(Yeah… camera still being cleaned…)

When you’re talking about window treatments, there are lots of options and a lot to consider. You have to think about privacy, sun blockage, wear-and-tear, cleaning, and of course, the overall design.

I’ve talked about how to install blinds and how to make your own, but I’ve never reviewed all the options. So let’s start looking at them.

Here are five types of shades or blinds:

Wooden Blinds–These traditional blinds look great on a window. They fit almost any kind of decor and can be paired with curtains. The downside is that they are expensive and can’t be used in room with high-moisture, like the bathroom, since the wood warps. (They do offer faux-wood versions too.) If you shop around, you can find good prices on wooden shades.

Plantation Shutters–My friends have plantation shutters and I love them. They are a type of wooden shutter that are “promotes the free flow of air through a structure in a warm climate,” according to this site. Wooden shutters add value to a house and last a long time. The downside is that they are very expensive and usually have to be installed by a professional. Is the look worth the cost? It depends on your budget, but the payback may be worth it.

Honeycomb Blinds–Also called Cellular Blinds, these are shades that look like this up close:

Honeycomb shades give a room serenity and are best for windows that get bright light. They offer up to 99% UV-protection, which means they are an energy-efficient option that may help drop your cooling bills. The downsides it that they are difficult to clean–always a problem with window treatments–and there is no middle-ground to the light control. The shades are either open or closed, no in-between.

Roman Shades–These fabric shades fit in your window and are a compromise between curtains and shades. Because they come in many styles and fabrics, Roman shades offer versatility in design options. They can look great or tacky. Roman shades are reasonably priced and can often be removed and washed like curtains. They aren’t good in rooms with high-moisture, however, since they can mildew.

Bottom-Up Shades–Instead of pulling these blinds down from the top, you pull them up from the bottom. They are best for second-story windows because they allow for privacy and still let light in. They are great for keeping people from looking into your home.

What do you have on your windows?

I like this quirky idea from the Shannon Kaye house tour on Apartment Therapy. It looks like she uses a wall pillar to hold her toilet paper.

It’s a humorous, but oddly elegant, alternative to your traditional toilet paper holder in the bathroom.

Very cute robot wallpaper by Dutch design label Studio Ditte.

Kind of expensive at almost $200 a roll, but pretty awesome, nevertheless. [The Style Files]

Following up from yesterday’s post about How To Make Your Own Cat Scratcher: there’s nothing more annoying than buying or making a cat scratcher when they refuse to go near it. Even worse is when your cat prefers to scratch on the sofa instead of the scratching post.

The good news is that cats can be trained. Like dogs, bad behavior can be broken and good behavior can be introduced.

Cats scratch to sharpen their claws and mark their territory. When they scratch, not only are they leaving visible evidence they were there, they are leaving behind a scent pheromone that other cats can smell. It’s a way of saying, “This is my spot, I own it.”

The key to getting them to use the cat scratcher to make clear that they have a spot in the house that they “own” for scratching, but only one place. And that’s not as hard to do as some people think.

Here are some tips to get a cat to use a scratcher:

1. Play with the cat around the scratcher. Wiggle a toy near the scratcher so that the cat claws on it. A few times of this and the cat will start to associate the scratcher with play.

2. Put catnip on the scratcher. Sprinkle a bit of catnip around the scratcher and the cat will want to go near it more and associate it as a fun, good place.

3. Reinforce that the scratcher is the only place where scratching is allowed. If you catch your cat scratching on your carpet or furniture, tell him no (or spray with a water bottle) and then pick him up and move him to the scratcher. A few times of this and he will start to understand that this is the place he is allowed to go for scratching.

4. Praise the cat for using the scratcher. Saying “good kitty” or “good boy/girl” goes a long way with cats. They respond better to positive reinforcement than punishment. Believe it or not, they do want to please you.

5. Remove pheromones. The above tips should be enough for most cats. However if you have a bad scratching problem, it’s important to remove the cat’s pheromones from the old place they scratch and put them in the new place. There are products you can buy in the pet store that mask the pheromone smell. I’ve used them and they work. If you apply the spray to the old place and follow the above steps consistently, your cat should start to use the scratcher exclusively.

Well, most of the time, anyway. You know how cats are.

Those are my tips. What has worked for you?

I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but there are a lot of ugly shower caddies out there (the above image being a prime example). Since I finished remodeling my own shower, I have been looking for a better way to store my soaps, and let me tell you, wire baskets or cheap-looking plastic tubs don’t exactly give the bathroom a look of elegance.

However, there are some attractive shower storage options out there. Here are a few that I found:

This Bamboo Adjustable Shower Caddy (image above) from Simple Human is one of several attractive bamboo shower caddies available. Bamboo is water resistant and can give a shower a spa-like feel.

Another idea is to install a shelf up high where the water can’t hit it to store towels, and use that as your caddy. In this picture from Andy Butkaj’s Flickr, an IKEA shelf and a towel bar have been installed together to just this.

Alternately, you can install a glass shelf to hold your shampoo and conditioners. Here’s an Apartment Therapy post telling you how.

Corner shower shelves are probably the way we’ll go in our own shower. They are elegant and unobtrusive, only I’m not sure why they are sometimes so expensive. I’ve seen them for as much as $125 each, but here is one for $13.55.

Finally, I like this Owl Shower Caddy from Urban Outfitters. While not the highest quality, it looks pretty cute.

What is your shower storage solution?

I enjoyed Julie Montgomery’s House Tour on Re-Nest this morning.

Julie Montgomery is a mom and an abstract artist who was “offered the chance to live at the base of a tropical fruit farm in Southern California, about a mile from the Pacific ocean. Included in the deal was a small studio within the packing facility to create her large–scale abstract paintings.” The only problem was she had to make a garden shed and an Airstream trailer into her home.

So she made the place into what Re-Nest calls “a dazzling gypsy caravan” by using painter’s drop cloth around the walls of the trailer to give it warmth and roll-out linoleum from Home Depot on the floor that looks like wood planks.

Combined with some well-placed rugs, furniture, and decorative touches, this is the coolest trailer I’ve ever seen. And it allows Julie to live the life she wants, or as she put it: “Living here has enabled me to raise my little boy from 2-5 yrs old instead of getting daycare while I worked. I have been able to thrive as a fine artist.”

See more of Julie’s house tour here.

For the last few months I have been carefully whittling my wardrobe down to just the clothes I like and that look good on me. There is no use in keeping clothes I don’t wear, no matter how much I paid for them or how much I liked an item when I bought it. So I started going through and ruthlessly eliminating.

This hadn’t been an easy task, since there were years of clothes to go through and every time I thought I was done, I realized that there were still more clothes that I wasn’t wearing. But I think I have finally done it now and my wardrobe is down to just the “essentials,” or at least the stuff that fits and looks good.

Having my closet in this state is like a sigh of relief. Getting dressed is easier because everything in the closet is something I would actually wear. It sounds silly, but this has made my life simpler. I don’t need to worry whether X shirt is going to look good–I’ve already determined that it will. My bedroom is cleaner too. I recommend it.

Having done this, I was curious about Miss Minimalist’s 10-Item Wardrobe. The above image is what she calls her core wardrobe. It consists of a black dress, a couple of shirts, pants, one skirt, and a jacket, plus shoes and a purse. That’s it.

That’s certainly some impressive minimalism there. She’s really thought it out too–she’s sticking to a main color (black) and picking items that can be dressed down or dressed up depending on the situation. If I feel like my life is simplified by fewer clothes in the closet, imagine how she must feel. Her wardrobe must not cost much and her laundry must be extremely simple to do. And she never has to worry about what to wear.

On the other hand, what a boring wardrobe! I’m no fashion plate, but these 10 items lack fun and color. Plus there’s a range that this wardrobe doesn’t covers: sometimes you want to wear jeans and other times, you really do need a cocktail dress. (Well, I do anyway.) Personally, I would not want to be business casual all the time.

The idea of rejecting the pressures and politics of fashion is interesting to me. There are lots of ways to do it–buy no new clothes for example or wear the same thing every day for a year. This is another way, and if you have the discipline, or just really don’t care about clothes, it might be a good option.

What do you think? Would you ever have a 10-item wardrobe?

Craft is on a roll this week with this post that lead me to Grey Luster Girl’s post on how to use a frame as an organizer for spools of thread. The tutorial goes beyond taking an existing frame and converting it into an organizer–although that would be cool too–and explains how to make the frame itself using trim.

If you have a lot of spools of thread, this is a convenient and attractive way to organize them. Great for the craft room.

Increasing numbers of people seem to be living in tiny spaces, under 350 square feet. Here are some videos that show people living in these spaces, and seeming to like it.

This man’s apartment is 258 square feet. He designed it to be modular, “inspired by the space-saving furniture aboard boats, as well as the clean lines of a small Japanese home.”

This family in Mississippi downsized their 2,000-square-foot home to a 320-square-foot home. Their choice seems largely financial, but they also seem satisfied with simpler living.

Of course, this is nothing new. Most of the people living on the earth live in small spaces and many of them have found creative ways to deal with it. For example, take a look at this apartment in Hong Kong:

There are advantages to this lifestyle. It’s cheaper, environmentally friendly, and forces you into a minimalist lifestyle that seems appealing, at least on the surface.

In reality, it would be way too cramped for me. Plus, I love privacy.

What do you think? Would you ever live in a tiny home?

Here’s a great way to spice up a beat-up upright piano: paint it. For example,

Green.

Or turquoise.

Or pink.

Even red.

Painting the piano not only gives it some pizazz, it makes it more inviting as well. Just looking at these makes me want to practice right now.