A decade of procrastination

Ain't it funny what you'll put up with, for SO long.

There's a possibility I may get a housemate for a few months, which means it's time to paint the upstairs. Three rooms had been done since we moved in, but need freshening. One room was never done. And the hallway...UGH! It's still old dark nail-up panel sheeting. The door between the hallway and the back bedrooms is the original paint, and is filthy. None of the trim has been repainted. I've turned a blind eye to it because..well, who cares? But now someone might have to live up there--not just stay for a night.

I mean, look at this light:



The house came with those square light covers, you know, the ones you smash the first time you take a sweatshirt off underneath or try to move something tall? Yeah, those. So when we smashed them one by one we did replace the one in the bedroom (with the most boring fixture imaginable--probably the cheapest) but slapped a regular shade on upside down on the hallway light.

The other two bedrooms have no hardwired lights, so we have something like this:



So today I went shopping for lights and a door for the bottom of the stairs. A solid door would be nicer, but warm air in the winter, and cool air in the summer, needs to make it up those stairs.



It ran over $200, but you know what? The money I saved by stopping drinking at home paid for it. So there you go. One good reason to stop an expensive habit.

I also bought a crowbar in my "replace the tools that belonged to Mark, one by one" campaign.

Then there are other shabby areas of my house that haven't been an issue. Who is going to see my spice cabinet? Who needs to decipher their labels? Up until now, no one.

I failed to take a photo of all the bottles of old stale spices that I threw out. It was rather alarming. Mark and I went through this thing about five years ago. Five years is a long time.



Spices are expensive, so anything that seemed like I should keep until I could afford replacements I did keep. Anything unlabeled or that just smelled like dust went into the trash, bottle and all. I wanted to shop the bulk spice area of Tops (which, surprisingly, has more options than Wegmans) but they didn't have the things I needed. The spices in the baking aisle were way too expensive, so I figured I'd just get one at a time.

Then I stumbled into the organic aisle and discovered small bottles of spices for half the cost of good old McCormick.



So now I am back in action. The fifteen-year-old cream of tartar is gone. The little envelopes of red stuff are all gone (could be cayenne, could be regular paprika, could be hungarian paprika--who knows?) Ditto with the baggies of green stuff--probably a product of two days a half-decade ago when I played with the food dehydrator. With the exception of one jar, all of the "ghost of Mark" handwriting is gone.

We're getting there!

What does your spice cabinet look like? Could I cook from it if I were over at your house?