Weekends without much money do not have to feel like sitting around in God’s waiting room. In high school my mother would tease me for staying home on Saturdays: cooking up strange Victorian recipes like trifle, making cushion covers from old dress fabric, painting a wooden chair in the long grass of our backyard, or attempting (and failing) to hang Chianti bottles on a fishing net from my bedroom ceiling. Three decades later I haven’t changed much. Often if I am poor in dollars I try to make myself rich in time, keeping the creeping apathy of empty pockets at bay by doing something swift (meaning an investment of fifteen minutes to an hour) and cheap (for fifteen dollars or less) that makes my home and spirits feel enriched. If I can’t alter the big things (like my tax bill) I like to generate change on a small scale. It’s empowering to embellish and engage the energy in your home and often it is also absolutely free.
CLEAN LIKE A NUTTER
If I can get one room in my house to look preposterously ordered, a sense of calm and a faint delusion of affluence descends. Decluttering allows you to enjoy and enhance the things you own and lends definition to simple still-lifes—such as branches in a tall vase or a large wooden bowl of Anjou pears. I always have a coffee table (with an internal shelf) that I can put things in and tall baskets with lids for the toy purge at dusk. Because I detest deep cleaning I settle for abundant storage: baskets, boxes, chests, and high shelves help me clear the decks at high speed or transform a room (or big central table) swiftly from one use to another.
To get the rooms in my house all clear for cleaning I divide the room into four sections and work around it in a clockwise direction, giving myself an insane deadline: like fifteen minutes per space. The faster the jobs get done the more pleasurable they are. I do the floors with hot water and Dr. Bronner’s rose liquid soap, an allpurpose cleaner. I do the surfaces with a sponge dampened with lemon, white apple-cider vinegar, and a spritz of orange-oil cleanser. Chemical cleaning agents are not really needed anywhere in the home, and I regularly log on to www.blueegg.com for ideas about economical and organic ways to keep a house fresh.
ELIMINATE ARBITRARY VISUAL DISTRACTIONS
My mother had a law growing up: No Ketchup Bottles on the Table. And anything else she considered aesthetically arbitrary, from butter in a wrapper to a box of salt, was banished from view. The same went in her kitchens, where all you could see was crockery, flowers, and cookbooks, with all the functional but banal nuts and bolts hidden away.
CREATE ONE DELIBERATELY SPARE SPACE
In a traditional Irish house of my grandmother’s generation, the front room or parlor was the fancy room for show, the room where dust never fell. I have a front room like this with a beloved Ikea couch covered in a vivid Indian bedspread, some long sari cloths slung over the windowpanes, and a big bare wooden floor. I find the less I put in this room the more elegant it looks, so the walls are decorated with wreaths made from fresh wheat and dried flowers that I found at the farmer’s market for fifteen dollars a piece, some grainy black-and-white photographs of my family, and pretty much nothing else. In many ways this room is the spiritual engine of the house because it is always empty. And ready for the finer company!
MAKE YOUR CUPBOARDS AND CLOSET SASSY AND SPICY
Tackling a closet or a cutlery drawer seems to me the height of banality. The sort of thing one does in the boredom of near senility or in prison. And yet, every time I fling open a closet that smells like cloves or see my hodgepodge of knives and forks nestled in a clean drawer lined with vintage bamboo wallpaper, I feel secretly glamorous. The trick with one of these micro décor projects is to renovate very small areas at a time. One drawer. One shelf. One area of a walk-in. Approach anything larger and you immediately have drudgery. If I have fifteen minutes I’ll clean and line the cutlery drawer. If I have an hour, I will color block my clothes, or maybe make an orange clove pomander ball to hang on a ribbon to make my things smell toasty, spicy and sweet.
Pomander balls were in use in the fifteenth century and were also the American colonial way of infusing one’s things with a citrus freshness. I’d add the spice mixture for a holiday gift, but for the everyday I feel the cloves are pungent enough. You can also use the same technique for lemons or limes.
To make 2 balls, you will need
2 oranges (or try apples, lemons, or limes)
Toothpick or pin to ease the cloves into the fruit
Whole cloves, at least ¼ cup, depending upon your design (I buy mine in bulk as they tend to be expensive.)
Spice mixture (see recipe below)
4 feet of ribbon
For the spice mixture, combine
3 tablespoons ground cinnamon
3 tablespoons ground cloves
3 tablespoons ground nutmeg
3 tablespoons ground ginger
3 tablespoons orrisroot powder (the dried and ground root of certain irises used as a fixative)
Directions
Making a pomander ball is easy, but it can take some time! Simply begin by sticking a clove directly into an orange (or any of the other fruits listed above) and then get on a roll. You may want to use a toothpick or pin to make the first punctures so that the cloves are easier to insert.
Once the ball is completely studded with cloves, you might choose the option of adding an extra layer of scent—if so, roll it in the spice mixture and set it aside for a couple of weeks in a cool dry spot so that it will dry. Once dried, tie around the ball a ribbon pierced with a pin at the top for hanging.
DRESS YOUR BED
Pillowcases are the cheapest way to decorate or transform a bed and they are often on sale in even the fanciest linen shops and vintage stores. I think odd pillowcases in the same color family are chic, as are clashing florals and antique linen with other people’s monograms. Slowly collect a set of six pillowcases and then adapt them to your bed. You might have to downsize a super long king-sized pillowcase, or stuff two standard pillows inside a large European sham to fit. Offset a very dramatic pillowcase medley with white sheets and a white duvet cover, my favorite are the Alvine ridged cotton sets from Ikea, which are just stiff enough not to look cheap or shiny. Iron your bedding using lavender water and just a little starch. Play very loud rock music while doing this mindless task, then retire to the freshly made bed in a silk robe with a slim volume of something really filthy or revolutionary to read. Domestic decadence!
If you have a generous window ledge or sill you can grow most of the herbs you need for cooking in your kitchen. Or cluster them in terracotta pots around the doorway leading into your kitchen. My anxieties about cat piss on the basil makes me favor indoor planting, so a very sunny spot is needed if this is your choice. Annual herbs are inexpensive and easy to begin from seed.
Plant them in a rich, well-drained soil and avoid heavy feeding with supplemental fertilizer. The scent and flavor of herbs tends to concentrate when they are grown in slightly lean conditions.
Pinch and use your herbs often. Even young plants need to be pinched back to encourage them to branch out and become healthy. Annual herbs, like basil, can be pinched when they are 3 to 4 inches tall, but don’t go mad and denude the bush to make a pesto! As your herbs grow, you might want to augment their use with a few store-bought bunches when pressed.