life in a tiny apartment.

Tip #67: Clean the curtains and window sills.

Revisiting post #65 for a little bit of clarification, commiseration, and hopefully some helpful advice.

In that post, I wrote about thinking seasonally and embracing about new and different spaces that appear in your tiny home as the seasons shift along with your habits. Since then, a few of you have written in–either in the comments, or in messages to me directly–about the pesky black silt that can form on open window sills in the city. (I suspect that you’re mostly concerned about the face brush I leave on my bathroom sill).

We’re lucky to have an exceptionally leafy back yard for an apartment in a big city, and so our dust tends to be more of the green and brown pollen-y variety. But it’s here, and I’ve known that black silt, too.

Here’s my best advice:

1. Invest in curtains that can be easily washed. And then wash them. At least twice a year. It’s kind of a bummer of a thing to do, until you actually do it. The best metaphor that I have is that washing curtains is kind of like the opposite of using those Bioré Face Strips that we all used in high school; an experience of sheer and utter wonder at the erasure of the grime and silt and filth. A return to bright, clean, white! In all seriousness, drawing the curtains during the day does a pretty good job of preventing some of that silt from flying around the entire apartment, and washing them prevents your place from looking like Miss Havisham has taken up residence.

2. Wipe down your window sill, daily. If you skip a day, you will notice. The world will also keep spinning.