Clean Sweep!

Right now we live in a one bedroom apartment in Gramercy Park.  And while we will most likely renew our lease when it is up in April, I'm confident that this will be the smallest space that Michael, Winston and I ever occupy together.  So there are hopefully larger closets, more cabinets and bigger storage spaces in my future.  At least that's what I tell myself every time I get a new pair of shoes and have to throw out an older pair so that I can fit them all into my "closet" (if you can even call it that).  I also do not believe that anyone I hire could ever do the level of cleaning that I'm capable of doing myself.  I clean a lot, and I clean often, and I'm convinced that no professional can make my house sparkle on a weekly basis for under $1K/month.  So much to Mike's chagrin, Saturday morning cleaning is a team project.  And while we still have our tiny living space, that's not going to be changing any time soon.  

Cute little wall art we bought to supplement our
decorations!  

The way I clean, I could be locked up in the apartment for days trying to vacuum up every piece of Winston's hair or sweeping every microscopic fiber of dust.  But Mike and I have gotten into a pretty great routine that has allowed us to still have our Saturdays.  It's like a well-oiled machine on Saturdays.  We wake up and eat our breakfast/coffee, put on some tunes, and hit our prospective projects.  I do have to say, that as much as I love my husband, this is an approach that he didn't ever volunteer for until we were married.  And now that we're husband and wife, our household responsibilities are shared.  I'm giving him a lot of credit for being my hero against the stubborn soap scum in our bathtub and for rescuing me from ever having to clean a toilet...but before our wedding there were many Saturdays where I sat sweating over a Swiffer wet jet whilst my husband slept on the couch with Winston draped across his lap.  But nowadays, he's come to accept the fact that if we split up everything, he actually gets to hang out with his wife, and get out to enjoy the weekend.  Enjoyin a cozy weekend at home in Manhattan is much better in an immaculately scrubbed apartment.  I hope that we can keep up this system as we move on to bigger and better living spaces because so far the tag teaming has made for a happy marriage, a home-y apartment, and a happy wife!  

And with a squeaky clean apartment, what better time than to take on a little home improvement project?  The holidays are coming up, and we're still waiting anxiously for our beautiful couch, so we're perfecting each room until that wonderful delivery day comes.  This weekend we made some minor adjustments to our bathroom.  After 5 or 6 dark and stormys this summer, Mike and I thought it would be cute to buy a few authentic hand painted buoys from a gift shop in Cape Cod to turn our bathroom into "the most festive you can be outside of Christmas".  So without spending too much moola, and just a few minor tweaks, we transformed the bathroom to a little nautical retreat.  A nice little room upgrade before we start to welcome friends and family for the holidays!