design family ideas observations

Designing Buildings with Space for the Practical & Messy

Erik and I spent the last few days helping our son Ian, his fiancé, and their roommate move to a new townhouse apartment. They had lived in their old apartment for about 10 years, so there was quite an accumulation of stuff to move. When you’ve got furniture, loads of boxes of heavy books, and other household paraphernalia to move in a short period of time, finding efficient ways to move it without killing everyone’s…

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design ideas observations

A Tiny But Significant Change in Fitted Sheets

Have you ever struggled to figure out which way to put a fitted sheet onto a mattress, particularly a queen-size mattress? Queen mattresses and their fitted sheets are fairly close to square, so inevitably I end up putting the sheet on incorrectly the first time around. While not an earth-shattering problem, it was annoying. And then someone had a brilliant idea and made a tiny but significant change to fitted bed sheets. Some fitted bed…

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observations pragmatic historian preservation tips

The Places We Rarely Clean

We have needed a new kitchen faucet for a few years now. We got some fancy-dancy spray faucet the last time and eventually lost water pressure because the aerator was blocked. We tried cleaning it with vinegar and were unsuccessful. We also attempted to remove the aerator so we could replace it without replacing the entire faucet. We didn’t want to have to throw the faucet in a landfill. Unfortunately, the aerator was not removable…

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