Curing A House

Apartment Therapy was written for apartments. Small apartments, especially. The principles and tasks apply to any place you live no matter how big or small it is. The timeline doesn't.

The title says it is the "eight step" cure--the book is organized by weeks. It makes sense to "wash all your floors" in one week, if you have, say 750 square feet, or less. When that is the size of your ground floor (and there's an upstairs), it isn't.

Here's what I figure: Small, Cool limits entrants to about 650 square feet. So, let's take 600 as our guideline. For cure tasks which require you to physically do something to the space, like wash floors or paint, figure on it taking that much longer: for example, 600 square feet = one week, 1200 sq feet, two weeks.

When we get to the kitchen do the same thing. How many cabinets are there to clean in a typical NY appartment? Not many. It's a tough week, cleaning cupboards, drawers, cabinets, the stove, the fridge, etc...in a house sized kitchen, give yourself a break. Pace yourself to get it all done in, say, a week and a half. If you want to stay on the eight week schedule, you're going to have to ignore a particular week. If you just can't let anything go, then expect to take take twelve weeks to finish, not eight.

I have participated in two cures, and my house is 1200 square feet (not including the basement, which is about another 800). This blog covers last Fall in some depth: and I do not recommend anyone, ever attempt what I did. To keep to the eight week schedule and do everything I wanted, I basically worked for nine weeks non-stop. Partly, that's because of my personality, partly because I had no idea how to prioritize nor budget my time.

So, please, if you find the work I did inspiring, great. But if you think I was a crazy woman and I-couldn't-possibly-do-all-that, that's great, too. In fact, please don't.