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Display Name: chryses
Member Since: 3/7/08
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A commercial garment steamer. Seriously, everyone who has a job requiring them to dress in suits (or even business casual) needs one of these. I use it every day and it's saved me thousands of dollars over the years on dry cleaning .


What's The Best Practical Gift You Ever Received?
Reader Survey
12/16/11 4:06 PM

In my experience spray foam doesn't work. I tried using it to fill a gap between between a shared wall and the exterior brick wall in a loft I lived in years ago. It stopped air from flowing between the units but did essentially nothing to block sound.


How To Sound Proof A Timber Joist?
Good Questions
5/5/11 12:40 PM

I have about 1300 CDs. To reduce the physical footprint of the discs, I used these:
http://www.jazzloft.com/p-34281-space-saving-cd-sleeves.aspx

I store everything in cheap boxes from Ikea (http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/80150514) and I've created heavy bond inserts for each letter of the alphabet that are about 2 inches taller than a standard CD - sort of like a record store (eventually I'll get around to making an insert for each artist so that I can quickly flip between them). I'm storing these on open shelves - if you have drawers you obviously don't need the boxes.

I haven't tried the Jewel Sleeves that Ana recommended, but they seem sort of pricey compared to the Jazzloft sleeves (roughly 3x the cost, if you buy in bulk).

Acrylic sleeves (regardless of who manufactures them) make a ton of sense. You get to keep ALL of the cover art for your discs - including the rear insert. An additional advantage of storing the discs in a format with the same height and width as standard CDs means that you can integrate non-jewel case CDs into your storage system and maintain alphabetical order (not possible if you're using binders unless you throw away or cut up the speciality packaging some discs come in).

I would recommend that you rip all your CDs as part of this process as well - for backup purposes, if nothing else. Given how cheap hard drive space is, there really is no reason NOT to rip to a lossless format. I would suggest using an open codec - like many of the above, I use FLAC.


Apartment Therapy Chicago | Ideas for Storing CD Collection? Good Questions
10/12/09 11:09 PM

If you have a lot of stuff, order your supplies from Uline.com and drive up to Waukegan to pick it up.

Many moving companies will charge you for the supplies they use to wrap your furniture/pictures/mirrors/glass/marble/etc. Thus, even if you've packed up all the little stuff yourself, buy the materials the movers will need (transport bags, mattress bags, extra tape, and extra boxes) to avoid the markup the movers will charge.

More help can actually make things cheaper - for instance, I wouldn't do a move with less than four workers - anything less and the movers get too tired too quickly and you actually end up paying more (assuming you're paying per man per hour).

Pack small boxes - especially if you've got lots of books/cds/lps (or anything else that's heavy). You won't wear out the movers as quickly and you'll be able to move them more easily yourself when you're unpacking.

I wouldn't suggest that you move the small stuff yourself, as competent movers will make short work of a stack of boxes. I would, however, suggest that you move extremely valuable/fragile things yourself. For instance, I always move my electronics, my lamps, and my wine myself. The insurance movers offer really only helps if the truck explodes (i.e. if all your stuff gets destroyed as opposed to a particular item) so I prefer not to take chances with high-ticket items.

I also want to recommend EMS - they just moved me the other week and did a great job. While they ended up being a bit more expensive than companies I've used in the past, they did my entire move in about 2.5 hours - the last moving company I used took over 8 hours to move less stuff (and EMS had to travel a greater distance).


Apartment Therapy Chicago | How To: Save Money (and Sanity) During a Move
4/23/09 11:21 PM

Tiamat_the_Red has it right:

1) Turn on POP3 in your Gmail account: http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=13273

2) Download Thunderbird (or your client of choice).

3) Enter your Gmail account info in Thunderbird: http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=86399

4) Run Thunderbird periodically to make sure your email is backed up.


Apartment Therapy Unplugged | Good Questions: Best Way to Save Emails?
7/14/08 10:56 AM

If you just want to use the Stolmen to partition the space and hold a few decorative objects, I think it's a good idea. I would not put anything heavy on it if there was the possibility that people might lean on it or bump into it. I'm currently using it as a bookcase:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/51867712@N00/1470165061/
As you can see from my comments on the page linked to above, installing Stolmen is not easy. It is an extremely cheap solution, however.


Apartment Therapy Chicago | CHI Good Questions: Compression Shelving as Partition?
6/16/08 10:04 AM

I'd recommend the new Squeezebox Duet (which I believe will is now shipping). The remote is similar (but superior in my opinion) to that of the Sonos, and the system is far cheaper (additional receivers are around $150, so a controller and two receivers would set you back $550 compared to the Sonos at $999).


Apartment Therapy Unplugged | Good Questions: How to Stream Music in my Home?
3/7/08 7:00 AM