When I’m working from home these days, I’m most often found at my desk by the windows. My workspace is slowly evolving, including functional additions like this and this. I’ve downsized my calendar from the enormous Typography Calendar by Pentagram to the wholesome illustrated calendar by Nikki McClure. It’s a good change for the new year.

My inspiration board changes with the seasons (remember it back in November?). The month of February is all about bringing love into the middle of winter–so I’m warming up and smiling with thoughts of sweet peaches and hearts and glowing suns, lots of reds and oranges. Spring will be here soon enough!

I love jars. I love food. And I doubly love food in jars. So as you might guess, this bulk storage situation in the kitchen makes me very happy. Two cheerful rows of glass jars, filled with dried goods to keep our bellies full.

Each jar was scrubbed clean and then later hand-labeled–because in a hungry moment, oat groats can be mistaken for rice, and that is unfortunate mixup to make at dinner time. Lesson learned.

To fill up the food jars, my favorite grocery store (and perhaps one of my favorite places) in San Francisco is Rainbow Grocery. They have the best bulk food selection in the world. Teas and spices? Maple syrup? Pastas and chocolate chips? It’s all there, sold by the pound. Awesome.

And this week, I was delighted to find the website of Unpackaged, a London shop that specializes in selling package-less foods. (Thanks, Alex!) I’m loving all this love for bulk food.

What do you buy in bulk? What’s your favorite thing to store in jars? (Jars of coffee beans make me very happy.)

And there are a few new favorite things here, too. First, a matching armchair tucked under the other window, which is an upcoming upholstery project. And then, the just-the-right-height industrial wooden crate to shelve our window garden. Both were found by chance on the streets of San Francisco. (This city may be renewing my love of curbside finds!)

Listening to: Bootless Man by Gwyneth Moreland (listen)

It’s Monday morning, and I’m at my desk listing, reviewing, brainstorming, and getting down to business. A pot of tea with honey and leftover apple muffins from breakfast. I like this quiet time, a little music, the midday sun just starting to peak in the windows.

I like this fresh and new workspace, simpler and more compact–but then, not so different from my workspace in LA. Really, not entirely different from my desks back in college either. However much I simplify, I seem to continue keeping and carrying a few of the same bits of inspiration and comfort with me wherever I go. These objects/images/texts are re-invented over and over in each new place, and “make sense” to me differently each time. Do you have a permanent collection of inspirations and comforts that make a place “feel like home”?

Cheers to new space, old inspirations, and a whole week ahead!

:: images from lillieinthecity / flickr