Tip #167: Hang up your swimsuits. It’s splash pad season. That season in the life of a city kid—and the adults who care for them—when parks turn on their sprinklers and children run pell-mell…
Tip # 166: You don’t get what you don’t ask for. Ask and ye shall receive (sort of), but more than that, you don’t get what you don’t ask for. In even the best…
Survival Tip #165: Paint the plunger. The handle anyway. It’s probably advisable to leave the rubbery part alone. But the wooden handle? Why not help it along a bit? Maybe it still has the…
Survival Tip #164: Seize the moment. In mating season, male cardinals feed the females they’re hoping to woo. They don’t just gather the food, they coax it into the female’s mouth, morsel by morsel.…
Survival Tip #162: Where do you put the people? Where do you put all your stuff? It makes sense that most tiny apartment queries I get have to do with managing the stuff in a…
Survival Tip #161: Take Your Small Apartment One Day at a Time. Monday: Give fresh water and fresh cuts to grocery store flowers. Precious treatment for $2.99 stems chosen by a three-year-old and bought…
Survival Tip #158: Get Stubborn/Find Room. This summer, we finally caved and got a window air conditioner. After the third consecutive June night where temperatures in our apartment were just shy of 100 degrees,…
#157 Give Yourself a Sick Day I spent much of my childhood engaged in long drawn-out games of make-believe. Some of these games featured bucolic scenarios of apple picking or making feasts of mud…
Survival Tip #156: Make it sized to fit. On Saturday night, we ate spaghetti. There were two big white bowls filled with pasta smothered in Marcella Hazan’s famous sauce, a smaller wooden one, filled with…
Survival Tip #155: Call yourself whatever you please. Over the weekend, a morning walk to the farmers’ market got us a basket full of fresh vegetables and a dusty wooden crate that a neighbor filling…