Cleanish: Plant Room Update

my ZZ plant, which will probably end up in the finished Plant Room!

Hello everyone! Over the past month, I’ve been slowly but surely getting the Plant Room cleaned up. Like, super slowly. I’ve been mostly brainstorming still! The vision is there, but the work is difficult…which is why this Plant Room Update isn’t that huge or exciting. But! I’ve still gotten a little done, so let’s get into it…

Matt and I cleaned the walls in the room a few weeks ago now. It was disgusting! Admittedly, I haven’t made a habit of cleaning the walls in my house, but I might have to start now, seeing how much dirt and grossness came from the walls in the Plant Room.

I used Dawn dish soap, white vinegar, and VERY hot water to clean the walls with a mop. Yes, a mop. How else am I gonna reach the top corners and the ceiling?!

Can you see the nice white streak? That was after the first pass of the mop. It took three more rounds of washing to completely clean the walls!

After we were done with the dirt, the next day I went in with a broom and brushed all of the dog hair from the dried walls. Damian’s dog, Neoma, is beautiful and luxurious, but she sheds like crazy!! I swept the floors twice and still got dog hair stuck to the walls while washing them. The broom got the dog hair off easily.

Now that the walls are clean, I have to decide whether or not to paint them or put wallpaper on (or both). I bought painters tape and tarp for the eventual painting we’ll have to do…but then I thought about wallpaper! Unfortunately, the walls have lots of little puncture points from pictures and shelving over the years, so painting might be the way to go. I don’t have it in me to fill all the little holes up!

I’ve also got to sweep one more time and clean the bottom of all of the furniture in the room…Neoma’s hair is everywhere!

Neoma hair, probably mixed with some cat hair! Stuck to the wood of a dresser…smh

So what’s the next step after floor and wall duty? Well, besides painting, I want to clean the windows. Damian loved to keep his room dark, so he put black trash bags and tape over the windows. Unfortunately, it gave the windows a strange shadow over half of the panes. I have to see if good ol Windex will be enough to get them clear again, or if I’ll have to find a new way to clean the windows.

If you look at the top half of the window, there’s a strange shadow almost burned into the glass. The bottom is perfectly fine!

I’ve also started to explore what plants I’d like to move into the room once it’s all finished. I have a beautiful pothos that’s trailing in my front room right now that I think would fit perfectly in the Plant Room. I want to mount the vines around the door frame. I also want to move the peace lily my friend Erin’s mom bought for the funeral that I ended up getting in there. Right now, it’s sitting on top of my coffee maker, resulting in an extra step to get to my coffee in the morning…ya know, to move the plant off the coffee maker so I can make coffee!!

This pothos (on the right) is the second plant I ever bought. It’s been propagated and split for others more than 5 times and it’s still this full and long! You can’t 100% tell, but it is touching the floor. Wow!

I still would love to put morning glories in the room, as that was Damian’s favorite flower. If they end up growing inside, I’d love to have them trail along the walls, but we’ll see if I can make them work! The only issue I can think of is the plant not getting enough light. In that case, I can always buy a grow light. When I did my (brief) research, I saw that growing morning glories inside can be fruitless, but it all depends on when you plant. So, next spring will be the perfect time to try it out!

I guess I haven’t really done much to the room physically, but just knowing what the end goal will possibly look like keeps me motivated to reach it! This coming month I really want to get started on the painting of the room, cleaning the windows, and eventually figure out the furniture placement. I hope I can get all that done before the next Plant Room Update!! The finishing touches will definitely be the most fun to do, but the hard work comes first. I’m looking forward to sharing the completed project with you all!

In the meantime, feel free to follow me on Twitter to keep up with my day-to-day life (although I’ve been very busy, so I haven’t tweeted as much…!). Twitter is where I post blog updates, so if you’re interested in keeping up with the Plant Room, that’s how to do it! I’m also writing a novel, and all of the tips I receive on ko-fi for my posts here go straight towards self-publication! So consider donating as well!

Thank you, as always, for reading. Hopefully next month I’ll have more progress to show! See you next week!