First K.I.S.S.

If there's one lesson I've learned from moving in and out of our house in about 18 months, it's that it doesn't pay to be awesome. By this I mean that I was so fueled by a desire to be awesome that during our time there I made-over nearly every single room AND the backyard so it could really be our own and reflect our style. But as we were packing up and I was yanking down wall decals and window treatments, I asked myself, "What was the point?" Perhaps it's because I'm seeing this all in crystal clear Pregnancy Vision, through which even making my own sandwich seems like too much work.

So now that we've dug deep and pulled together enough stamina to get the new apartment mostly unpacked and settled, it's time to think about how to dress up the place. And I've decided, this time around, to adhere to the K.I.S.S. principle. As you may know, K.I.S.S. stands for Keep It Simple So-I-don't-drive-myself-crazy-and-spend-money-I-don't-have-on-an-apartment-I-already-know-we-won't-live-in-forever, stupid.

Allow me to offer up the dining room windows as a case study.

Notice the light pouring in, illuminating the clutter. Welcome to my nightmare.

All of the other windows in the house are covered with blinds. And not vertical blinds that I hate. Nice blinds. Phew. But these dining room windows are bare.

My first instinct was to repurpose the cherry wood blinds from the spare bedroom in the old house. This would be preferable to curtains, as the blinds could stay raised halfway to steer clear of the air conditioner.

At the time this thought occurred, we still had possession of the old house and I took a moment to measure the blinds... only to discover that actually the windows they covered were two different sizes and thus, so were the pair of blinds. I guess I'd forgotten all about that. This would mean I'd need to make a trip to Ikea to buy another set in either of the two sizes, then take down the blinds from the old place, then take down the curtain rod already in the new dining room, and then install the old blinds.

But that was the old me. Applying the K.I.S.S. method, I said "eff that" and left the wood blinds hanging in their place, telling the old landlords they could keep them. And I decided to just take advantage of the perfectly good, already installed curtain rod hanging over the windows when we moved in.

Luckily I still had the curtains from the old living room. So after about 10 minutes, our sunlight and privacy problems were solved.

Ok, I took this picture several days later after I'd had more time to clean. I WISH that part had only taken 10 minutes too.

"But wait!" you exclaim as you closely study this picture. "What about the air conditioner? The curtains are blocking it and if you open them, you're back to being exposed."

Very astute observation. You know what I'm gonna do to solve that problem? Absolutely nothing!