Using What We Have : Renewing with Paint

I have been wanting to change things up in our family room.  There are toys everywhere still, even after purging the toy closet.  The kids need places to put things away to.  I also wanted the room to be a place of inspiration, somewhere they would want to play.  We looked into purchasing some organizing units over a period of several years, but they were not quite what we wanted and pricey.

I finally realized that I already had the unit that I wanted.  However, it was currently in use in the basement.  It had been 'temporarily' placed there when we moved in. "Just until we found the time to repaint it and place it", in the meantime it housed all of my old college texts and binders, children's books, adult books and magazines, emergency water, extra juice, Candles, LOTS of household cleaners,

We removed everything, weeding a good 100 magazines, 50 books, and other sundries from the shelves and getting them out of our house, mostly they found new homes, some old notes were recycled.  We moved all the cleaners to another locked cabinet, and the soaps went to another shelving unit.

Finally, we were able to move the unit outside for painting.  First we primed, then we painted.  So happy to have some bright white shelves for displaying our children's creations, we quickly moved them into the family room.   Only, we found they made the rest of the room look tired and dingy.  so we took them back out and proceeded to paint the previously yellow room white.  All was well, we were using Low VOC Glidden.  Then we ran out of paint, 2 of the 4 walls still needed one more coat, so we went and bought some more paint.  All was well, until we woke the next morning.  The 2 walls we used the new can of paint on were all 'droopy' it was terrible.  Turns out Glidden just switched to NO VOC paint, great for the Earth, but something was obviously wrong with this particular can.  We brought it back, but they did not come sand down our walls for us :(



It has taken 2 weeks, but the room is finally repainted, we fixed most of the damage.  But upon re-installing the shelving we found the primer had not properly adhered :(  it was coming of in large peels!!!
So we are scraping the new paint off.  We will have to sand down the old paint, super hardy paint!!  it has been on there for 50 years! and in decent shape except for the the fact that is a VERY yellowed cream color.  Even after scraping off the new paint it still looked great.  My husband was lamenting that we could not obtain a similiar paint in white.  Of course it was all the VOC's in the old paint that made it hold up so well.

In some ways it makes me wonder, if we looked at the true cost of producing and disposing of paint, containers, brushes, all of the transportation and energy involved in its production, would it be better to used the harsher chemicals and paint something every 50 years?  Or reduce VOC's and paint it every 2 years?

Does This Make Life Simpler??

Eggies

Or Do I really need this?

For Halloween my mother gave me this kitchen gadget!  Yay something new to try, and i was very intrigued, until I opened it and saw how many pieces there were.  And i thought, "wait, what is wrong with the shell it came in?"

I had never seen (or maybe just did not notice them...). But have seen them in the 3 stores i have been in since!  Guess everybody needs them.

The idea is that you 'simply' crack the egg into the Eggies and then boil that, so that you don't have to peel of the egg shell.  BUT. You have 4 parts per egg boiled to clean!  The set comes with enough to boil 6 'eggs'

Their saving grace is that they are top rack dishwasher safe.  Thing is that I wish i just had two top racks!  So I cannot use them tonight after all,  but will have to see if i am still in the mood to hard boil eggs tomorrow.  Then i have to see if i have a place to store one more setof kitchen gadgets!!!