Tips, tricks & lore related to life at home
Search the App Store for “To Do” and you get 249 hits. Do the same search for “Address Book” and you get 43 results…and half of those are utilities for cleaning up your contacts, not apps for managing contacts. This is a little weird seeing that your “Rolodex” is supposed to be the most valuable…
Cardboard has long been the stuff of dreams – the joke is that at Christmas children spend less time playing with a toy than with the box it came in. And few things are more exciting than the arrival of a new appliance and a box that can become an instant fortress or playhouse. Now…
I worked one summer on a blue card fire crew, one of the best jobs ever. A ten-person crew can clear a trail five feet wide down to mineral soil almost as fast as you can walk it. The tools we used were so useful that I’m surprised at how rarely I see them in…
You’ve got one of those nifty paracord bracelets and you know that it must be good for something more than Macgyver-esque style. More than Just Surviving lines out 93 ways to use that paracord bracelet for more than drying laundry. Here are just a few of the ways you can use paracord: Belt or replacement…
We’re not saying that a global recession is right around the corner. Then again the history of the United States has been peppered by depressions and recessions – one about every five years or so – so never say never. Whether you’re facing hard times or just want to get back to basics the Survival…
Do you know how to set up a greenhouse, grow herbs, pluck a chicken, and properly train an animal? PioneerSettler serves of a list of 133 Homesteading Skills for the Modern Day Homesteader along with links to information and resources that will help you master these skills. Some of these skills are ones that you’d obviously…
We’re opening a new category of topics on Wild Rye, loosely grouped under the heading “homesteading.” This section will include classic homesteading topics like backyard poultry, canning, and doing-it-yourself. But it will include things of interest to the more urbane homesteader such as setting up your wifi for your connected home. If you have any…
Shipping containers have been a promising alternative to prefab architecture at least since Stewart Brand’s Sausalito research library. According to Gizmag there is now a Canadian firm called Honomobo that will drop one of these ready-to-inhabit home spaces on your lot for the price of a basic remodel. Of course you’ll have to work out…
As I’m working on clearing off my desk and clearing out my office I’m starting to realize that this time around the clutter I’m dealing with is of a different quality than your garden variety crap-fest. Use the Two-Minute Rule to Banish Vulture Vomit Forever That was the term Stanley, our colorful across-the-street neighbor, used…
Let’s get this out of the way first – that’s an iced coffee on my desk, not an iced Guinness. Next, I am drowning in clutter. It doesn’t seem to matter how much time and effort I spend on trying to get my life organized, there is just no free space anywhere to put anything.…
The American garage is truly a multipurpose space. Part workshop, part storage unit and part garage there are so many demands put on this space there’s no wonder it can get out of control in a hurry. Easy Closets takes a strategic view by breaking the typical garage into six zones – 1) Transition, 2)…
Yesterday some doofus in a Dodge Magnum decided to test the general properties of matter by occupying my lane while I was still in it. I swerved hard to avoid the oncoming rear quarter panel of the Dodge and then swerved back to avoid causing a chain reaction of my own. At least that’s what…
Driving the BMW i3 is a huge change from my gas-hungry Jeep TJ. The i3 has a distinctly golf-cart feel with the smooth silent and instant acceleration. Once you’ve got it up to speed – only 7 seconds if you floor it (compared to 7.4 seconds for the Scion TC) – the ride begins to…
Here’s the deal – I live in my car. That’s to say I spend almost two hours every day dragging my sad briefcase across two counties to the salt mines. For the privilege I shuck out over $400 big ones to fill the ample gas tank on my lumbersexual Jeep TJ. But you can only…
Every time I open my “Big Box of Stuff” – my instant organiztion system that involves sweeping everything under the rug and declare all problems solved – my head starts spinning with the urgency and cataclysmic busy-ness of everything. I’m fighting the urge to drag everything out and prioritize it. But not so fast –…
