Oh clutter, does anyone escape your grasp?  I am considered (both by myself and by others) to be a ruthless, effective, and tireless fighter of clutter.  And yet I can point to six things that belong somewhere else within arm's reach of my keyboard as I type this right now.  

Clutter propagates in the dark, it creeps in on little cat feet, and can even destroy lives.  Philip K. Dick coined the term "kipple" in his novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

"Kipple is useless objects, like junk mail or match folders after you use the last match or gum wrappers or yesterday's homeopape. When nobody's around, kipple reproduces itself. For instance, if you go to bed leaving any kipple around your apartment, when you wake up the next morning there's twice as much of it. It always gets more and more."


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As our family gets deeper and deeper into environmental alternatives and a greener lifestyle, I’m learning so many super cool things. One thing I recently learned about was how to reuse coffee grounds. We don’t make coffee very often in our home—usually when I have to be up for a long time, or if we have company—but when we do, we have plenty of grounds leftover to use in these projects…

Fertilizing Plants: Apparently the makeup of coffee grounds makes them an excellent fertilizer! As a bonus, they’re not as stinky as many other fertilizers, either (though I will argue with you to the death over the beautiful aroma of our earthy compost!).

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Last time we discussed some of the broader issues around the phenomena of cold spots.  This time I wanted to dig down into a more narrow discussion of the physics involved.  Temperature - heat - is energy, and there are several ways to "harvest" heat in order to use it for energy.  But could ghosts be harvesting heat literally out of thin air in order to power their appearances?


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I have to admit to being an indifferent gardener at best.  I have this problem, probably because I was raised in a series of apartments and condos, where I mentally categorize everything outside my front door as an undifferentiated mass of "outside."  I have to really struggle to see messes and problems, and I guess I'm just lucky that my yard can't be seen from the road!


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Once the sun comes out, you can't help but notice those dirty windows!  Since I work from home, I'm staring out my window all day long.  Also, I'm always looking for some dumb excuse to leave my desk and go do something else.


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Always dilute Simple Green!

In a world where every cleaning product is scrambling to greenwash itself, I think it's important to highlight Simple Green.  Simple Green was there first, and it still does it better. 

Not for me are the charms of the upscale, overpriced, boutique eco-friendly cleaners like Biokleen and Mrs. Meyer's.  Nor the chemical polluters of the world who champ their cigars and chortle and slap a green leaf logo on a bottle and call it "The Clorox Green Works Line."


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I will never use the Tide pump again.

I had never even planned to, really; my sister, who works in retail, bought it on sale and gave it to me when she discovered that it wasn’t compatible with her washing machine (very generously, I might add; thanks, sis!). Now, we usually buy more eco-friendly detergent (Method is my favorite) but we’re not about to both waste a perfectly good jug of detergent or waste money when something has already been purchased.

But after using the pump, I’ve realized just how awful it is. I should have remembered; my mother used to use it (I think she still might, even) and I couldn’t stand it when I did laundry as a teenager. And I think it all comes down to a big, fat laundry conspiracy!

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Happy Year of the Tiger!

It’s traditional to use this time during the Chinese New Year to clean, gut, disinfect, and generally purge your home. It’s a good time to do it, too, especially in my neck of the woods where it’s been constantly snowing and there’s little else to do.

While it’s traditional to do all of the cleaning before the New Year (which, this year, was on Sunday), cleaning on New Year’s Day is forbidden because it could sweep out the luck from the New Year. Now that the first day is over, however, you can still work on your goal throughout the month of February and get your home in tip-top shape well before the Jones family does in the spring! Here’s how.

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No, it’s not a catchphrase of the latest movement or a nationwide command secretly issued in the State of the Union Address. Get Organized Now! is a website run by Marcia Gracia, an organizational guru who maintains thousands of organizational tips, products, and packs to help you stay on top of organizing your life.

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Bed BugThe Stranger’s Brendan Kiley recently wrote a disturbing piece about everybody’s second favorite bug (the cockroach of course being the first) the bedbug. In fact, the piece so disgusted me that I immediately became OCD for the first time in my life and not only had to scratch my arm 24 times, but scrub it ferociously as well in solidarity with people who have suffered an infestation.

The cute little bugs apparently reproduce violently and in a way that can kill the female or shorten her life, forcing me to contemplate whether or not the “she was asking for it” defense would have any merit in a bedbug court of law. Once the female bedbugs have reproduced, the bedbugs hide out in mattresses and pillows and are incredibly hard to get rid of.


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