A Better Life

Remember when I told you that I had been going through some changes around here?

Nope, it's not my constantly changing office.

That's just a picture to pull you in ;)

Actually, one of those big changes was starting the Flylady system.

But not with the original creator, as brilliant as she is.

I found a wonderful woman on YouTube, named Kat, that walked me though the whole process with her videos, but we'll get to that in a minute.

I'm sure you've heard of the Flylady, as she's been around for years.

I know I had.

The ladies in Blogland started going nuts for her years ago and she was all over the place.

I remember checking her blog out and thinking, "I don't need this, because I'm an obsessively clean person."

HA!

The truth is, I'm am OCD, but unless I had the time to clean every single little inch of my home like it was going to be in a magazine, I was lost as to what to do. So before someone would come over, or I would take a picture for my blog, I would go insane like a cleaning madman.

Not that I lived daily in a pigsty, mind you, but let's just say I wasn't on top of it, as I should have been.

Anywho, I was searching the internet for yet another cleaning strategy that might get my act in gear and came across Kat. She was a Flylady that worked for the the original Flylady. 

Apparently, the system got so popular, that flybabies (newbies), were handed off to other women that had been doing the system for years.

I came across one of Kat's videos and was intrigued, so I went to her channel and clicked on the video below that she recommends for newbies and I was hooked!

The video is 40 minutes, but well worth your time.

I followed her advice and started routines, then the weekly plan, then decluttering in zones and now I've reached the cleaning in zones, instead. Albeit with a little decluttering still to do here and there in hidden places ;)

I watch her daily morning videos and live videos that give advice and tips and now my home is presentable all the time and I don't have to go nuts before anyone comes over :)

Kat is no longer an "official Flylady", because she was spreading herself too thin (she takes care of her elderly parents for a week at a time every three weeks), but she still helps us flybabies (now we're called Lions) everyday with her daily videos, under the name "A Better Life with Kat", while still following her version of the Flylady system.

Kat truly cares about every single one of us and you can see it in her live chats especially.

She's definitely changed my life and I'm unbelievably thankful that I found her.

I hope you head on over to her channel and watch her videos :)

And just for fun, check out her other channel called Kat & Mr. B where they read their old love letters and do other fun stuff, like cooking and showing how to make a box for the recent solar eclipse:

I could watch these two all day :)

Thank you so much, Kat, for showing me how to have A Better Life!

xo

rue

PS

This was not a compensated post. I just wanted to share this lovely lady with all of you.

A dark secret

In this adorable cottage there was a very dark secret...

BWAHAHAHA...

Just kidding.

It's just my closet.

Although it was scary in there

See...

Yes, I know you've probably seen scarier closets, but to me, this was a nightmare.

I'm a tad OCD, so it was driving me nuts. Especially after seeing so many bloggers posting all their brilliant closet makeovers.

Now, before you get excited, this isn't going to be that 333 project or some glamour shoot with a chandelier.

One:

I wear vintage dresses most of the time, so there's really no mixing and matching and when you wear something you just throw on with some shoes, you tend to want to wear more than just four things.

Want to have an easy wardrobe?

Wear dresses.

Cold?

Put on some tights and a sweater and/or jacket.

It's that easy.

Two:

As much as I would love to turn my closet into one of those beautiful wallpapered, chandelier type looks, it's really just a functional, tiny, walk-in space, that I had built in my dressing room, with clothes. 

And really, who has the money to invest into a closet that no one else sees.

Can you imagine... 

"Hey! Come see my beautiful closet!"

No. 

No one cares.

Sorry.

I can't promise you that I won't do something more with it, just for me, but for now, I'm a happy camper and I can find everything, so.... YAY! :)

Anywho...

This is is part way through the cleaning.

This is the atrocious amount of shoes I had to go through.

Seriously?

I wear saddle shoes and Keds most of the time, unless I'm going out (I wear heels then) or it's winter and some of them were 30 something years old.

Enough already!

The giveaway pile kept growing.

So did the vintage clothes I need to sell or repair.

I tried every. single. thing. on.

It took FOREVER.

But finally, after 3 or 4, maybe 5 hours... I was done.

On this side I have a multitude of belts, a few skirts, and dresses.

On the opposite side I have... jeans, pajamas, robes, slips and coats.

I have my purses on one side, going around to the middle....

and heels on the other side.

Straight ahead, I have... tank tops, blouses, t-shirts and one scarf.

I didn't separate seasonal, because I use quite a few things in all of the seasons.

Most of the so called "normal clothes", like modern skirt suits and fancy dresses went into another closet.

I'm not about to count everything, because I don't really want to, honestly, but I will wear all of it, I love all of it, and I can find all of it.

And that's what really matters to me.

The hardest for me is that I have to live two separate lives.

Vintage and not vintage (or normal clothes, as I call them).

Some people my family (my kids excluded) and strangers think the way I dress is odd, so I have to conform on certain occasions.

If it was up to me, I'd only have vintage dresses and a few jeans and t-shirts to work in the yard, but such is life.

Funny, people can walk around in what is basically tights and a bra or pajamas in public and it's okay, but wearing a dress that's from the 40s or 50s is wrong somehow.

Anyway, enough of that...

my closet is finished and hooray for me!

:)

xo

rue

Is it or isn't it?

Since I've been back blogging again, I've noticed that the words "vintage", "farmhouse" and "country" get thrown around a lot.

To be honest, most people have no idea what they're talking about.

Sorry, but it's true.

When I come across this, I ask myself 

"Where?" 

or 

"Are they crazy?"

 or 

"Did they actually research what a kitchen looked like from (insert the era they're going for here) ?"

 or 

"Do they have any idea what a true farmhouse or country kitchen looks like?" 

or my usual response.....

"Are they drunk?"

Now, when they say "vintage feel" or "farmhouse feel" or "country feel" sometimes I can see it, but most of the time I can't.

For instance, today while I was looking around at a few blogs, a popular blogger (name withheld) mentioned that they wanted a 1940s kitchen and thought that they had accomplished that.

Ummm... no, not quite.

The kitchen was completely white. Sound buzzer!

They had an apron front sink. Sound buzzer!

They had subway tiles. Sound buzzer!

They had marble countertops. Sound buzzer!

For reference here is what typical 1940s upscale kitchens looked like:

Now, not to say they didn't have white kitchens then, because they did, but they weren't ALL white.

Example:

But, do you see subway tile?

Nope

That wasn't popular in the 1940s, it was popular in the early 1900s.

Do you see marble countertops in any of these pictures?

Nope.

They used tile or laminate.

Do you see an apron sink?

Nope.

It was either a sunken sink or a drainboard sink.

What she really has is a trendy white kitchen that barely whispers of an early 1900s manor house, where the servants worked, but only because of the subway tile and because it's white.

Here's an example in the background:

Before you think I'm being mean, let me just say that I think her kitchen and most kitchens like hers are beautiful.

That being said though, it's not a 1940s kitchen and far from it, which is fine, but I have a problem with people saying these things and then everyone jumping on the bandwagon saying "I have a vintage kitchen of a certain era!"

In actuality you most likely don't. What you probably have is a modern kitchen with perhaps some vintage "toys" and decor in it.

To be fair here:

Is my kitchen truly 1930s vintage?

Well, let's take a look at my main inspiration pictures:

And then at my kitchen:

The answer:

No.

Although, it has the original cabinets, breakfast nook and light fixtures, floor and tiles like what would have been there, a 1930s sink and I chose the colors from a 1930s kitchen picture, it also happens to have a modern stove and a 1950s fridge.

I would say that it's a vintage kitchen that has grown with the times or just simply a vintage kitchen, but I wouldn't label it in a certain era, because even though it has the bones it's not a true 1930s kitchen.

My point is, that before you say you have a certain type of kitchen, do some research. You'll probably be surprised to know that no matter what you think your favorite style or era is, in actuality it most likely looks nothing like the real thing.

So that's what's been on my mind.

I'm not even going to get into the whole farmhouse and country debacle.

I kinda think you get the point ;)

xo

rue

my kitchen inspiration

As I have said before, my home was built in 1930 and although many people would try to modernize it, that's not my style. In fact, the previous owners were set to gut the entire house, from what I can tell with all the pamphlets in the cupboards. Luckily, they never got around to it and decided to sell the house.

One of the main things they were going to do was put in dark wood cabinets, granite counter tops and stainless steel appliances. You know... like every. single. house. you see on HGTV, especially House Hunters. They had already started with the stove, the sink, the fridge and most of the knobs. It looked ridiculous, because the original 1930s cabinetry was still in place, but it was topped with 1970s white, stained, laminate counter tops and the floor was a horrid dark reddish brown linoleum. On top of that the whole room was painted puke brown, including the cabinets and the hinges. I don't know if they were trying to make it monochromatic or what, but the whole thing was a mess.

Below are some before pictures to give you an example. It was right after I moved in, so please excuse the mess.

 Here you can see all the 'lovely' brown, the counter tops and the sink...

 This is a close up of a cabinet that was added later in the house's history (it's gone now) and you can see the  horrible knobs....

 The painted over hinges... ugh!

More brown cabinets on the bottom and the gross flooring.

And finally the breakfast nook where they had tried to minimize the cute details.

See what I mean? Awful.

Can you imagine that little room with dark wood? It was already dark enough!

Anyway, at first I wasn't sure what I wanted to do, except to get that brown out of there and although I knew I didn't want it to look like my last kitchen (that you can see in this post), because it wasn't right for the house, I had to do something right away. So, I sanded down all cabinets and doors, soaked all the hinges to get the paint off, and then painted everything white to get a blank canvas. I knew then that I wanted color and lots of it, but I waited about 6 months to get a feel for what the kitchen needed and spent a great deal of time looking at pictures of 1920s, 1930s and 1940s kitchens that I found on the internet. 

Here are some of my favorites:

A couple of breakfast nook examples.

That generation certainly wasn't afraid of color and patterns!

  Here's some real life kitchens from the era, just for fun:

And finally, here are recent pictures from magazines, museums, and movies that I saved for inspiration via pinterest:

Pretty neat, huh?

After looking at all these pictures and more (a lot more!), I came to the conclusion that it should look like a kitchen built in 1930 (which it was), that had progressed over time, but had stopped somewhere around 1960. I thought it would seem more natural that way and I wouldn't have to stick to one era, since that's not the way the rest of the house is decorated. After all, I wanted it to look old, like grandma's kitchen, not a 1930s museum!

Well, that's all I have for today. I hope you enjoyed it.

I promise I'll show you what I did soon ;)

rue