How To Love Your Ugly Kitchen

Our kitchen really bothered me when we bought this place six years ago. This kitchen was a significant downgrade from the compact but modern kitchen of our previous home. No gas range, no smooth granite counter tops and although we had increased our square footage considerably, our new kitchen was as small or perhaps smaller

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I Hate Thrift Stores But I Love Buying Second Hand

Have you ever hit resale burnout? You might have kept an eye on Craigslist or Kijiji for a few weeks looking for a stroller liner or a winter jacket and even missed out on a few that came up and were sold immediately. Or you have had items listed for weeks and had a lot

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A Common Wardrobe Problem: Weight Fluctuation

   Here’s something I haven’t heard many people talk about: weight fluctuations are really hard on your wardrobe. Not just because you need multiple sizes but as you are growing out of things you stretch them out. Clothing gets misshapen. All that tension on the seams does damage. My clothes are in rough shape right

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When You Don’t Have A Backyard

Houses certainly have their appeal when you have three kids. It would be a joy to open the door and tell the kids to go play outside – while I had a coffee and read the paper. “Go play outside” was a constant refrain from my childhood. It was the 80s and we had free

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Have you heard of Cohousing?

This is a guest post from Mackenzie Stonehocker, reader and Cohousing organizer. We’ve been exchanging emails about cohousing and I asked Mackenzie if she would guest post here on the blog. She kindly agreed. I love this concept. It seems ideal for a lot of people: less of the upkeep of being a sole home

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Can You KonMari with Kids?

The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up has been everywhere this year. After some of my sisters and friends got on KonMari kicks I decided to do some folding even though I haven’t finished the book (keep getting distracted by books like the new Mindy Kaling). Historically I’ve mostly thrown the kid’s clothing into drawers.

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Should You Keep Your Formal Dinnerware or Wedding China?

I really like our formal wedding china but have wondered if we should keep it. We left several boxes of breakables with family while we lived overseas. It was fun to be reunited with some almost forgotten items on our return. Fun and strange. Four years ago my pre-kids self was still fresh in my

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