Welcome to my Perfectly Designed, DIY’ed, Green, Frugal Home. That’s Not.

Let’s do a little pre holiday house tour!

This is my craft room/sewing room/guest room.

How do you see it?

• Horrible function, design, layout. You call your self a home blogger? It looks like a place where furniture goes to die.

• The photo is backlit, too many shadows. Good night girl get off the green square on your camera!

• Hahahaha! My craft room looks like that when it is "neat" too.

  

• Are those store bought gifts in the bag in that photo? You should make everything you give over the holidays because it is more frugal/better for the environment. Proof you are a helpless zombie forced by stores, advertising, Black Friday to buy things for people. I suspected so much from a person who admits to using coupons if you use the item and shopping sales when you can – you greedy hoarder of cheap crap.

• Soda cans on the table?! Do you KNOW what kind of evil non food is in pop and why I absolutely forbid it and you should too? Real food people wouldn't dream of consuming such junk. Don’t even try to think you are a food blogger Ms. Lazy Budget Chef. I bet the ingredients in your recipes include Pop Tarts.

  

Lately I’ve experienced this type of snobbery in one place or another on this here Internet.

The hurtful part is I know most of the people behind it do something that isn’t perfect either.

Why do they expect bloggers and social media friends to live up to their way too high expectations?

It ends here.

I am not confessing.

I am not asking for forgiveness.

I am being brave (or stupid because I can hear the unsubscribe, unfollow, and unfriend buttons clicking as I type) but somebody has to say it so it might as well be me.

I am not perfect.

I am tired of pretending to be.

I am not the perfect design and home blogger because my entire house isn’t done or magazine perfect – yet. I have stuff on my DIY list I put off because it is a Have To project, which isn’t always as fun as a Makeover Project or anything that involves demo. I have craft fails so hideous I don’t show you. 

While our personal green practices put us in the very dark green category, if it means alienating the people I love, forbidding the things I like, or skipping my mother’s surprise birthday party because OMG it is full of not REAL food from scratch and they have wasteful single cans of soda I chose not to do it. 80/20 Rule all the way baby. 

Sometimes I try to shoot a photo to be all artsy fartsy I-hope-its-good-enough-for-Foodgawker or Craftgawker and hate the results of multiple attempts. Then I put my camera on the auto settings so I can upload the post in time for you to read it. Like today.

Husband and I sometimes play I Dare You To Eat This with gusto when we are out of our real food kitchen bubble.

I have been know to buy something at full price and frivolous just because I want it and no one pushed me into it but me.

This is my life uncensored.

You’ve been warned.

This is under my kitchen sink. Homemade/green/frugal cleaners and one plastic bag of petroleum based dishwasher detergent pods live here. My dishwasher is a mega HE priss about what it likes and it's cheaper than the eco brand it likes that hasn't gone on sale in ages and the last cardboard box melted in a DIY mishap - twice.

Husband brought the coffee can home from work for me to repurpose. It is our compost pail and the painting is a craft FAIL. Sometimes I use the garage disposal because I don’t want to schlep stuff to the outdoor compost bin because it is raining, snowing, or I am just too tired.

Remember my reorganized office post here? This is what it looks like today after a pre-Thanksgiving mega work spree.

In my medicine cabinet conventional over the counter and prescription medications work in tandem with herbal and essential oil remedies. I do not think either is evil. 

We stick plastic contact lens in our eyes to see. Husband uses a disposable razor because he likes the close shave it gives him over an electric razor. After my electric razor One Small Green Change, I agree with him although I still use an electric razor because I haven't purchased replacements out of laziness. 

We use conventional deodorants because the natural stuff makes us stink. Homemade deodorant was even worse. 

In our pantry, expensive gourmet food like this:

Shares shelf space with food like this:

  

In my freezer Trader Joe Pumpkin Spice hippie coffee sits next to it’s not hippie Fair Trade cousin Aldi’s Gingerbread coffee. Lime juice ice cubes from fresh squeezed lime (big pain by the way) that hopefully will not freezer burn in a vacuum sealed glass jar next to a plastic zipper bag of frozen organically homegrown bitter melon. Yes, friends there are frozen vegetables and orange juice concentrates in my freezer too. It is crazy money to buy either out of season at a farm market in Ohio. IF you can find one open this time of year.

  

In our cabinet dried fruit and nuts hang out with the Hispanic version of Nutella in a plastic jar. Backup cans of beans are there for those times we want food and don’t have time to soak dry beans. Cans of tomatoes and paste are there when we run out of the few jars I canned from our garden and still afraid to crack open because I am a newbie canner and don’t want to kill my family with botulism. Dehydrated fruit and vegetables live in BPA free plastic and repurposed glass jars because we use both types of containers without apology.

I dehydrated the vegetables pre-Sandy in case we lost power. I have no idea how to cook with them. 

Most of the medications in the pictures of this post are expired. I'm not sure

 how we are supposed to properly dispose of them.

  

What prompted this post was a visit with a fellow blogger (whom I adore.) I told her I freaked out about some of the real life not perfect things she might see in my house on her visit.

She told me I was nuts.

Nothing like a good friend to slap your brain back on track. Our talk didn’t make me feel too bad about not being able to offer to teach her how to use my compound miter saw (something she wants to learn.) I didn't offer because the new water saving toilet was delivered and is blocking access. Not to mention there is too much junk on the workbench I haven’t finished to use the saw.

  

Oh and one more thing about me you may not know.

My hair has been blue for two months.

I like it this way.

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