This story category covers design and home decor, home maintenance and easy organizing tips.
THE LOOK FOR LESS | As much as I try to squeeze it in, my sunny dream cottage by the sea just won’t fit my budget. But the fresh, cottagelike look of a bright wainscoted room can be achieved without using high-end, labour-intensive classic tongue and groove boards. Read more
HOW TO SAVE A LIFE | I’d been meaning to do it for a few years, but it wasn’t until I experienced three horrible deaths in a single week, each one the result of a small bird crashing into the picture window in my home office and then dropping into the reflective pool directly below it and drowning, that I decided to make a preemptive move. Read more
BUY RIGHT | One thing I know for sure about tea lights is that the burn time listed on the package never lives up to its promise. I have only my own experience to back up this claim, but over the past few weeks, I have been testing tea light burn times for an upcoming wedding reception, and, without exception, every wee candle came up at least one hour short. It may be possible for tea lights to burn for as long as the manufacturers contend, though I can only imagine that to do so, they would need to be in a place where the air is still. Read more
WASTE NOT | Here are three ways to get started: Read more
CREATIVE SOLUTION | Plants potted up for the house are more than just leaves, stems and blossoms. They’re landscapes in miniature, with every aspect of their situation—the pot, the soil cover, the setting—adding to or detracting from the presentation. When I want my indoor plants to look all of a piece, I start by making associations. Read more
THE FIX | I’ve done a lot of things to rid my home of casemaking clothes moths (CLICK HERE for our Frugalbits how to) but, until recently when I read about it on goop, I didn’t know that a particular material used to make clothing storage containers might actually ward off these hungry insects. According to Gwynnie and, as it turns out, a gaggle of other Internet home-keeping pundits, breathable nonwoven polypropylene, the material found in those ubiquitous grocery shopping bags, may do just that. Read more
BUY RIGHT | When it comes to sweeping indoors, I prefer an angled broom with a dirt-catching split-fibre tip that can wiggle into corners (Vileda makes a good one). Outdoors, I want a broad brush that can cover more ground and sweep away heavy debris so I always go for a pusher, though I had no idea how inefficient most push brooms are until I tried a Schmutz Haken, the silly looking sweeper pictured here. Read more
BUY RIGHT | There are plenty of dog owners who think that a leather leash is the only way to go, but I’m not one of them. A friend gave us an expensive harness leather lead for our pooch when he was a pup, and beautiful as it is, I’ve used it only once because I found it stiff and unwieldy. Yes, I know that leather put to work will soften over time, but nylon-webbing leashes are pliable from the get-go. They work perfectly fine for my needs, particularly the inexpensive brand I use that has a helpful feature no good dog leash should be without. Read more
DO IT YOURSELF | Do you have a hodge-podge of unattractive garden pots and vases collecting dust in the recesses of your storage area, containers you’ve been thinking about shipping off to the Sally Ann? Well, if you like the look of concrete, a binding agent the late, great Canadian architect Arthur Erickson called “precious …. the marble of the 20th century,” you could mix up a batch of the material and paint it on your old planters the way I did on mine. It made me want to keep them. Read more
CREATIVE SOLUTION | Try as I might, I can’t seem to keep hair out of the bathroom drain, where it diabolically wraps itself around greasy soap residue to form stubborn, icky clogs. Since I dislike using harsh (and expensive) drain cleaners, I tackle drains first with a simple kettle full of boiling water,* hoping to dissolve the hairy sludge. But when hot water doesn’t dislodge the muck, I revisit my seventh grade science project—The Erupting Volcano.