C-O-D-E-R-E-D

Without our realizing it, things drift into shabbiness, or at least cease to look their best. Look around. Are there areas in your house that need upgrading so that they contribute to a more gracious way of life?
Consider whether you would be more enthusiastic about your house if you simply spruced up your
Flatware. Are you using bits and pieces of sets in a myriad of styles? Buy a new matching set and enjoy the benefits of being proud of how your table looks. Over the years pieces get nicked in the electric disposal, become dulled with use, and look generally dingy Certainly, if you are going to entertain, you will do so more happily with a presentable table.
I’d been shopping for a new set of flatware for a while, and I stumbled upon a set at a discount store for a good price. I said, “Enough with using junk flatware!” and snapped it up. I don’t know of any purchase I have enjoyed using quite so much. I hadn’t realized how ready for retirement
old set was, until I employed the new one.
Shoe area. Are your shoes lying around in a jumbled pile, kicking at each other in the bottom of your closet? You’ll feel better about the entire area if you buy a shoe holder and vacuum the bottom of your
is very important, get rid of shoes you don’t wear. Can’t stand throwing them out? Move them into the lives of other people who can happily wear them, while you happily stop storing them. Or throw them away. It’s okay. Really. I promise.

There is the Kitchen cabinets and drawers that you can change. New handles and knobs are inexpensive but will spruce up your kitchen and give lots of bang for the buck. Your local variety store, hardware store, and home store probably have them. Right now give your kitchen hardware an unbiased exam. They may be whispering, “Change me!” If you’re not sure, bring home a couple of samples you can return later and hold them up to the cabinet. That should give you a good idea about what you should do.
Also consider having the new front door. It creates a powerful first impression about your house. What does yours say? Does it need repainting? Cleaning? New hardware, such as an updated knob? Would a new seasonal wreath, kick plate, knocker, or some other decoration give it some needed oomph? Do your street numbers and front porch light need refreshing?
Adding a storage spaces. Are you storing things you no longer need or want? Are you storing your grown children’s belongings or other people’s things? Free up your house by sending these back to their rightful owners. Invest in adequate storage containers for your own things.

Create a calendar for the coming year on which you place photos and visual inspirations—seed packets or photographs—for your dream garden. Write in one or two very simple steps (and the cost) each month that may be possible for you to accomplish.
Enjoy the anticipation, but don’t think about how you’re going to do it all, Let yourself feel the sensation of accomplishment ahead of time by imagining completed projects. Do what you can, but don’t stay attached to a particular outcome or the completion of everything on your calendar Substitute anything unlikely to be accomplished with smaller similar projects that bring you pleasure.

If your shoes are jumbled or hard to get to, they are telling you that you need to take control. Of the many options, consider which solution fits your needs and your pocketbook: stacking wire racks, shelves, pocketed holders on the backs of closet doors, under-the-bed shoe storage, stacking shoe boxes. You have to decide which method works for you.
I was once surprised when someone asked, “Of course, you keep your shoes on the upper shelves of your closet, don’t you?” I didn’t, but when I tried it, I found it was an excellent solution for me. My four-year-old granddaughter, on the other hand, keeps hers in the bottom drawer of her dresser. And that’s the perfect solution for her.

Towels and sheets. Are many of yours frayed and grungy? Discard them or use them for rags, and get new ones. But choose towels wisely, depending on your climate and your laundry equipment. I live in hot, humid south Florida, and we use air-conditioning—but only in the middle of summer. I also use a solar dryer (translation: a clothesline), so for me, thin, inexpensive towels are best because they dry faster, both after use and on the line. Also they take up less room in the hamper and on the shelf. Besides, I happen to like them better than heavy towels. For guests, I have a nicer set.
You may love heavy towels and have no problem with washing, drying, and storing big ones. As we all use towels every day, it’s important to buy the kind that works for us. In this decision, cost should take a backseat.
It’s the same with sheets. You use them nightly, and they meet a very personal need for comfort. So buy what you really like and need. Because sheets last a long time, it helps if you consider that their cost can be spread over
extended period.

The Rooms like the dining room become a home office? Has the guest room become a storage room? With thought, you may be able to reclaim them for their original purpose, so you can enjoy them more.
You can do some flower arrangements and plants. Are your artificial ones dusty and droopy? Clean them with an air blower or silk flower-cleaning spray. Are your live plants straggly? Depot them or replace them. In the beautiful rooms of decoration magazines, flowers and plants play an important part in making the room come alive. If you imagine those pictures without plants, you will notice the rooms lose a lot of sparkle.

Let’s face it, though, many of us don’t have a place, or at least time, to garden. I can barely keep my lawn watered and mowed, let alone plan, plant, and putter in a garden. Today my front lawn, dry and yellow from the frost, is covered with red pine needles and stubs of branches broken by gray squirrels. Does this send a message to my neighbors that I have no neighborhood pride?
Landscape has long been a canvas for one’s philosophy and social status. Surely it also intersects with our spiritual “in scape.” The natural world functions within and without; our true terrain is where our sense of place finds resonance with our personal story.

Is it no small thing,” the poet Matthew Arnold asked, “to have enjoyed the sun, to have lived light in the spring?”7
Certainly gardens are a green infrastructure of ecological and spiritual prosperity that inspire healthier more livable communities. Your garden is also a private sanctuary where you can indulge your own sense of connection to the earth. Here you can find tranquility and plant elements of surprise—and did you know you can do all that without spending a fortune or moving a mountain?
Begin by documenting your wildest dreams. Have you yearned to create a butterfly haven? Do you long to grow an exotic kind of rose or to build a lily pond where you can sit every evening at twilight?
Prioritize these dreams and divide into the number of years you expect to live at your current residence. Just have fun with this; nothing about it is set in stone.

Another of my friends who is a home enthusiast, Luna Herr, lives in a Spanish U-shaped adobe house atop an inland California foothill. Red tile roof, Terra-cot ta courtyard, and semiarid foliage create an exotic aura. But to the rear, adjacent to the pen pasturing Sigmund the Goat, Luna has created a blossoming utopia. A fenced rose garden, replete with meandering brick pathway, unusual bird feeders and houses, and a labyrinth of colorful flowers, accentuates the contrast in landscape. Her philosophy is based on an old English proverb: “Tickle it with a hoe, and it will laugh into a harvest.”
Jane and Luna are part of a flourishing trend of home owners indulging their personal whimsies by using them to create a private outdoor paradise.

What makes one house or another appeal to us? The architecture? The details? The location? “I finally came to the conclusion that it is always about the landscaping,” my friend Jane Green told me. That summer I never saw Jane without garden gloves and straw hat, working the soil around her cottage that sits on its now-pampered lot across from the local park. What resulted was a whimsical mixture of wild country and styled English garden. Botanical surprises are tucked into the landscape, including all sorts of teapots topping every post in the picket fence—the sort of stuff that turns home into wow!