In the wake of lockdowns and quarantine, we are now in the midst of a comfort renaissance. Home furnishings got hot last year as we all tried to make being stuck inside as palatable as possible, a trend that has only continued in the first half of this year. And among the most in-demand items at the top of the luxurious, pillowy heap are mattresses.

In fact, mattress sales went through the roof last year after Covid-19 hit, increasing by more than 30% over 2019, according to mattress industry veteran Jerry Epperson in a story by USA Today. 

It shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise, since our mattresses are being asked to cushion a lot more activities in the pandemic. When we say far more people are “working from home” now, we might picture it happening at a desk or kitchen table, but how many newly officeless employees are really just on their bed with a laptop? (Spoiler alert: a lot).

Locally, Michael Baetge, owner of 41st Avenue home furnishings store SC41, says he’s seen a “really interesting pickup in sales of anything having to do with comfort”—including sofas and recliners, as well as all things bedding—beginning in August and September of last year.

Just when things were going gangbusters for home furniture, however, the supply chain got squeezed in what Baetge calls a “snowball effect” from the shutdown of factories in China and other countries at the beginning of Covid-19.

And for mattresses, things only got weirder. Remember those freak storms in Texas and Louisiana in February? Well, not only did they make everyone worry that the apocalypse had finally decided to stop messing around and just arrive already, they also knocked out the only two factories in the entire country that produce a key ingredient in foam. In the aftermath, furniture companies began receiving about half the foam they normally use for manufacturing, and they cut their production significantly.

“It’s really wild,” says Baetge of the supply and demand problems over the last few months. He says customers have been understanding as order times have extended. But SC41 also got a bit lucky, at least when it comes to mattresses, since they don’t rely on China or the American southeast for their materials.

“The components in our mattresses all come from Europe,” says Baetge. “So we’ve been really fortunate in that.”

Deborah Cypert is an O.G. in the flooring game. As owner of Interior Vision Floors and Decorating, the 63-year-old has been in the industry for more than 30 years. From her shop in Soquel, she oversees the carpeting, corking, decorating and beautifying of local homes.

These days, Cypert doesn’t have to do all the work alone. Her flourishing business boasts six full-time employees, each an expertly trained flooring ninja well versed in the art of hardwood, linoleum, rugs, window coverings and the many varieties of carpet.

How has business been during the Covid-19 crisis? Good—surprisingly good.

“We’ve actually been busier than ever with Covid,” says Cypert. “So many people are staying home, and they finally have the time and energy to do projects and beautify their home. Because they are spending so much more time there, they are coming to us to make their homes more comfortable.”

Cypert says the best part of her job is transforming peoples’ lives by making their living spaces feel beautiful, clean and fresh. And she works tirelessly to make people feel happy, comfortable, and at home in their homes.

Many of Interior Vision’s clients call the company to address an area in their home that has been neglected–either a nagging eyesore or a feature that just don’t feel right at the end of a day. Demand for such projects has skyrocketed since the onset of Covid-19.

With all the time spent at home, that yellow shag carpet—yep, the one you bought thinking it was so cool and trendy during that one-summer hippie phase—could really, really start to weigh on your nerves. Those with a carpet crisis, or another type of flooring emergency, call Cypert to set things right.

Pre-pandemic, around 5% of Americans worked from home at least part of the time. Today, that figure is estimated to be closer to 25-30%. This trend is expected to continue and may actually climb in the post-pandemic world.

So, what are people looking for these days? One of this year’s hottest sellers for Interior Vision have been window coverings, Cypert says. Those who are working from their abodes routinely hit up the firm to install blackout shades so they can better view their computer screens.

Of course, Cypert and her team have had to adapt to the pandemic. This meant wearing masks, gloves, practicing social distancing and slathering on hand sanitizer pretty much from day one.

Overcoming the initial shutdown was stressful, and it’s taken a while for customers to truly warm up to the idea of inviting a strange crew of expert flooring technicians parading into their homes.

“At first, like everyone, we didn’t know what to expect,” says Kathy Cooper, operations manager at Bay Area Floors. “But then business started booming. Especially in the residential sector. It was slow when the pandemic started, but after a few months people started feeling more comfortable. They were like, ‘OK now we’re at home, what can we do to make our space better and more livable?”

Bay Area Floors has been active in Santa Cruz since 2009, and Cooper says improvement in the local economy overall has been a huge factor. “As other businesses have started to reopen, we’re seeing an even greater increase in our business. The strength has been totally surprising.”

Of course, home-improvement companies have had to change the way they operate—for instance, moving to phone and video consultations.

“The virus has changed the way we do business for sure,” Cypert says. “It’s also made us more efficient and effective. Reaching and handling more people each day.”

Another adjustment has been that across the flooring space, and in most areas of the construction world, materials are getting much harder to source and obtain. From lighting to windows to flooring to wood to plumbing fixtures, demand is outpacing supply.

“It used to be getting items in days,” says Cypert. “That became a week. And now it can be 3-6 weeks or even more. Products taking longer to arrive, and it’s affecting the entire industry. It’s making people wait much longer to have the products they pick out ready to be installed.”

Covid-19 has had an impact on every level of the global supply chain. And if someone at a manufacturing plant contracts the virus, it’s common practice to shut down the entire operation. Staff shortages due to infection and government rules and precautions have created a backlog in orders. Prices for almost all materials are rising, and the rates for overseas transport and shipping containers have shot through the roof—container costs rose a whopping 100% just this past year. These expenses are typically passed on to the consumer.

But in this time of uncertainty, businesses in the home-remodeling space are poised to grow well until the future.

“It’s a good time to be in the flooring business,” says Cooper. “Demand is high. As is demand for labor. If anyone is an installer—carpet, vinyl, or hardwood—we’re actively hiring. It would be a great time to learn this trade and enter the space.”

The Central Coast of California is often called “the salad bowl of the world.” The Mediterranean climate of the region is perfect for year-round agriculture and horticulture, producing large amounts of the world’s veggies, fruits, and other plants.

That’s why it might be hard to understand why Cabrillo College’s Horticulture Department even bothers to grow certain common vegetables. Peter Shaw, a Cabrillo instructor who is also chair of the department, hears it all the time.

“People ask me why we grow lettuce here—it’s so abundant all around us,” Shaw says. “For one thing, it’s very easy to grow and sell. But it’s also about education. We’re trying to teach a technique to our students that will work anywhere. If you go to somewhere like Texas, you can’t grow lettuce year-round outside, but you can inside, like this. We just happen to live in a pretty unique environment.”

Hydroponic agriculture entails growing plants without soil by using different materials to support the plants’ roots, then directly submerging them in mineral and nutrient-rich water.

At Cabrillo College’s greenhouse facility, located at the very top of campus in Aptos, lettuce and other crops grow on sets of sloped tables, which feature submersible pumps placed inside a reservoir. The pumps bring the water up to one end of a table and allow the solution to trickle down with gravity, before starting the process over again.

Nearby in the school’s brand new AgTech Greenhouse, the department is currently growing high-wire crops of Persian cucumbers. Here, the plants hang suspended, growing inside a cube of rock wool, also submerged in the water.

Cabrillo’s setup also uses aquaponics, which is the practice of growing fish and other aquatic animals to use their waste as fertilizer for the plants—a symbiotic relationship benefiting both systems. 

Shaw says there are many advantages of hydroponic growing, with increased production being among the biggest.

“For outside farms, they have about a few harvests of lettuce a year. Here, we get about 18,” Shaw says. “It’s a really fast turnover.”

The perfectly controlled environment of the greenhouse—the temperature, lighting, nutritional intake and care given by a staff of students—allows the crops to flourish. Shaw says that a head of hydroponically grown lettuce, with its roots still attached, can last up to two weeks inside of a refrigerator. 

“A huge percentage of produce is thrown out because it’s low quality, or a lot of trimming needs to be done,” he says. “When you pick up a head of lettuce from here, every leaf is green and usable.”

Shaw says the indoor system uses about one-tenth of the water of field-grown crops. It is also easier to harvest, alleviating a lot of the bending over and reaching that traditional harvesting requires. 

Hydroponic gardening is often used in areas where farming is challenging due to space or weather. This has led to organizations and companies setting up hydroponic greenhouses in urban backyards or atop buildings. One of Shaw’s former students is currently working for Gotham Greens, a major rooftop gardening company out of Brooklyn, New York.

“It’s all about hyper-local food production,” Shaw said. “It can be a really good business for smaller facilities, and is great for growing local produce in places with food deserts, where it’s harder to access fresh food.”

Many people have also started growing hydroponic crops for their own use at home, whether by setting up a small garden tower in their apartment or growing atop their aquarium or terrarium using aquaponics. 

“There are a lot of ways, and a lot of places that this [method] can be used,” Shaw says, adding that there are many resources for people interested in learning about how to use hydroponics at home, such as online communities on Reddit.

“But honestly, to really see what’s going on—you should come out to a place like this,” he says.

Cabrillo’s facility currently employees six students who work alongside Shaw. Every Saturday, the team sets up a booth at the Aptos Farmers Market further down campus and sells a good deal of the produce they grow.

Shaw says that though he doesn’t think hydroponics are the “end all” of food production, they do have a big future, and their impact on the ag industry is only starting to be seen. 

“This is a huge industry, and it’s becoming larger throughout the U.S. every day,” Shaw said. “Again, it might seem weird for us to do it here, since we’re already in such a great climate to grow outside. But a lot of our students aren’t going to be living here forever. This is a model you can pick up and move to wherever you go.”

To learn more about Cabrillo College’s Horticulture Department and how they are using hydroponics, visit cabrillo.edu/horticulture.

It’s out of control, and you’ve put it off for long enough. Yes, I’m talking about that garage stuffed to the rafters with stuff.

The garage that once upon a time was nicely organized. The hardware shelves. The sports gear and exercise equipment. The boxes of old clothes. The heirloom tchotchkes you have to store somewhere. And now all of them are having a party together without any detectable rhyme or reason.

Let’s drill down a bit. My garage is being held hostage by a funky collection of sacred relics: old Gourmet magazines; clothes that are too large, too small or unthinkably dated; antiques without identifiable purpose; power tools missing a vital part; electronica that lack charging cords; expensive hiking boots that never fit; office equipment for an office I no longer have; ex-husband’s 20-year-old stereo; rusted soda fountain chairs from grandfather’s grocery store.

Plus, there’s a layer of what in polite terms might be called dust. Schmutz, crapola, grime. A garage gets unclean pretty quick.

I set out to tackle my garage situation recently and discovered that I truly had no idea what I’d stepped into. Example: At the top of one of those tall white cabinets with doors that line one wall of the garage sat a very long, thin crystal vase that was a gift from my parents. The problem is that I’ve never used it, don’t like it, and it’s so tall that it can’t fit onto any of my cupboard shelves. That’s why it’s on its side at the top of the garage cabinet. Do I throw it out? Do I give it to the Goodwill?

To avoid having to decide, I turned to a stash of file folder boxes filled with notes from courses I taught 20 years ago. Sure, it’s fun to reminisce, but I wasn’t going to use those notes again. The folders were easier to toss than that skinny crystal vase. Valuable space was being held hostage by that vase, but I couldn’t bring myself to get rid of it.

Also easier to toss were the four remaining mason jars filled with orange bitters I’d made as Christmas gifts 15 years ago. It felt good to take control over those little jars, throwing them into the recycle can. But let’s be honest, I only liberated space roughly 10 inches by 10 inches. Inches! Not exactly a fresh start.

Did I really need to keep every single New Yorker just in case I wanted to reread that clever opera review by Alex Ross? That’s what the internet is for. How about that hexagonal wicker shelf organizer whose odd shape prevented it from fitting neatly anywhere? A beautiful object that served exactly no purpose in my life. Coffee mugs from a former sister-in-law who lived in Slovakia. Hideous student artwork, the 20 rolls of toilet tissue I ordered from China at the beginning of the pandemic? Ugh. What to do?

Well, dear reader, what I decided to do was close the garage door, step into the kitchen and pour myself a glass of wine. I told myself that I’d tackle the garage mess next weekend. Or maybe the weekend after that ….