49 book confessions

I love to read.

However, I often feel guilty taking the time to read, when my To Do list is overflowing with more important tasks.

I wish I read more than I do.

I have a hard time starting a new book. I recently heard this referred to as a Book Hangover: The inability to start a new book because you're still living in the last book's world. Exactly!

I go through periods where I'll read several books in a week, followed by not touching a book for a couple months.

I once read eight books in one day. 

There are 75 titles on my library wish list.

I have 73 sample books downloaded to iBooks.

There are 39 cookbooks on my Amazon wish list.

I have a strange fascination with prison literature.

Before Larry and I were dating, he lent me two books: A Single Shot (which he described as the most depressing book he'd ever read) and Into the Wild. I read 75% of Into the Wild on a plane ride home from Vegas. I never read A Single Shot.

I have a hard time committing to a book over 500 pages. When I make it through a really long book, I feel a huge sense of accomplishment.
That being said, I have several ambitious tomes on my nightstand: Crime and Punishment and The Executioner's Song.

During the nine years we've been together, Larry and I have both read only three of the same books: The Road, The Book Thief, and Just Kids.

I read the most at the beach.

I read many different genres, but never science fiction, fantasy, or romance. Or anything about vampires.

Larry thinks the books I read are depressing.

I've never read To Kill a Mockingbird.

I love reading on my iPad. I also love reading paper books.

I usually don't read a popular book until several years after it was published.

I can't read more than one book at a time. Larry's always reading a couple simultaneously, which I think is weird and confusing.

I'm generally not a fan of short stories.

The book is always better than the movie.

As a child, I loved to read and spent my nights reading with a flashlight under my pillow. I was a night owl back then, too.

Sometimes I still stay up way too late engrossed in a good book. I don't need a flashlight anymore - the iPad is backlit.

My favorite books from my childhood were The Very Hungry Caterpillar, Gregory the Terrible Eater, It's Not Easy Being a Bunny, and The Trumpet of the Swan. There was also a book about a dog that dug and dug and dug (to the other side of the world) - Google says perhaps this book was The Digging-est Dog? But I can't be sure. I also loved all books by Roald Dahl.

My first chapter book was Charlotte's Web. My mother read a chapter to me each night when I was in kindergarten from a copy that was hers when she was a little girl. We both cried when Charlotte died.

When I was a kid, my mother took us to the library every week. We put our book selections in an L.L. Bean tote bag. I remember the day I was finally old enough to get my own library card - so exciting. But now? I haven't been inside a library in almost ten years. (But I still check out books electronically.)

When I was in second grade, my godmother gave me the first two Nancy Drew mysteries. I was hooked.

Also, in second grade, we read Ramona Quimby, Age 8 in school. There is a passage in this book when Ramona's mother serves tongue for dinner. I read this shortly after my own father brought home a tongue. I became a vegetarian for the next year.

Yes, I did read The Babysitters Club books. I knew they were crap, but I loved them.

In fourth grade, our class participated in the Book It! reading program sponsored by Pizza Hut. I loved reading the books, but I also loved the free pizzas and the awesome purple holographic buttons.

In eighth grade, I found a copy of The Catcher in the Rye on my parents' bookshelf. I remembered reading in Seventeen magazine (Yes. Sad, but true.) that many people named The Catcher in the Rye as the most influential book they'd ever read. I sat down to read it. I thought it was good, but not life-changing.

In high school, I stopped reading for pleasure and only read the books assigned in English class. Even then, I didn't read all of them. I loved American Lit. I hated European Lit.

Books I loved in high school: Ragtime, All The King's Men

Books I hated in high school: A Tale of Two Cities, 1984

Books I read the Cliff's Notes instead: Moby Dick, The Grapes of Wrath

I didn't read a single book for pleasure in college. The demands of my major (architecture) left no time for pleasure or hobbies or reading. Heck, I hardly even slept during those five years.

I don't understand reading a book more than once. There are so many books to read out there, why spend the time re-reading when you could use that time to read something new? Exceptions to this rule include Charlotte's Web and The Trumpet of the Swan. I plan to re-read them and hope that they haven't lost their magic.

I used to force myself to finish books I didn't like. Now, I remind myself that life is too short for boring books. There are plenty of good ones out there - why waste time reading something you don't like?

I couldn't finish On the Road. I thought it was boring, pointless, and made me want to punch both Sal Paradise and Jack Kerouac in the face.

I've only read the first Harry Potter. Maybe someday I'll read the others. Maybe I won't. There are dozens of other books higher up on my To Read list.

I've never read any Twilight books and I have no intention of ever reading them.

I've never read any Hunger Games books. Despite the fact that these books are of a genre that doesn't interest me, several friends who have great taste in books have recommended them. Maybe I'll read them.

I hate dust jackets.

I love browsing books at bookstores, but I never buy them there. They're cheaper on Amazon.

I still haven't finished my 2011 goal to read all of the Pulitzer fiction winners from the last decade. (To date, I've read 6 1/2 of them.)

My goal this year was to spend $0 on books to force myself to read the unread books on my shelves (library e-books are ok, too). So far, it's working.

I'm currently reading Wild by Cheryl Strayed.

king vs. queen

Confession time! Larry and I sleep on a double bed. And we've been sharing a double bed for nine years. Yes. A double bed.

We're not small people. It's uncomfortable. And while we do like to sleep close at times, I'd prefer it be in an Awww, let's snuggle kind of way, not an OW, GET YOUR ELBOW OUT OF MY EYE kind of way.

When we were house hunting four years ago, the thing that sold me on this house was the master bedroom. It was huge! It took up the entire top floor of the house! It had a cathedral ceiling and skylights! It was my dream bedroom and I couldn't wait to transform it into a cozy nest for two (er, four - since the dogs share our bedroom, too).

I used to watch a lot of home decorating and DIY shows on HGTV. In just about every episode, the owners would admit that while they had renovated the rest of their house, their own bedroom was a sad state of affairs. The camera would pan through a beautifully decorated living room/dining room/kitchen and then go up the stairs to reveal the master bedroom: a mattress sitting on the floor topped with a brown comforter from 1989.

I always wondered how this happened and vowed it would never happen to us. The bedroom is the most important room in the house. It is the room that you spend the most time in. It must be comfortable, it must be a retreat.

Anyway, we moved into the house, got settled and thought SOON WE WILL FILL THIS GIANT BEDROOM WITH A GIANT KING SIZED BED!

WE WILL SLEEP LIKE KINGS!

IT WILL BE VICTORY!

Yet four years later we are still sharing a double bed. It rests on a metal bed frame - the kind that come free when you buy a mattress (a mattress that is ten years old*). Want to know what other furniture we have in our giant master suite? Two nightstands from Ikea and a trampoline.** THAT IS ALL.

This photo is from last summer's bed jumping escapade, but it also accurately expresses my frustrations over our sorry-ass furnitureless bedroom.

You will note that we DO NOT OWN DRESSERS. Guess where our clothes are? Did you say "in the closet"? You are only partially right. They are also ON THE TRAMPOLINE. AND THE FLOOR.

We have turned into those people from the HGTV shows. It's a sad state of affairs. It's our dirty little secret. When friends come to visit and move towards the stairs, we fling our bodies in front of them and shout "DO NOT GO UP THERE!"

If you're wondering "Why the heck didn't you just buy a bed and some dressers then?", you must not be a homeowner. Being a homeowner is expensive and unpredictable. Things break. Trees fall. HVAC systems need replaced. These things eat up your budget, and since we already had a mattress to sleep on, it stayed, and the renovation of our bedroom was sacrificed so that we could afford to have a house that was cool in the summer and warm in the winter. (Both of these are very important. We have lived through both a broken furnace and a broken air conditioner and these situations are way more uncomfortable than sleeping a little bed.)

But we are finally at the point where we can buy some bedroom furniture. A bed, a mattress, two dressers. We'll paint the walls, buy new bedding, hang some art, and put the clothes in the drawers.

Except that we can't decide...

KING VS. QUEEN

We originally thought we'd go for it and get the King. I know, I know, King beds are enormous and maybe a little tacky. As an architect, we advised our clients to never get King-sized beds. They take up the whole room! A room full of bed will be ugly and awkward! They're heavy and difficult to move! You can't get them up the stairs! BUT, after sharing a double bed for years, we wanted a serious upgrade. We wanted space. And with a bedroom that is 18 feet wide, we certainly have the room for it. To fit the other furniture in the room we settled on a California King (which is four inches narrower than a regular King and would allow two dressers to fit - we think). But then we realized that a California King mattress still wouldn't fit up our stairs...

Unless, we bought a latex mattress***. I've been interested in these for years (ever since Young House Love bought one). They are organic and don't have the potentially-dangerous chemicals that are found in regular spring mattresses. I'm not an alarmist when it comes to these kind of things, but not sleeping on chemicals couldn't be a bad thing. Most importantly, latex mattresses come in boxes. They are flexible. They will fit up our stairs. To make things even more convenient, the top-rated latex mattress manufacturer, Savvy Rest, has a showroom just a few miles from us. They are a local company and the mattresses ship from the Charlottesville area. I'm always keen to go green/eco-friendly and to support local businesses. And Savvy Rest is a good one. Problem is, a latex mattress is more than TWICE as expensive as a spring mattress. Ouch. Then again, a mattress it the most important piece of furniture you own. Consider that you will own it for 20 years (Savvy Rest has a 20 year warranty), sleep on it 8 hours a night, and avoid nasty fireproofing chemicals, and it doesn't seem like such a splurge.

Latex mattress samples from Savvy Rest. A mattress is comprised of three 3" layers of latex in your choice of densities. 

The layers are zipped into a quilted organic cotton and wool cover.

BUT. Do we really need a mattress that big? We slept on a King at the beach and I dare say it was too big. Larry and I would wake up in the morning and the bed WOULD STILL BE MADE between us. It kind of took the fun out of sharing a bed with someone since that someone was sleeping in another zip code.

So, maybe we just need a Queen. Cheaper, fits up the stairs, isn't the size of a cruise ship. Problem is, I think the Queen is too small.

I know, I know, just call me Goldilocks.

But a Queen sized bed is just 6 inches wider that a double. That's 3 extra inches per person. That is not enough space to keep Larry's elbow out of my eye.

Image via El Colchon Mattress.

Why don't they make a bed size that is between Queen and King/California King? What to do, what to do?

If budget was our deciding factor, we'd just go with a Queen-sized spring mattress. If eco-friendliness was our deciding factor, we'd go with a California King latex mattress. If assuring that other furniture will fit was our deciding factor, we'd go with Queen. All of these things are important, but to me, the most important deciding factor is comfort. Which mattress will provide the best night's sleep? I don't have an answer to which is the best choice for us. Is King too big? Is Queen too small?

Decisions, decisions! AAAARRRGGGGHHHH!

We've been trying to make this decision so we can just GO AHEAD AND ORDER THE DAMN FURNITURE ALREADY, but we're stuck. Larry's favorite party question these days is "Can I ask you a personal question? What is the size of your..............mattress?" 

Not that the size of anyone else's bed will determine what is best for us, but I'd love to hear your thoughts. Anyone out there have a King-sized bed? Have you ever felt squished in a Queen-sized bed? Anyone have a latex mattress? Is it impossible to find sheets for a California King?

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* When I moved into my first apartment after graduating from college, I didn't have a mattress or the money to buy one, so I SLEPT ON THE FLOOR for three months. No lie. Sense a pattern here?
** The trampoline is for exercising. FITNESS. (And also clothes storage.) It is not some kind of sex equipment. JUST WANTED TO CLEAR THAT UP.
*** A latex mattress is not the same as a memory foam mattress. We are not considering memory foam. It is stinky and made of chemicals. Also, it doesn't bounce. (Warning, that link is NSFW. Also, MOM, DO NOT CLICK THAT LINK!)

things I am afraid of

Let's talk fears and phobias. Everyone has a few weird things they're afraid of - some of them completely irrational (the very definition of a phobia, right?). Here are mine:

GRASSHOPPERS
Some people hate snakes or spiders, but for me the creepy-crawly that freaks me out is grasshoppers. I'm not particularly a fan of any crunchy-bodied bug (cicadas, locusts), but the grasshopper is by far the worst. They look nasty, they swarm, they have hairy legs, they can fly, AAAND they jump ONTO YOU.

WIND
Scary shit happens when there's wind. As a child, I was afraid of swinging when it was windy because I thought it would blow my swingset down. As an adult, this happened, and our house missed being smashed by mere inches.

SCARY MOVIES
I was the kid who wasn't allowed to see The Wizard of Oz until I was TWELVE because my parents thought it was too scary. When I finally saw it, I didn't think it was scary at all. However, I have no desire to see actual horror movies. I've never even seen The Silence of the Lambs. It just sounds grotesque. (Related: A few weeks ago I saw a car with a license plate frame that said "It rubs the lotion on its skin." Do NOT go on a date with that guy!)

Anyway, Larry laughs at me about the scary movie thing - especially when I admitted that scary movies give me nightmares. The other day he was naming scary movies and asking if I'd seen them. Child's Play? No. Nightmare on Elm Street? No. Halloween? No.

I then admitted that I had seen Scream, I Know What You Did Last Summer, and Se7en. (Which I saw in the theater when I was IN HIGH SCHOOL. A friend's older sister chaperoned us unto the theater since it was rated R and we were under 17.) His reaction: "Seven?! THE HEAD IN A BOX MOVIE? I haven't even seen that!"

DENTISTS
As I kid, I never could understand why people were afraid of the dentist - it was no problem for me (plus they had a toy box!). This is a fear I've unfortunately developed as an adult. I know I'm not alone - according to Wikipedia, 75% of U.S. adults experience some degree of dental fear.

Cocktails and the view from the 95th Floor of the John Hancock Center, Chicago, June 2009.

HEIGHTS 
I'm not a fan, but it depends on the situation as to how fear-inducing it is for me. Larry is much more afraid of heights than I am, so I have to be the rational one in these situations. I managed to coax him up to the 95th floor of the John Hancock Center in Chicago (I will admit that the wobbly elevator ride is a little harrowing), where he promptly ordered two cocktails (the view was totally worth it). I would love to go on a hot air balloon ride (this is a no-go for Larry), but the very thought of bungee jumping or skydiving makes me pee my pants. I wish I had the cojones to hike Angel's Landing. (Maybe someday. Or maybe not.) Also, to any structure with a glass floor, I say, WTF. I'm looking at you Sears Willis Tower Skydeck Ledge, and at you, Grand Canyon Skywalk. These situations invoke, as Larry would say, The No. 9 A-Hole Pucker. Sweaty palms, indeed.

SMALL PLANES
You will never, let me repeat that, never, see me going up in a biplane. I'm also no fan of turbulence, take-offs, landings, or the plane running out of fuel. (This happened to me over Minneapolis and resulted in an emergency landing in Fargo. Fun times.)

NEEDLES 
I've mostly gotten over this one - I've had quite a bit of blood drawn in the past five years, so that's no problem for me now. (Though you won't see me getting a tattoo any time soon!) What I really hate are I.V.s - those totally suck and hurt like a bitch. And you still won't catch me signing up for any tests involving needles that give electric shocks!

PUBLIC SPEAKING
No, thank you. Also, no it does not help to imagine your audience in their underwear. That's just sick.

OPEN BODIES OF WATER AT NIGHT
There's something creepy about black water. Deep, mysterious, scary.

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When I was a kid, I was afraid of the second freezer we had in our garage. It was full of frozen meat and it gave me the heebie-jeebies. I also wasn't a fan of thunder or sirens at night, elevator doors (one closed on me once - to this day, I still dash out of elevators quite quickly), cemeteries (gave me nightmares for weeks), or blood. Well, I'm still not a fan of blood, but I've had to clean up some dog injuries, so I'm getting better about it. Still...no, I do not want to see your bloody finger, gnarly wound, skinned knee, etc. Yuck.

Oh, and for quite a while I had a fear of ax-murderers hiding behind shower curtains. Please don't think this is good reason to hide behind a shower curtain and scare me because then I will have to kill you.

We could delve deeper and discuss fears of the future, things that keep me up at night, etc, but let's just leave it at the so-called silly and irrational fears.

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So, am I crazy? A 'fraidy cat? Anyone else want to confess what they're afraid of? Snakes? Spiders? Enclosed spaces? Clowns? Germs? The number 13, aka Triskaidekaphobia? - I still remember this as a vocabulary word we learned in 4th grade. (Also, did you know that fear of the number 666 is called hexakosioihexekontahexaphobia?)

awaking the beast

I am not a morning person.

I never will be a morning person.

This is something about myself that I've accepted I cannot change. I'm a night owl through and through.

Even as a child, I was aghast when my friends told me they woke up at 6 am on weekends just so they could watch cartoons. First of all, cartoons suck. Seriously, I was never into them, even as a kid. Second of all, sleep is way more important. Third of all, why are you waking up WHEN IT'S STILL DARK OUT? That's not natural!

As a teenager and college student, I loved sleeping in. This is probably pretty normal behavior for adolescents.

People told me, "Oh, once you get a job, you'll never be able to sleep in. Your body will automatically wake up early, even on weekends." or "Oh, once you get older, you'll become a morning person."

Ha.

HAHAHAHA.

I'm 33. I still like to sleep in. I freaking HATE mornings.

Seriously, do NOT talk to me in the morning. Do not try to coax me out of bed. I will be mean to you. (I'm sorry about that, but I just can't help it.) Also, if you utter the phrase "Good morning, sunshine!" or "Rise and shine, sleepyhead!" within my earshot, I *will* punch you.

I've learned over time that my body's clock prefers for me to sleep between the hours of 4 am and noon. Yes, I realize that this schedule does not work with society's expectations, so I've spent much of my adult life trying to fight it. But I am most productive between midnight and 4 am. That is when I catch my second wind and my creative burst.

When I worked in an office, this was obviously a problem. I was always trying not to be late to work. I slept through my alarm quite a bit. I turned the alarm up so loud the neighbors complained, and I still slept through it when it was blaring away right next to my face. I got a second alarm clock. I slept through that, too. I had bosses and co-workers who were extreme-morning people. Why is it that morning people always turn their noses up at night owls as if we are slackers? Just because I get into work later does not mean I don't work just as hard once the sun starts to set.

(Oh, and hey, morning people? At least my bedtime is not equivalent to that of a baby's!)

Part of the problem may be that I don't drink coffee. I made it through five years of architecture school (and many many all-nighters including staying awake in the studio for 72 hours straight) without a single cup of coffee. I tried taking a no-doze once and it made me feel like a strung-out jittery crack addict. I never did that again. I stayed awake through sheer willpower and by chewing spearmint gum (and the occasional cookie).

I guess what I'm saying is that my sleep habits suck and they have for a long time. Even when I do get up "early" I don't know what to do with myself because my brain does not seem to fully function. I sit around and stare at the walls until it becomes a more appropriate hour for getting things done. Sometimes I allow myself the luxury of reading a book in the morning. But guess what happens? I end up falling asleep.

So, as my 30 Day Challenge for March, my goal is to set a regular sleep schedule, get up "early", and have a bedtime. This is going to be harder for me than it sounds...

Alright, morning people, here is my schedule, so please don't laugh at me (I apologize for that crack about a baby's bedtime. Also, I'm sorry if you like cartoons):

8:00 am Out of bed! Seriously, no snoozing!
11:00 pm In bed. Do something relaxing, like read a book. (Or drink wine.)
12:00 am Lights out.

I realize that a wake-up time of 8 am is much later than most people get up for their day jobs. I realize that some people get up early and do things like *run* and *work-out* and still get to work before 8 am. I am not those people. Also, baby steps...

Now here's my problem. Like I said, when I get up early I don't really function well and I don't know what to do with myself. I'd like to start working earlier in my studio, but I feel like I need an hour pre-work to get going. What should I do with myself during this time? Suggestions?

What do you morning people (or recovered night owls) do to start your day? How do you find momentum to keep going through the morning? HELP.

confessions | on hoarding and decision-making and keeping it real

I originally started writing this post as an introduction to a new photo series I'll be featuring on my blog: Collections. The new photo series isn't about my urge to hoard things, it's really about photographing collections of ordinary items around my house - things that I don't even realize are collections until all the items are together in one place. 

While writing this post that was supposed to be about collections, I ended up getting carried away analyzing my urge to hoard things and how owning extra stuff clutters up not just my home, but my life, and my ability to make decisions and be productive.

The post below really has nothing to do with my photo series, and to be honest, it makes me seem a bit wacko. Since it wasn't relevant to my photo series, I thought about deleting it, but realized it's a subject worth addressing. I know I'm not the only one who struggles with owning too much stuff. While Larry and I joke that we're hoarders, don't worry, we don't have a stack of dead cats in our basement. (Ok, we don't have a basement. But we do have an attic, and I'm 100% certain that it is completely free of cats, dead or living.) Our house is comfortably lived in, we entertain (just ignore the collection of dog hair!), and the messes are hidden behind closed doors. (Please don't look in the guest room! No really! Don't go in there! Wait, you want to stay (gulp) overnight? Do you mind...sleeping on the couch?) Everyone has a room like that, right? (Oh yeah, don't look in our closets either. And for the love of God, DO NOT go in the attic.)

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I'm happiest and most productive when my home is organized, minimal, and clutter-free.

My home is never organized, minimal, and clutter-free.

We own a LOT of CDs. Most of them are not in their cases.

Despite my best intentions to rid my house of junk and live simply, clutter-free living is not in my nature. I am constantly battling my instinct to save, to keep, to hoard. "I might need this someday," "I paid good money for this," "But it still works," "Someday I might be skinny enough to wear this again," and so on. I didn't live through the Great Depression, so I have no societal influences to explain my urge to save that aluminum can (But I could make it into a candle holder! Or a flower pot!), that bit of rope (Wrap a present with it!), or those old stumps in the backyard (I had the best intentions of transforming them into gorgeous garden stools!).

In our mudroom, aka Mt. Trashmore. 
Things to note: Paint cans left by the previous owner. Grungy towel for wiping dog paws. Overflowing recycling bins.

There are catalogs to go through, old clothes that need to be donated to charity, and don't even get me started on the scraps of paper and post-it notes, all scrawled with To Do lists, cryptic sketches, middle-of-the-night ideas, and websites I need to check out, etc.

Dishes that refuse to wash themselves. Jerks.

Papers that refuse to file themselves. Assholes.

I'm well aware of my shortcomings and am always trying to remedy them. Yes, I've read about clutter-free living, clutter-reducing boot camp, purging your possessions down to 100 things (that's just crazy talk) and yes, I know it's best to only have useful and and beautiful items occupying the space in my home. A noble cause, but that's easier said than done!

In the linen closet: a collection of beach towels.

When we bought our house and I moved out of my apartment, I used the move as the opportunity to get rid of lots of crap. And boy did I purge! But still, there were some things that I couldn't decide on, so they got packed up, and 3 1/2 years later, those items are still in boxes. Clearly, I didn't miss those things and it is unnecessary for me to keep them. But yeah, they're still in the attic.

The top of my vanity. Disgraceful. 

I've found that the problem that bogs me down most in my daily life is decision making. I am the most indecisive person in the world. I can't decide what to wear, where to eat dinner, or which book to read next. When I buy something new, I spend hours researching ALL the different options and comparing prices before I make my purchase. It's a major character flaw. It's annoying - to others and to me. The internet, which makes millions of options for everything available to everyone, does not help with this problem. Information overload is not a good thing for me.

In analyzing this flaw of mine, I've found that my problem with decision-making comes down to having too many choices. When I'm on vacation and I have only 5 outfits to choose from, getting dressed in the morning is a breeze. When I'm at home and I have a whole closet full of clothes (plus a couple of laundry baskets with clothes that never got put away, plus a dryer full of clothes that haven't been folded yet), the decision of what to wear can be paralyzing. That's lame. But true.

Pile of clothes. Location: On a chair.

So in attempting to declutter and simplify my life, I am striving to reduce the number of choices I have, so that daily decision-making isn't such a challenge for me. (Don't even get me started on major life-altering decisions. Baby steps, please, baby steps!)

Do you see the catch-22 here? I need my space to be clutter-free to help me make decisions and stay motivated, yet to eliminate the clutter I have to make decisions as to what to keep/toss/donate and be motivated enough to go through it all. Oy.

Junk mail in its natural breeding ground: Our dining room table.

Our freezer (stocked with Unidentified Frozen Objects) and fridge (Hey, who wants a 3 month old rotten peach???)

For someone who has packratting in her genes (my mother can't visit without bringing me a newspaper clipping, some coupons, and some sort of trinket, while my dad's house is littered with piles of books, newspapers, and magazines), and a creative personality (all artists are messy, right?), I fear this will be a lifelong struggle for me. Some sources of clutter I've conquered over the years (Do I really need 17 kinds of hair gel when the one that works best is from the drug store? Just say no to the expensive stuff they try to sell you at the salon!) and some I just cannot beat (I try to open up the mail over the recycling bin, but still it piles up on every flat surface in the house. Damn you, junk mailers! Also, do I really have to do the dishes EVERY day?!).

CLEAN ALL THE THINGS?! (I don't wanna!)

Dog snot on the window. Easily remedied in 15 seconds with a bottle of windex. Easily messed up again in 15 seconds with a dog nose.

I've recently been going through some of those "still packed three years later" boxes as part of a goal to start the year organized. New Year's cleaning if you will. It's a gargantuan task. And some of the things I've found in those long forgotten boxes are what inspired the Collections photo series. But really they reveal a bigger issue: Larry and I are pigs. And we might need professional help.

My studio. This room should be condemned. OMG.

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(I took the pictures in this post several months ago because I had planned to do a photo post that was a confession of sorts - all the little messes in my houses artistically photographed out of focus - the piles of laundry, the dirty dishes, the shoes by the back door...all the things that show we're real people. I've seen other bloggers do the same and always think it's so refreshing to see that bloggers are real and imperfect. I think there's so much pressure for bloggers to portray their lives and homes as perfect, so here's my dirty not-so-little secret: we're messy. Oh yes, we are.)