We redid this room for $0. Like an episode of Design Remix, we used everything we already owned.

We started off by repositioning our ginormous sectional. We tried every conceivable configuration and finally settled on this one. It’s still too big for the room (it’s pretty much all you see when you come in the front door) but I think it turned out ok. I don’t love the heavy piece of carved wood above the television unit, but it serves a purpose. That’s a little “surprise” from the garage I dusted off to hide a 2.5 inch hole in the wall we couldn’t avoid if we wanted to watch TV in this room. Something lighter would look better (maybe even a plant) but it didn’t fit with my $0 budget.

Before the Remix.

After the Remix. Better, no?

Of course we also moved every single toy into the den. The den is now a mess, but you can’t see it when you first walk in the house, and with everything in such a small room it is fairly easy to clean everything up on a moment’s notice.

No toys!

Better. Much better.

We have children. They require toys. I prefer laughter over a clean house. Usually.

The culprit.

We moved the large mirror to the dining room. I want to redo this room, too, only with money. For starters, I would love to find a round table, replace the light fixture, and put down a rug. I’ve also thought of papering the wall behind the mirror or painting it a different color. We’ll see. For now, I’m just happy I can walk into my house without being blinded by a sea of toys.

Hello, I’m beige. How may I bore you today?

Yawn.

Have any of you remixed a room? I’d love to see before and afters, so link away in the comments if you’re up to sharing!