Sometimes there are big projects to do and you expend so much mental energy trying to wrap your mind around those. Meanwhile, there are little projects to do that, the longer you wait, start to weigh on you as much as the big ones. That was our situation until this month when we knocked out not one, not two, but three little things that, when completed, instantly made me feel so good, so satisfied and so happy. (A new mattress will do that!) Sometimes, it’s just the little things.

As Valentine’s Day just passed, I’m going to start in the bedroom. Two little things got done here – and one bonus thing! – and I am absolutely happy to report that I had nothing to do with two of them.

The first is getting a new mattress. When Daniel moved into his Brooklyn apartment eight years ago, he bought a cheap mattress. A year later I moved in and we have slept on that cheap mattress ever since. The life of a mattress is usually less than eight years old but that was only a part of the problem. The first year we were living in the cozy cottage and had our puppy, we only had one air conditioning unit and it was in our bedroom. One day in August, it was supposed to be a super hot day and we wanted to make sure the pup would stay cool all day, so we locked her in our bedroom with the air on. I came home to find that was a disastrous idea as she lost her mind that day and dug a hole through all of the bed coverings into the mattress down to the springs. We couldn’t afford to replace the mattress then so we just flipped it over. But since we’d been sleeping on the other side for five years at that point, the springs were starting to go haywire and didn’t feel so great after a while of sleeping on the flipped-over mattress. So, naturally, we waited almost three more years.

A couple of weeks ago at work, Daniel messaged me to say Leesa was having a sale and should we just pull the trigger. Ten minutes later, he said he had purchased it and that we had a mattress on our way to the house. Normally, getting a new mattress is not a little thing as people like to test out different mattresses and make sure it’s good for how they sleep, yadda yadda yadda. But not us! We had done some minor research months before, heard good things about a number of brands, then didn’t do any more research since we weren’t ready to buy at that time. But, frankly, ANY NEW MATTRESS WOULD HAVE BEEN BETTER THAN OURS!!!

We’ve been sleeping on it for almost two weeks now and, after a few nights of getting used to it, it is fantastic. This is my first bed without springs and it’s my first foam-top mattress. I like a firm bed so it’s interesting how there is still a soft top but the bed itself is pretty firm. And the best part is that it comes in a box and all you have to do is unfurl it in the bed frame and an hour later it’s ready for use.

If you are interested in a Leesa, visit here.

The second little thing in this room involves our curtains. I bought semi-sheer cream and gold curtains from Target when we first moved in and almost immediately afterwards wished they were Roman shades. I have several reasons for this but they’re all so little and dumb that I won’t bore you with them. If I were to dress these windows from scratch today, I’d probably get something like this. Three years ago, Daniel sent me a DIY from Jenny Komenda of Little Green Notebook on how to turn fabric into a Roman shade. Over the course of three years, I have gone back several times to read it. Only this month, did I finally do it. She has two DIYs on her site, one that is all fabric glue and one that requires sewing and some fabric glue. I used both DIYs, one on each window, to test out which one I’d like better. The all glue version requires use of some of the window blind slats to create the folds. I like the way the shade works better with this option because the folds are more clearly defined but this method would be better with darker fabric so you can’t see the slats through the fabric when the window is closed.

In any case, I am so happy that this project is done, I love the way they look and the functionality is better than the curtain since we can pull the shade up to see a little bit of the outside and let in more light without having to have the shade all the way open as with a curtain.

Now, onto the living room. We have a sectional couch, a coffee table in the middle and an end table on one end. Super easy, you sit on the couch and put drinks and remotes on either of these two tables for easy access. Right? Wrong! When lounging on the long side of the couch, the coffee table is *just* out of reach and the end table is on the far end of the couch. There is a radiator against the wall next to the long part of the couch. For optimal laziness, I have been saying for almost three years how great it would be to have a shelf right above the radiator so you wouldn’t even have to sit up to take a sip of a beverage or change the channel?! I had about two hours free on Sunday, so I zipped over to IKEA, bought a shelf and brackets (I have a thing for the Ekby bracket; this is the same shelf we added to the guest room), came home and mounted it, easy peasy. After three years of thinking about this, it took practically no time to actually do it. Essentially, my desire to be even lazier was thwarted for almost three years by my laziness. Face palm.

Since we started in the bedroom, I’m bringing it back to the bedroom for that bonus little thing I mentioned earlier. This one is a total surprise since we never once talked about it and I would have never imagined that Daniel would want this, let alone be the one to initiate this. Daniel surprised me with a Roku TV to put in our bedroom. I love falling asleep to TV, but Daniel hates it. A week or two ago, he told me he ordered a Roku TV from Amazon and two days later, we had a TV in our bedroom. I love it. And it fits in our closet so, whenever we finally get doors on, we’ll be able to hide it and not have it show all of the time.

The other night, when it was surprisingly warm, we laid down on our new mattress, our dog at our feet, her nose sniffing at the window with the Roman shade only partially closed and the TV on and it felt, for the first time since we moved in, like somewhat of a luxury space.

It’s those little things that sometimes can make such a huge difference.