Category Archives: Things We Like
Things We Like: Subtle Contrast in Color
Post by Kyle St. Romain.
As part of my home improvement project , or un-improvement project depending on how you look at it, I am now painting the walls in my entryway, kitchen, and main living spaces. When I first painted them nearly 8 years ago, I chose a very sterile white. While I spent a considerable amount of time selecting that particular shade of white, it never really did much for me. The good thing about having white walls, however, is that they are very easy to paint over.
This go-round, I wanted to give the walls some of that personality they were lacking in white. After a few trips to the home improvement stores and much deliberation, I settled on Benjamin Moore’s Wickham Gray. An interesting bonus is that Wickham Gray is part of the Historic Color collection, which is inspired by documented colors found in 18th and 19th century architecture. A cool, modern color with some history behind it is a no-brainer for me.
What I like most about this color, and what inspired me for this post, is the subtlety of it. In certain light and at certain angles, you can hardly distinguish it from the white it’s being painted over. However, when you see it next to the Winter White baseboards and trim, it has a nice little pop. At other angles its appearance ranges from a steel gray to an almost velvety light blue. Generally hard to impress, I am floored by the depth and intrigue of this color.
So when you are deciding on new color palettes for your bedroom or other areas of your home, think about ways to create subtle contrast; contrast doesn’t always have to be big and bold. An accent wall, white trim, exposed walls and duct work, or incorporating other design and architectural elements can really help what you might otherwise think to be an uninteresting color stand out. As is the case with this Wickham Gray, in certain light, you may hardly even notice the color at all. But as the light changes, you and your guests will be in constant amazement over how the appearance of your room changes with it. A little time spent planning these subtle contrasts can help bring you enjoyment from your room for years to come.
Things We Like: Managing Coffee Intake For Better Sleep
Post by Kyle St. Romain.
It’s no secret that I look forward to my morning cup of coffee. The caffeine certainly helps fuel my desire to indulge, but I also enjoy the ritual and flavor. Having been away from home the past couple months, I have deeply missed my fresh-ground café latte in the mornings. And while coffee shops abound, unfortunately, Starbucks just doesn’t cut it anymore.
Last week I found hope: a new coffee shop nearby with an appeal to the coffee connoisseur (at least I thought so). Excited for the prospect of some good Joe, I turned this place into my office for the day and drank a variety of coffee creations with reckless disregard of getting to sleep that night. While I did get all my work done for the day, I also found myself wide-awake at 2:00 that morning. Wow! That’s some good stuff.
I’m not usually this sensitive to caffeine, and definitely have a new appreciation for this powerful stimulant. What I’m even worse at is self-control, which is why I was happy to discover a new app, called Up Coffee, that helps you manage your coffee intake throughout the day. It’s free to download, and all you have to do is enter information about your gender, weight, height, caffeine sensitivity and regular bedtime. Then, when you have a caffeinated beverage make note of it on the app, which will then tell you approximately how long it will be before you can get to sleep.
In addition to the time to your target bedtime, Up Coffee will also show you charts of how caffeinated you are throughout the day (may be helpful for planning time for prime productivity), compare your consumption to other users (which may be a bit skewed due to the fact that the only people using the app are the ones drinking lots of caffeine), and other fun little tidbits.
Is a coffee management app right for you?
I don’t usually drink coffee in the late afternoon or evenings, save the occasional affogato (espresso poured over a scoop of ice cream), so there really isn’t much of a need for me to adjust my caffeine intake to get a better sleep every day. Plus, I don’t usually go to bed until after midnight anyway. However, if you’re drinking coffee well into the early evening on a regular basis and need to get to bed at a decent hour, then a little app like this may be just what you need.
Things We Like: Spring Cleaning The Bedroom
Post by Kyle St. Romain.
While it may not feel like it yet, spring is right around the corner. Technically, the first day of spring is marked by the vernal equinox, which falls on March 20 this year. One of my favorite things about spring, besides the fact that the cold weather and occasional ice storms will finally subside, is the opportunity to do some deep cleaning. As one of my friends back in college told me, “It’s not clean until it smells like chemicals.” While I don’t necessarily like the smell of ammonia and bleach, it is the best way to get rid of the musty smells that have accumulated over the winter. To me, the smell of cleaning products is the scent of accomplishment — something that can’t be achieved by lighting a candle.
To get you prepared for spring cleaning this year, I’ve compiled a cleaning list to help make your bedroom sparkle anew. Remember, for efficiency sake, you want to work your way from the top down. Dust will tend to settle as you clean, and you want to get as much of it out as possible.
1. Vacuum the window treatments, and dust the blinds. Some people like to take the window treatments down and wash them, but this can be tricky depending on the fabric they’re made out of.
2. Clean your ceiling fans, light fixtures, and any pictures hanging on the walls. This almost goes without saying, but the tops of your ceiling fans get really gross. You don’t want to be breathing all that dust when it’s time to turn the fans back on.
3. Clean the air vents and as far inside the ducts as you can reach. You can soak your vent covers in hot water while you clean other things in your bedroom. After they dry, apply a thin layer of car wax and reinstall. Waxing your vent covers with car wax to keep dust off. This tip works for gas stovetops, and other places in the house where dust and grime tend to accumulate.
4. Clean all the windows inside and out. Don’t forget the windowsills. You’ll be surprised how much cleaner and brighter your room looks with both sides of the windows clean. If you have screens over your windows, you can wash these outside with a hose. Just be sure to let them dry completely before putting them back up.
5. Take everything off the furniture tops in your bedroom and dust all the objects and surfaces. You may also want to take more drastic measures and remove all the furniture from your bedroom so you can clean behind and underneath. This may also be a good opportunity to rearrange your bedroom for a new look.
6. Wash all your bedding, including the bed skirt. For comforters, check the washing instructions. If it’s starting to get warm where you live, wrap up the comforter and store for the fall.
7. Vacuum the top of your mattress, and between the mattress and the box springs or bed frame. You can then freshen up your mattress with baking soda and lavender. Also, don’t forget to flip or turn the mattress, depending on the type you have.
8. Give the floors a good cleaning. If you have a rug in your bedroom, vacuum it first, then roll it up and vacuum the floor underneath. Dust finds its way everywhere in your home, including under the rug. If you leave the bed in place, don’t forget to vacuum under it. While you probably won’t find any monsters under there, you will find a lot of dust bunnies, which can be just as scary.
9. Put everything back in its place.
10. Pat yourself on the back for a job well done. This is also the perfect opportunity to take a nap. You deserve it!
Things We Like: Placebo Sleep
Post by Kyle St. Romain.
A lot of the articles I’ve posted here on the Charles P Rogers blog deal with ways to help you sleep better. A comfortable bed, proper diet, enough exercise, and a solid routine are all cornerstones to a good night’s sleep. However, I recently came across a study that found simply believing you’ve slept well improves cognitive performance, even if you actually didn’t sleep well at all — a classic example of mind over matter.
The study, “Placebo Sleep Affects Cognitive Functioning,” was conducted by researchers from Colorado College, and is published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology. In a nutshell, the researchers hooked up their participants to a bunch of fancy equipment and told them that it would measure the amount of REM sleep they got. Note: The equipment did not actually measure anything. The researchers then reported back to the participants with made up numbers about how much REM sleep they got the evening before. Participants were randomly told they got 16.2 percent or 28.7 percent REM sleep, regardless of what may have actually been recorded.
After being told their results, the participants were asked to take a series of tests to measure their cognitive performance. As the title of this post suggests, the participants who were told they had a higher level of REM sleep the night before performed better on the tests than their peers. Some other controls were put in place to help get rid of bias and the subjects’ self-reported sleep quality, and the results held.
So what does this mean for the rest of us? Basically, it confirms the adage that if you change your mind, your body will follow. If you’re in the mindset that you’re getting good sleep, then your brain will perform like you actually got good sleep irrespective of your actual sleep quality. The opposite also holds true: if you’re always thinking about what a bad night’s sleep you got, then your mind will perform like you did, even if you slept wonderfully the night before.
So while a comfortable bed, in an ideal sleeping environment may help you actually sleep better, you need to believe that you are sleeping better too. For me, I’m going to make a conscious effort to tell myself what a good night’s sleep I got and hope that my mind adjusts accordingly. This may be especially important with a lengthy test coming up next week, one where I’ll need every cognitive advantage I can find.
As an update to last week’s article on barn doors in the bedroom, I’ve included some pictures of what my barn door looks like. There is still a lot of work to be done with the bathroom remodel, but it’s good to see some progress! While I was a little skeptical about how would look in my room, and how functional it would be, I honestly couldn’t be happier with the way it turned out. It fits over my existing doorframe like a glove, and the substantial heft of the reclaimed barn wood blocks affords a lot more privacy than I had expected. An unexpected bonus is that I was able to use old hardware that was reclaimed from an old barn nearby. The door has a lot of character and, in my mind, is truly irreplaceable. It is definitely something I plan to keep and use wherever I live.
Things We Like: Sleeping In The Trees
Post by Kyle St. Romain.
If you want to connect with nature on a higher level or if you just want to feel like a kid again, a tree house might be just what you need. I never realized how prolific tree houses were until I started watching a new show called Tree House Masters on Animal Planet. You’d think there would only be a couple episodes, max, to squeeze out of what has to be a very niche market. However, there are actually a lot more tree houses out there than you may have realized. There is even a tree house community in Costa Rica. Very cool!
For those of us without the tree, the space, the budget, or the willingness to take the extra step of building a home in the trees, there are lots of other ways you can create the feel of a tree house in your own home. Check out what has been questioned as as the best kids bedroom design ever. Spoiler alert, it looks like a tree house! There are lots of other examples of children’s bedrooms that have been transformed into indoor tree houses too, have a look here.
If you prefer the experience without the hassle of building and owning your own tree house, or designing your home to look like one, there is a tree house hotel in Sweden. Can you imagine falling asleep to the gentle sway of the tree and sounds of the wind rustling through the leaves, and then wake up feeling refreshed to one of the most breathtaking views ever? Sounds amazing to me.
While tree houses aren’t for everyone, they certainly do make you wonder about the different ways people live. Personally, I don’t think I could live in one as my main residence due to size constraints. I also have enough frustration navigating the numerous elevators to get out of a modern high rise. That said, a tree house would make a very cool guest house, home office, or simply a relaxing get away —definitely something to think about.
