My hopelessly-hooked-on-Craigslist home tour
We moved in a month ago and have worked extremely hard to make it feel like a home. We are strong believers in “reduce, reuse and recycle” and try to apply it to our home as much as possible. We tend to shop at thrift stores and garage sales — and love a good Craigslist deal. Take a look around and I hope you find inspiration in what you see.
A home hearth, a colorful living room YAHOO!, and lots of Trekkie goodness in this week’s reader photos
Start your week with our collection of interesting articles on the web and photos from our readers. This week: see LEGO portraits, and the USS Enterprise is in trouble! In these Clicky Links you’ll find lots of sites to waste a little time on — and help you start your gardens.
Click through, too, to find our links on submitting YOUR stuff to Offbeat Home!
Spring clean your computer in 6 steps
Spring might be a ways off (especially in the Southern Hemisphere) but any time is good for a clean-up — for your computer as well as your home. This advice is for Windows XP, Vista or 7 (sorry Mac/Linux users but I wouldn’t know where to start!) and should be super-easy for anyone to follow.
Will future homes be open source and Creative Commons-licensed?
I am so in love with open source solutions, but I’m used to free, group-edited projects being relegated to the tech world: Gooogle plugins for my Gmail and Chrome, Wikipedia…the number of ways humans have found to work together to improve our world is astounding and effing impressive. Could you imagine what Gutenberg, the inventor of the printing press, would think of the accumulation of information that is Wikipedia?!
It seems that the trend is breaking into the real world. Enter The Ekinoid Project: an open-source plan for housing based in the UK.
How to build a Japanese-style heated floor desk
I’m all about floor-furniture like the kotatsu, a 14th-century invention used in many Japanese homes all winter. It’s like the floor-oriented table often associated with Japanese homes, but with the added convenience of a heater and blanket. Sometimes I have daydreams about how awesome it would be to have one of these suckers. SO WARM. So cozy. None of the crampy discomfort of a western-style desk!
I’ve got a little floor-desk of my own going on, and this IKEA hack came just in time for me to play with.
How to go from an apartment set up to a functional furnished house
When we moved from an apartment to a house, things started to slip away from us. We tripped over boxes, forgot to clean anything, and we floundered. Until I came up with a plan — and a tool that you might find helpful, too!
A Gaudi-inspired sparkly art nouveau summer house
This is the story of the Russian-style summer house I crafted in my backyard in Newcastle Upon Tyne. In ten months, and for less than £5,000, I took it from clay model a to stained-glassed, mosaiced den place to drink a Guiness whilst foxes run in the garden.
Go paperless at home: 7 ideas for less clutter, less stress, and more free mindspace
So much paper comes into my house that I just don’t care about. Bills that don’t change month-to-month but that I should keep for my records, receipts, healthcare info, manuals — it’s all stuff I don’t WANT but I need to keep, just in case. Sound familiar? In an effort to make all our lives less cluttered, here are seven ways to get after a paperless house.