I think the responses are confusing two different kinds of floor grates. The first kind of floor grate is the smaller vents you get with a forced air system and ducting--these are not...

In my experience some of the people who believe that dishwashers waste water just don't care that much about dishes being clean. I will never forget the day I was in the kitchen and a relative took...

We rent and have a baby on the way, and given how badly newborns regulate their own body temperatures, the "put on a sweater"-type suggestions have limited utility. So we recently built frames from...

For sinks that stop up, we've always just unscrewed the S-trap underneath and cleaned it separately--the S gets cleaned with a hose outdoors, and gunk in the straight pipe up to the sink can be scr...

We flew with our cats to Paris and back. It was not fun for anyone but ultimately fine. We kept them in harnesses with a leash even inside the carriers because we had to take them out...

Speaking as one of those people whose birth went horribly wrong despite being apparently low risk, I am incredibly glad I chose a hospital birth. I have met only two other women who faced similar s...

We have two short Sapiens, a preschooler, and we live in SF. My feeling is that they could pretty easily fall over in a serious quake, although they're stable enough in a mild one. Ours are behind ...

Huh. We named our son Theodore because it's the male variant of my name (Dorothy) and because my husband's name is Matisyahu (which means the same thing in Hebrew). And we have not yet met another ...

Whose sofa is stuck in Folsom prison?

In our experience as (working) parents (who don't hire any help except preschool), you pretty much stay as neat as you always were, with a little slippage here and there. We were neat before we wer...

In the house where I grew up we had this issue, and my parents opted for short curtains, because there is no other safe option if you want curtains and have baseboard heat (they should be at least ...

davidasposted The only studies that purport to "debunk" the cancer and heart disease risks of secondhand smoke are those funded by the tobacco industry, including that of Enstrom and Kabat. T...

The NIH reports that smoking kills over 400k Americans every year, and that approximately 50k of those deaths are due to secondhand smoke exposure. It is the leading preventable cause of death in t...

I was brought up to use sponges, but even after microwaving or boiling, they are bacterial sinks within minutes. We are now committed to dishrags and sometimes change them multiple times in a day, ...

We're willing to do a lot to stay in the city itself, because of the easy commutes to work (I walk and my husband takes an express bus), the amenities, and so on. And "a lot" includes not having a ...

I'm with you, happify. I spent all of graduate school with people who treated books as the ultimate status symbol (we're so intellectual!) It got old. There's no reason to hoard books when most of ...

The light's much better in the new kitchen, although it's not to my taste. Personally, having lived with the black and white checkerboard for several years, I hate it more than any other kitchen fl...

Stairs for the building are welcome. I prefer the apartment itself to be all one level. However, I have a toddler.

It would certainly make cleaning the floors easier.

For our half-bath, we used the starch fabric trick that's normally used on walls, and just ran it across the disgusting new vinyl floor and up the walls to the edge of the old tile (the vinyl and...