San Francisco is My Home

26
Mar

How to escape spring cleaning

Author: kris, Category: Shopping

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The air warms up, the birds chitter-chatter, and I can say almost definitely that spring has arrived in San Francisco. If you’re like me, you’re probably being hit with a longing to engage in spring cleaning, which is conflicting with your deep hatred of actual cleaning. When that happens, I say buy a bunch of bright, fresh little touches for your house that conveniently hide the dirt you’re not removing.

Flowers

The obvious spring touch is fresh flowers. My favorite spot is the Flower Mart, where some families have kept their flower stalls through multiple generations. It’s a visual feast, and a good place to go if you can’t afford to actually buy flowers because you can sate yourself on the scent alone. This is also a great place to go to buy in bulk (weddings, a really big house, etc.).

If the Flower Mart seems overwhelming, you can find your blooms at the best-known (but not necessarily the best) farmer’s market in the city. This, of course, is also the place to pick up some fresh, seasonal produce so that you can clean up your mouth as well as your house. (Note: I do not recommend veggies as an alternative to brushing your teeth.)

You can find pretty vases for these all over the place, of course, but I feel like vases are an ideal thrift store item. You’ll get a mixture of pretty and funky, they’ll be cheap as all get-out and they’ll look great when not surrounded by all the other chipped and dusty glass on the thrift store table. Good Will usually has a good selection of colored glass stuff, and a quick wander through the Mission junk stores can sometimes turn up a treasure or two.

I found these tulips here.

Fabric

I found a great list of local fabric stores here, which explains the pros and cons of each one in detail. My favorite on the list was Far Out Fabrics, but you of course can choose your own. Use cheap fabric to drape over a ratty chair, make a throw pillow, cover a table, or make yourself an outfit. If you’re sew inclined (heh), you can sew up the edges and make fitted furniture covers and hemmed tablecloths and so on, or you can rock it dorm style as I do and just fling stuff around. I think you know which one Martha Stewart would approve.

I found this image here.

Fun stuff

You’ve been stuck in your house all winter (or…at least for those three days of rain) and you need to liven things up a little. Grab pink elephant shot glasses at Cliff’s, or some expensive hand painted plates from Anthropologie. Get a few vintage postcards from Quantity Postcards and cheap photo frames to stick them in from the Ikea in Emeryville. Scatter your new tchotchkes around the house to spruce up a room without having to, you know, dust it.