Sometimes you just wanna move stuff around.
(day THREE.)
Category Archives: my NEW apartment
turquoise kitchen redux
I was in love with the kitchen in our old spot: big old sink, turquoise walls, black and white checkered floor, huge windows. We put a lot of work into making it our own and I miss it dearly. The new place is a little more well-kept and the management company much more involved, so painting our new cocina turquoise was a no-no. The walls are the same gray we chose for the entire unit which, thankfully, makes a great contrasting color for my favorite shade. The first order of business was adding bits of turquoise everywhere I could. Most of this stuff had been orange in its prior life, plain wood or metal before that. I love how easy it is to update with a can of spray paint.
Shelf: $3, IKEA
Spray paint: Montana Gold Shock Turquoise, $6
Lotus bowls: .50 – $1.00, various thrift stores. I use these in almost every room of the house. I think I have around a dozen!
Mortar & pestle: gift from Papo
Yellow plastic sugar and cream containers: $3, rummage sale
Vintage shaker: $5, rummage sale
Vases: $2, thrift store
Wooden bowl: $1, thrift store
Bombay Sapphire: priceless !
Teak salt and pepper shakers: $30, A Hunted House, Washington DC
Silverware people: gift from Papo
Spice rack: $3, thrifted
Spray paint: the same Montana Gold Shock Turquoise, $6
Hook: $4 for two, Ace Hardware
Spray paint: Again, Montana Gold Shock Turquoise, $6
Coat rack: IKEA, $3
Spray paint: Of course, Montana Gold Shock Turquoise, $6
White cow: $8, thrift store
Wood art: $3-5, thrift stores
Knobs: $1.49 for SIX, IKEA
And of course, the cabinet doors came off almost immediately. The bottom doors that remained got a dose of color courtesy of the cheapest knobs ever.
BEFORE
AFTER
When our cutlery tray proved too wide for our new drawers we were forced to improvise. These jars came from the junk store and have been used for everything: remember my mini-planter from ReadyMade? They’re perfect for spoons, forks and knives.
And that, my friends, is a turquoise-tinted kitchen. I had much better photos of the whole room put together but accidentally deleted over 150 shots from my camera. I’m hoping to find a recovery tool online lest I have to contort my body into all those weird picture-getting angles again. More of the kitchen soon…
Posted in my NEW apartment, thrifted vintage love
Tagged diy, apartment, spray paint, cheap, upcycle, thrifted, turquoise, color, cabinets
dovetail lamp + a peek of the dining room
I haven’t had a proper dining room since we occupied the mansion back in my mid-teens. That experience as a whole didn’t go so well. Maybe this is where my ambivalence towards any kind of formal area, be it for seating or dining or really doing anything other than sleeping since you kind of need a bedroom for that (unless you’re my dad, then the living room futon does just fine), stems from. You wanna eat? Do it in the kitchen, while sitting on a counter or at the table, your choice. Or maybe you’d prefer the back porch? Or the couch? Or the bed… while reading a magazine and swatting the dog away from the bowl perched perilously on your lap? Fine by me. Just clean up after yourself.
However, I now have a dining room. A tablecloth-covered desk may be acting as a table and the two benches that used to anchor our bay windows are standing in place for chairs but it’s worked for one gathering so far.
The tablecloth is a piece of fabric my friend Kate brought back from a trip to Curaçao a few years ago and the curtains are hold-overs from the old place. I’m sure I’ll figure out a way to update them soon. Any ideas? Maybe I could turn the tablecloth into curtains. Hmmm….
My favorite part of this room is the new lamp. It blows my $4 floor lamp out of the water both in style and price and was worth every penny thanks to a local vintage boutique. I had been out with Chernara all day looking specifically for a floor lamp for the dining room and I happened to pop into Dovetail while waiting for an order of Thai food from a neighboring restaurant. I pass the shop everyday on my way to work and loved a recent write-up of a co-owner from Time Out but this was my first time visiting. It also happened to be a day where every single item in the store was half off, making me a very happy girl.
And of course I love all of the built-ins! Perfect for the books that used to line the floor of our old abode.
So…who’s coming over to sit at the grown-up table?
Psssst… Chicago! Check out Dovetail!
1452 West Chicago Avenue
Chicago, IL 60642
(312) 243-3100
Posted in my NEW apartment, thrifted vintage love
Tagged apartment, books, boutique, cheap, chicago, decor, dining room, dovetail, lamp, thrifty, vintage
cutting, ripping and idying curtains
I have a curtain problem: I want nice curtains but I can’t justify spending more than $10 a panel for a piece of fabric. This is why I painted the curtains in the kitchen and why I went to town on upcycling (I’m so tired of that word but I can’t think of another one: redoing? changing? manipulating?) three tab-topped pairs from IKEA. I’ve spent more time on these curtains than they were worth if I translated that time to an hourly rate and I’m still not sure that I like them. See for yourself.
Our living room, as of a few weeks ago. Notice the tension rods holding up some sad white Wilma curtains, $12.99 for a pair. I hated walking the dog past our apartment and looking at the tabs from outside. They were just messy. So I tried to sew down the tabs. That was a disaster. I studied them closely after my failed attempt and noticed a little pocket attaching the tabs to the body of the curtains: it was the perfect size for some thin rods I had also picked up at IKEA.
I used a seam ripper to pull off the stitches holding the pocket together. My neck hurt from looking down afterwards but it was worth it. No more tabs!
Still not satisfied, I picked up a couple of packages of iDye while in LA and dyed the curtains in our apartment building’s washing machine. It couldn’t have been easier, minus the staining my hand received when I reached into the washer to agitate the fabric. Don’t make that mistake or you will have tinted cuticles for days. The color, to me, is much more blue than gray and this is probably due to the short washing cycle of our crappy shared machine. If I had a machine that allowed a longer wash/soak cycle I believe the color would have been richer.
I don’t love them. I don’t hate them. They will do until the perfect set of affordable curtains come my way.
Here are some questions for you.
1. Should they be hemmed?
2. Aren’t they more blue than gray?
3. Should I have mounted the rods on the inside of the window well to show off the woodwork?
4. Isn’t our coffee table too big for this living room?
5. What do you think of our new Kattrup rug?
xxoo
Posted in diy, my NEW apartment
Tagged apartment, cheap, decor, idye, ikea, jaquard, tab-topped, washing machine, wilma curtains
paint stamped curtains
When we lived in Palo Alto I took an art class with this amazing abstract painter. I had to have been the only one who left each period with yellow and purple hair, paint embedded into my fingernails, paint streaking my jeans. I have no problem making a big old mess of myself.
I do, however, have a problem with plain white tab-topped curtains. And mini-blinds. The problem was that I had both: blinds in the kitchen and boring curtains in the Room Where Things Go To Die. I woke up on Sunday feeling exceptionally aggressive after a disastrous post-Thanksgiving dinner with my immediate family and needed to channel my energy into something. Anything! The curtains were screaming for attention, the mini-blinds were assaulting my otherwise coming-together kitchen and I had some blue paint and a red Solo cup.
So I tested a few stamps on some crappy stained white fabric. I liked it. Then I took my tab-topped curtains, ironed down the hems, and stitched a small seam so they wouldn’t be visible on a rod.
Next came newspapering my kitchen floor and laying my freshly ironed curtain down. And stamping. Stamping and stamping. I didn’t have much of a pattern in mind and thought I would do the whole thing until my wrist got tired and I realized how little paint I had.
I finished one and snapped a photo of it so I could check the pattern while stamping the second. Then I stared at it. Where in the hell was this thing going to sit to dry while I worked on the second piece? I left to buy– the horror– some tension rods and prayed it would be dry when I got back (Chicagoans, that K-Mart on Ashland and Milwaukee? Instant depression, stay away). It wasn’t. Where was it gonna go?
Onto the stove. I know this was probably dangerous, right? I couldn’t believe The Mister walked in without chastising me.
After three hours of drying, the first curtain was finally ready to be hung. It was too long. I half-heartedly measured before I started and I guess I got it way wrong.
So, I cut and hemmed. And wanted to cry a little.
Not many circles made it to the bottom. One of these days I’ll take them down to re-stamp. Why did I make it so short? My plants need sun, folks!
This is what they looked like around 5:30 in the morning on Tuesday. Don’t ask.
And there they are at night. Why the one on the left is leaning forward all weird is beyond me, I need to go adjust it. Also, flatware people: they’re up!
Overall, I’m satisfied. Not in love, but glad to not have to look at the mini-blinds. The tension rods pose the biggest problem but I don’t quite feel like drilling hardware into these walls just yet. We’ll see if I can stand them for a bit.
Sorry for the iPhone photos. My SLR isn’t behaving these days and I really just felt like blogging without waiting for some time to shoot the curtains in the daylight.
PS I took the cabinet doors off! The kitchen is my favorite room in the house these days.
Posted in diy, my NEW apartment
Tagged chicago, cup, decor, diy, kitchen, painted curtains, stamped curtains
saturday, done: new bedroom in the new apartment
Hello, Sunday. You delicious day of rest, you.
I spent all day yesterday working on the apartment. Our previous unit, as you know, required a crazy amount of TLC and all we have to do here is pop stuff on walls and arrange tschotskes. It almost seems unfair and will surely give me less to blog about.
The landlord painted in our color of choice before we moved in–if you’re looking for a true gray paint, Gray Owl by Benjamin Moore is absolutely perfect– and since painting and repainting and spackling and stripping was one of the things that took up huge chunks of time in the old place, not having to do anything with the walls here is awesome.
The big project yesterday was hemming a pair of IKEA curtains I initially bought to replace our ugly kitchen blinds. I found them too dark for the only room in the house that gets really great light and decided to use them in the bedroom instead. Hesitant to use the IKEA iron-on hemming thingie, I’d put the project off for a month but finally decided to tackle it. They turned out perfect and even though I’m comfortable enough with my sewing machine to sew a hem, this was much easier and didn’t require me actually finding my sewing machine pedal in one of the boxes we’ve yet to unpack.
As with most old-school Chicago apartments, our bedroom is crazy small. This is the left side of the room, a print of The Mister’s from Nigeria above the bed in lieu of a proper headboard. I’m on the hunt for something that will work in such a small space but not holding my breath. The lamp is from my mother-in-law and I wish the photograph showed it in all it’s glory. The top is paper and the bottom wood. Speaking of wood, I love all of the woodwork in this unit; it’s rare to find it not painted over these days.
And here we have the opposite side of the room. The dresser extends all the way to the wall on the right side and next to that is a closet without a door. Tiny, huh? Since moving back to Chicago from California I almost prefer small bedrooms. They feel cave-like and cozy.
The only thing I’m not keen on in this room is the side table. I contemplated spray painting it the way I did the dresser but thought it would look a little too fun house-y. Add side table to my hunting list. Happily, everything in the room, save for the bed and bedding and curtains, was thrifted or Craigslisted. I’m sure I’ll happen upon a table in the same way.
So what do you think of the bedroom so far? Side table suggestions? A shape I should be on the lookout for that would compliment the dresser?
PS Wonky internet. The story of this apartment’s life and what I am blaming, at least partially, my lack of blogging on lately. For some reason the wireless signal doesn’t hold up well on the back porch and that is where I like to sit and type, especially on November nights like tonight, over sixty degrees with gusts of tropical-feeling Windy City winds. But I can barely get my email to load out here. We’ll work on a fix for that this week ’cause I miss my little corner of the internet. How I only have two bars less than twenty feet from my Airport is beyond me.
Posted in my NEW apartment, thrifted vintage love
Tagged decor, diy, ikea curtains, small bedroom, thrift, tiny bedroom
hello there, part 2
New hooks! They’re hung! There’s two sharp screw bottoms peeking out of our bathroom door! They are a hazard! Don’t come to my house and trip and fall into them and bust your eye. Seriously, why did I not think about my long screws and my thin door? Ah. I will just hang art with them. Cause I am definitely not re-hanging these bad boys.
Can you tell I have been drinking lots and lots and lots of coffee lately? I have. Because life is busy! It’s so busy! Between work being insane, new house nonsense, yoga once a week, being knee-deep in baby shower planning, plus dressing and feeding and clothing myself and the occasional night out with friends, I am just at a loss. Is fall always this crazy? I think it is. I think you come off the calm and lushness and loveliness and humidness and hot-time-summer-in-the-cityness of August into this psychotic season of apples and pumpkins and everyone moving fast and wanting things from you and the dog needs to be walked even though it is cold and dark outside and you have to go from a freezing bus stop onto a hot and crowded bus and your head hurts and your new boots don’t feel right and that stupid sweater that looked so cute in the dressing room is all itchy now and you come home and all you want to do is read a book under the covers and hibernate until May.
Needs. This guy has needs. Like dinner. And bathroom time. Why does everyone need something from me?
Because it is fall now, not summer. And let me tell you: it is going to get worse because by the looks of my local thrift store, Christmas is right around the damn corner and that means I will be breaking out the sewing machine for it’s annual month week of use so I can be looked at adoringly by my friends and family after presenting them with something all cute and homemade that they will never use. Needs. Those gifts they will never even remove from the trunk they stowed them in before the drive home from the Christmas party are needs.
Oh, calm down already. There is a barn for you to gaze upon. In Wisconsin. Where people move slower and drive old trucks down quiet lanes.
PS I got a really neat houseplant today, it is huge.
Posted in my life (personally speaking), my NEW apartment
putting up the plate wall
The Mister was in NYC for the weekend and I happily spent my husband-less Sunday putting up our wall o’ plates and generally organizing and decorating the kitchen. I am embarrassed to report that I did this through three cycles of Nostalgia, Ultra, an album I swore I was ambivalent about but haven’t been able to turn off in the 72 hours since I saw the newly released and weird Swim Good video, which prompted me to check out all of the songs in their entirety again. It provided good background music and now I know all of the songs and interludes by heart. I need to start buying albums and not relying on Pandora so much. It was fun to be exposed to something new that all the kids out there are talking about! I feel very with it now. Moving on.
Before the plates. The silverware is in mugs because our new drawers are too small for cutlery holders; we’ll have to come up with a better solution soon.
Per Rosie’s suggestion in the comments of this post, I laid all of the plates out and moved them around until I found a pattern I liked.
Then I started hanging. The walls are plaster, so I was able to use a nail for some of the easy areas but had to resort to my trusty drill when I hit something hard.
I changed my mind a bunch of times at the last minute and decided to make it longer rather than wider. Even though I did this rather haphazardly and didn’t follow my initial plan, I can see the curve in the smaller plates and it is just what I initially envisioned but couldn’t get on the floor. Some of my plates did not make the cut so I have a few plate holders left over. I must go thrift more of them, of course.
I hung up my old orange and now turquoise shelf above the stove and put up the wood cutting that I swear is my dog in the recess between the counter and our cabinets.
And that is the kitchen so far. Not bad for the first two weeks in our new apartment, huh?
I still miss a lot about our old kitchen. Namely our old gal of a kitchen sink (I really did call her old gal in my head) and our cheapie white cabinets and faux wood counters. The latter two are things most people in an apartment would hate but they worked so well with our style and this granite-and-brand-new-cabinet thing is so not me. Next up: the doors come off. I feel a little strange taking the doors off of cabinets that are so new and shiny but I can’t take it anymore. I want to see my glasses, my plates, my bowls. Looks like me and the drill have some work to do this week!
Do you like the plate wall? Don’t you think I need more of them? Shouldn’t it stretch down the whole hall? Aren’t plates awesome?
Posted in diy, my NEW apartment, thrifted vintage love
Tagged apartment, art, cheap, decor, decorating, diy, kitchen, plate wall, thrift, thrifted
new apartment to-do
Hiya, folks! I can breathe through my nose all nice and easy now. bioAllers. Get some.
We’re a little over a week into our new apartment. It’s chilly; September is in full-effect. Most of our unpacking is done, the boxes are out in the alley and it is time to decorate this bad boy. Our previous kitchen had a lot of turquoise and orange and white and faux wood. I liked the faux wood. The new unit is outfitted in granite countertops (ugh) and real wood (I think). This meant a redo on the items I spray painted orange specifically to go with my blue hued walls. I thought and thought and thought about colors. I always end up coming back to turquoise. Always.
These are for our keys. One of the things I hate about moving is the temporary loss of “systems.” I need them. Systems = where my keys live, where my shoes live, where my jacket lives, where the dog treats live, where the dog leash lives, etc. etc. I need those little routine systems in my life to keep me sane. Naturally, hooks are what I tackled first while spray painting with Aziza over the weekend. These will be in the kitchen, for back door keys and laundry room keys. Another set of plain silver ones are already hanging in the front for day-to-day keys; do you think I’m a crazy spaz for not being able to live without my hooks?
Our old orange spice rack got a makeover in the same turquoise as the key holders. The Mister and I hastily put it up tonight. It isn’t as dark as it looks in the photo, it is the exact same paint used in the photo above. Our management company painted the unit gray for us before we moved in (we bought, they painted; nice deal!) and the turquoise is a great fit. I also hung up my favorite tole tray– learn how to that here– above the sink, in the same place it was before. I’m not so good with change.
Now comes the to-do. So much to tackle. So much I want to do all at once. Help me prioritize.
- Plate wall. I had three before. They need to be turned into one. I am not one of those people who will painstakingly trace out the shape of each plate on wax paper and tape upon the wall before hanging. I know I may set out to do that, but I’ll end up being frustrated with how long it takes and just tossing everything up there all random. Giant plate wall is a huge task.
- Coat hooks. I need to repaint the towel rack we had in our old bathroom and hang it on the back of our new front door. I’m thinking gray. Sanding + painting + hanging.
- Artwork. These walls are bare! We have so much art. Where will it all go?
- Curtains. I need to turn my tab-topped curtains into non-tab-topped curtains. Lucky for me, I found a blogger who did the exact same thing with the same Wilma IKEA curtains I own! This means breaking out the sewing machine.
- Curtains Part II. They’re white. And plain. And need to be stamped. I need to find a shape or pattern or stamp I like and customize on the cheap.
- Curtains Part III. Our closet has no door. It is messing up my chi. I need to sew a curtain to put up since I am fresh out of curtains and not willing to spend any more money.
- Curtains Part IIII. I hate my tension rods. They were a must just to get the blinds down and fabric up but ugh. Real curtain rods have to be here soon. $$$.
- Cabinet doors. They must be removed. I miss my open shelving.
- Bookshelves. We’re using our new built in hutch for books instead of dishes. We also have two smaller built-in cabinets directly opposite that we are also using to store our tomes. We still have homeless books. A lot of them. And since we’ve decided to stockpile our favorites in the effort to thwart e-reader takeovers, we’re gonna need even more. Our white shelves must go back up.
- Craigslisting. I need a teak dining set and two or three kitchen chairs. Ugh. So expensive.
What do I tackle first? What to do? I’m not even overwhelmed or anxious or in a hurry; I’m simply excited to have some fun apartment projects in my future.
Have ideas for curtain shapes? A killer dining set in Chicago you want to give me? Maybe a simple alternative to tension rods that won’t break the bank. Let me know or tell me about what projects you need to start in on…
Posted in my NEW apartment
Tagged apartment, diy, ikea, open shelving, sewing, tap-top, turquoise, wilma curtains
i’m allergic to my new apartment!
This is a very long post. If you simply want to see some little images of our new place and don’t want to read a sickly gal blather on about feline allergies, scroll on down. They’re at the end.
Hello, SARS mask. The last time I tied one of these around my face I was angrily scraping pigeon shit of off our old balcony rafters wearing a t-shirt with FEMINISM LIVES emblazoned across the front. This time I am using it to sort laundry.
We moved into our apartment one week ago yesterday. That Sunday it was everything I dreamed of. I was exhausted by 8:00pm and determined to pass out (I took everyone’s advice and made sure our bedding and towels were at the ready immediately) but couldn’t take the clutter. Up I stayed, past midnight, organizing the kitchen until we had at least one room in the house that resembled normalcy.
There’s the bootleg before and after, as posted on Instagram that night. I went to bed content, excited to arise the next day and get started on making house into home.
And then I woke up.
Early, because of said excitement. I think I got a total of six hours after a grueling day and only receiving about four hours of shuteye the night before. I hurriedly started unpacking and unpacking and unpacking and half hour into it was completely overcome by sneezing. Sneezing and a runny nose and a fuzzy head that has lasted since… last night, with a brief break on Friday and Saturday and smaller fits of sneezing when I left the house for work. My nose is rubbed raw and slathered in Vaseline but I am finally starting to feel a little bit normal. More on that miracle in a bit.
Why all the allergies? A cat. A long haired cat. The former resident of this here abode, along with two indescribably filthy human beings, maybe even worse than the two who occupied our last apartment before us. Remember how when we were apartment hunting I told you how disgusting humans seemed to be? This apartment was one of the worst examples: we actually came back to view it a second time after crossing it off of our list early on. It was on the market for much longer than the other units we viewed, a fact I can only attribute to the layer of grime over every surface and the hairballs in every corner. Still, it never even occurred to me that this would pose such a huge problem. I didn’t even correlate CAT with ALLERGY on either visit to the apartment. I don’t even think I sneezed. I knew I was allergic to felines but didn’t imagine their dander’s staying power: six to nine months, maybe a year.
Even when the allergic reaction started, we chalked it up to high pollen counts in our area. An allergen-ridden fall was projected on every weather website out there. The Mister thought the dog was bringing in ragweed pollen after walks. When our local CVS was out of 75% of their allergy meds, we were positive that this was a simple seasonal allergic reaction that everyone was feeling– something I had never gotten before but maybe due to the stress of the move it had decided to manifest.
But it persisted. And persisted. Sometime in the evening of day 2 or 3, a lightbulb went off. THAT DAMN CAT. Duh. Why hadn’t I thought of that, I thought while my nose dripped onto my chest.
To spare you the long ordeal this has been– the crying-in-the-shower moments, the transcripts of calls to AJ and KB complaining and snotting up the phone lines (which have to be done at least 100 feet from my house since AT&T gets ZERO CELL SERVICE here), the contaminated trash can that had to be emptied once a day, the hours of internet research… let me just tell you what we did so you don’t have to go through the same thing.
1. bioAllers Animal Hair & Dander Allergy Relief. Hollar. These little drops of goodness have saved me in a way that Zyrtec, Allegra, Claritin, Alavert, and even good old fashioned Benadryl have not. Fifteen drops under the tongue every three hours or so and a world of difference. No foggy head, no dry mouth, no sleepiness, no side effects, period. They are a godsend. I started them on Friday evening and slept like a baby that night for the first time in days.
2. Allersearch ADMS Anti-Allergen Spray. YES. More, please. The Mister WORKED this place with this spray and certified elbow grease. It cannot have been easy to cart around our heavy assed vacuum and its short hose attachment; one that required him to actually lift the body of the machine up a step ladder to get each rafter, door molding and beam. I cannot stress how important it is to get the tops of everything in your apartment. The cleaning crew that our management company sent in did a nice job on the surface but once we looked a little deeper we knew where to find that pesky dander. It loves to settle atop high surfaces. He even found a decrepit luggage bag and cat poop above our new built-in hutch. That had to have been a major source for allergens.
4. Take the blinds down. If your rental agency or landlord provided blinds or curtains, get them out. Save the pieces, wrap ‘em up nice, make sure that you can put them back if you need to, but no amount of cleaning is going to get them allergy-free. My curtains may look a little bootleg right now due to the haste I made in getting them up but I feel so much better now that the majority of the yucky blinds are out of this unit.
4. I mentioned that Friday and Saturday were OK with the introduction of my bioAllers. Sunday was another story. The last thing I had to fully unpack were our boxes of clothing. Really one big box as we brought over everything else in luggage. The minute I opened that box: sneeze parade, again. I was heartbroken. Didn’t know why this was happening. Couldn’t believe it. I had washed every single item of clothing in that box before I packed it, knowing that the days of free laundry in our old building were behind me. Didn’t matter. 10 days in a box? A box I took from work that contained produce from a local farm? Not a good look. Here’s where the mask comes in. I learned my lesson last night. I’m not taking it off while touching those clothes until they come out of the dryer. Which should be… about now. The Mister brought home a dozen of the masks from work today and I plan to use them whenever I need to get into something dusty. I’m taking no chances. I’m sure the new neighbors loved seeing me have an entire phone conversation with one of these on earlier.
And that is my epic allergy story. I’m praying, in the way that I pray, that this is somewhat over. I can breathe through my nose for the most part and I’ll be sticking with bioAllers for awhile; the reviews around the web are mostly from cat-allergic people who choose to live with them as pets so I’m counting on it to keep working its magic. This apartment is probably the cleanest it has ever been and though we got off to a rough start, I think we’ll be just fine. Worse comes to worse: a HEPA Air Purifier, which run around $500-800. I know I can avoid that with positive thinking… right?
Here are some snapshots I’ve posted on Instagram this week, starting with one of our new block. I’ll be taking proper photos soon. It’s coming together fast!
Posted in my NEW apartment, urbanisms
Tagged adms, allergen spray, allergic, allergic to apartment, allergy, allersearch, apartment, bioallers, cat, cats suck, chicago, clean up, cleaning supply, contaminants, crazy, crying, crying in shower, dander, dirty people, disgusting people, dogs rule, elbow grease, filty people, good husband, gross people, HEPA filter, i hate cats, moving, nasty people, new, new place, nice guy, ouch, people with no sense, pet dander, pollen, ragweed, raw, red nose, sad, sneezing, tissue, unpacking, vaseline, weather
