It’s a chief joy of mine to find something that someone else discarded and to make it mine. One woman’s trash becomes another’s treasure and not much of anything goes to waste. With the…
Tip #168: Hang a high shelf. My forever motto is less stuff, not more storage. But there are some things that need having and those things need a place to perch. In those cases,…
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…