advice please

by

Weigh In Wednesday: Take One, Leave One

I find myself in need of advice on little silly things that are nonetheless driving me crazy. In exchange, I thought I’d share a few little tips that have been helping me out lately. 

If you have any hot tips to share, please do so; if you are in need of any advice, ask away. I will chime in if I have something to offer, and I hope your fellow readers will do so as well. 

Tiny Tips That Are Making Life Better

  • Low-Effort Houseplant Watering: I love houseplants – looking at them, owning them, watching for new growth or flowers. And I am also terrible about keeping on top of their watering needs. After several died or nearly died, I finally broke down and bought a pack of plastic watering bulbs so that I could put one in every single plant I own. It’s not foolproof – they do need to be refilled every week or so, depending on the plant. But it is making my plants SO MUCH HAPPIER and my days are no longer punctuated by random stabs of guilt when I realize it’s been several weeks since I last watered my plants.
  • Morning Time (and Madness) Saver: Mornings have always been tough in my household. They continue to be tough, especially since we have added Primping to our daily routine. And also, school starts earlier this year than it ever has before so we need to be out the door fifteen minutes sooner than we did last year. One thing that has made getting out the door slightly better is to keep a hairbrush, hair ties, and a small makeup kit in my car. That way, Carla can do her hair and makeup while I am driving her to school. Secondary tip: One common frustration around here is that no one can ever find a hairbrush when she needs it. I bought a bunch of small hairbrushes so that Carla can keep one in her backpack, one in her sports bag, and one in her locker.

  • Easy Sheet Pan Meal Clean Up: I love sheet pan dinners, and I love using a barrier between the food and my cookie sheets so I don’t have to deep clean the cookie sheets every night. (They don’t fit in the dishwasher.) I own reusable silicone sheets, and use them for certain things, but they are too difficult to clean for me to use them every time I make a sheet pan meal. For the longest time, I’ve been using aluminum foil. But I am continually frustrated by food sticking to the damn foil. I tried parchment paper, but found it super annoying because it’s so insubstantial it doesn’t stay in place and it’s difficult to crease. I’d seen tips before for putting a little sprinkle of water or cooking spray on the cookie sheet to hold the parchment in place, but it doesn’t always work and/or it requires me to wash the cookie sheet, which I was trying to avoid by using parchment in the first place. Then I saw someone on Instagram crumple up the sheet of parchment paper before smoothing it out onto the cookie sheet. GAME CHANGER. 
  • Connection Points When Talking Is Hard: The credit for this genius idea belongs with my friend G. She told me that she and her daughter have a special notebook in which they write each other secret notes. “Secret” in that no one else can read their exchanges. I have tried this technique with Carla, who can be quite reticent about sharing her feelings and talking about her worries. It works so well. She is willing to share all sorts of things in writing that she refuses to discuss out loud. Because of this silly little journal we pass back and forth, I feel much more connected to her and what’s going on in her inner world. It’s not even something we write in regularly. Sometimes we’ll go back and forth for a few days, sometimes the journal will sit untouched for months. But so far it’s been the perfect bridge when I sense she’s something is troubling her but she’s reluctant, for whatever reason, to share it, or just when we haven’t had a chance to chat in a while. Oh look – there’s a whole line of journals specific to this purpose. We just use one of the many old journals I have lying around.
  • Instant Mood Improver: Get a cat. Please note: mood improvement requires close proximity to cat and may disappear once cat is out of sight, which could be quite often, depending on the cat. 

Please Advise: Here’s Where You Tell Me What To Do

  • Do you have any tips for making it simpler to put laundry away? Especially if those tips apply to getting other people in your household to put laundry away? Our current “system” involves me doing laundry, folding or sorting Carla’s clothing, and then asking Carla to put it away. Which results in Carla using my bedroom as a dressing room, because that’s where I fold the laundry. I have started putting the clean/folded laundry in a basket and putting that basket in my bedroom on the landing outside Carla’s room in Carla’s room, but still – the basket remains there, full of clean clothing, growing less folded by the day, until I Make A Fuss. And honestly, the Making A Fuss only results in the laundry ending up on the floor, which makes me incandescent. I have not opened the door to Carla’s closet lately, and do not want to, lest my head implode like a firecracker. I am willing to do Drastic Things. Should I get rid of 75% of her clothing? (I did ask her to go through her wardrobe this summer and remove everything she doesn’t or won’t wear.) Should I buy her another dresser?  The child has AMPLE storage, seriously, so much storage, but what we are doing is clearly not working for her and she doesn’t have any ideas (besides I like having all my clothing in a laundry basket / on my floor) for how to make the situation more user friendly for herself. The only thing I am unwilling to do is put her laundry away myself. She’s twelve. She can put her own laundry away. Oh, okay – there is another thing I am unwilling to do: ignore the mess. I have tried that tack and it is not workable for me or for our family. 
  • What are your favorite low-effort houseplants? Especially if they require low light? As I mentioned above, I LOVE plants and would love more. But a) our house has very little direct light and b) the cat will seriously eat any plant, or at least give it a little taste test, so any plants I buy need to be non-toxic. I have moved all the currently toxic plants I own to out-of-cat-reach spaces, but they aren’t necessarily low-light plants and they aren’t doing very well. For instance, the Christmas cactus and the kalanchoe I owned pre-cat have been relocated to the top of my bookshelves, and they are no longer dying of thirst but they are clearly not loving their lighting conditions. I have also purchased a few plants that require “bright, indirect light,” and even those seem a little light-starved. I think I need plants that thrive in less light. But not no light. All the plants have access to natural light. Just not bright light.

  • How do you keep your fingernails tidy? Okay, confession time: I am a nail picker. I will pick at my nails and the skin around my nails, sometimes until my fingers bleed. I think I developed this gruesome habit as an alternative to nail biting (although I still do that at times, too, ugh ugh ugh), and I am ready to stop. But… I don’t know HOW. It’s a nervous habit, for sure, and I don’t think you can help me get over my social anxiety. But part of the reason it’s such an addictive habit is that my cuticles (is that the right term for the skin on the sides of my nails???) are often dry or peeling or otherwise pick-able. Right now, my pinky finger is all painful and inflamed because of this habit and I Don’t Like It. My questions for you are: a) If you or someone you know has gotten over this gross habit, HOW? And/or b) Is there something I should be doing to enhance my overall nail skin / fingernail / cuticle health? I do tend towards dry skin, and use Working Hands cream like it’s my job. But I get overwhelmed by the abundance of cuticle oils and creams and have no idea which ones WORK. Or if buying a “cuticle remover kit” would do anything at all to help me.

I do not want to end this post on weird giant photos of my fingernails, so here’s where I turn things over to you. What hot tips do you have to share today? Or, at least, the little things that are making your day-to-day easier/better/more enjoyable? And in which areas are you in need of advice?

by

What to Do with a Weird Space Specifically Designed for Something Else

As I write this, it is approximately 7:15 and I have been awake since 3:27. My kiddo woke me up, and I am always happy to wake up if she needs me, well, not happy, but you know what I mean. But then I couldn’t go back to sleep. I distracted myself from fretting about, well, you know, everything, by focusing on how hot it’s going to get here in the next few days and how I can avoid using my oven. Then, at four-ish, I decided it was time to stop pretending I was going to go back to sleep and I collected the kitten and watched an episode of Psych. Then I fed the kitten and started my tea and opened some of the boxes that arrived yesterday (two of the board games from my gift ideas list, one cat grass kit). Then I had to rescue the kitten from a piece of tape that had, presumably, escaped from one of the boxes and affixed itself cruelly to his undercarriage. Which is when I discovered that he… well, he needed a bath.

So to recap: It is 7:15 and I have been up for nearly four hours and I have already washed and blow-dried a cat.

On the plus side, he is very pleasingly soft and fluffy once he’s all blown-dry.

Anyway, I need your help. 

We have a bar area in the basement, and it’s beautiful. But a) we don’t really have people over to do whatever one does in one’s home bar, and b) I would like to keep the basement as kid-friendly as possible as Carla gets older, so that I feel safe having The Teens over to our house. 

Right now, it’s very much A Bar, with room to display glasses, two wine racks filled with wine bottles, and three cupboards that are supposed to hold a variety of glasses. My husband used to display his collection of European beer glasses on the display shelves, but we relocated those to the cupboards once we got a kitten. 

The wine in the racks is not drinkable. The previous owners left it here, and noted before they did that it was not drinkable; it was purely for aesthetic purposes. Where a person obtains decorative wine bottles – which, to be clear, are full of real if not drinkable wine – I do not know, nor do I understand why anyone might pay for wine they knew they would not drink, but to each his own. My father, who knows wine, tested a couple of bottles just to make sure the previous owners weren’t, like, super wine snobs and the wine was fine if not great, but he agrees that it is not drinkable. This is to say that I feel no qualms about getting rid of the wine, except that it does seem like kind of a colossal waste. (I had the brilliant  insane thought in the middle of the night that perhaps I could donate it to a church that offers communion. I have had communion wine and it is not what I would refer to as drinkable either. But a) that’s probably dumb for a billion reasons and b) even if it isn’t as dumb as I really think it is, I would not know how to go about offering or transferring my bounty to a church anyway.) 

Anyway, if anyone knows any uses for undrinkable wine, let me know. 

What I really want to know is what else I can use the wine rack/glasses display area FOR. It turns out I am completely unimaginative in this respect. My brain has zero issue coming up with wild and horrifying explanations for whatever made that creaking sound in my living room at 3:45 am. But try to come up with alternative uses for the bar space, and I’ve got nothing.

My husband keeps his Nespresso machine in the bar area. Maybe we could use the wine racks to store mugs? Sleeves of Nespresso pods? (I’m joking about the latter.) Maybe we could remove the wine racks on one side and put in a shelf and an outlet and keep the Nespresso machine there instead of on the bar? 

It seems like “removing the wine racks and replacing them with shelves” might be the best plan, if that’s even possible.

My friend Jen (HI JEN) is expert at hosting The Teens at her house, and I seem to remember that she has a fancy smoothie machine in her basement and maybe a popcorn maker. I wonder if the wine rack spaces are deep enough to hold either or both of those things? Maybe we could put in a microwave? 

The glasses display area also seems like space that could be repurposed. I mean, I like my husband’s beer glasses collection just fine, but it does get dusty and it seems like a bad idea to have a bunch of glasses hanging around out in the open if you plan to have The Teens over. (Also: the kitten.) But what else could possibly go in that space? 

I have googled a bit, trying to find examples of other people who have similarly transformed their bar areas into something less alcohol-focused… but I haven’t really found anything that struck me as useful. 

What would you do with this space? 

by

How to Wash Your Face

A couple months ago, my husband read a Real Simple article out loud to me called “Yes, There Is a Right Way to Shower.” We mainly thought it was hilariously dumb, although I suppose some people don’t get excruciatingly detailed instructions on how to shower from their parents, so I bet it serves a worthwhile purpose for some people.

Plus! As much as I wanted to poke fun at this article, I ended up learning two new things. First, that you DON’T need to leave conditioner on your hair; supposedly it works immediately. (I am suspicious.) Second, that you should wash your face at the END of the shower. The latter tip, I put into practice immediately. I’d been washing my face first thing in the shower for… decades, so it took a bit of effort to change up my routine. But now I wash it at the end of the shower. And I like it. (Sometimes I still forget, and get out of the shower, and then have to get back in to wash my face. But that’s only happened a handful of times.) (I also have been showering in as cold water as I can stand; Jenny, I think, recommended washing my face and hair with cold water as helpful for my rosacea. Plus, it’s so hot ALL THE TIME that I rather enjoy the cold showers. My teenage self – who routinely got yelled at for using up all the hot water, so long did I linger under the steam – wouldn’t recognize me and my five-minute cold showers.)

I’ve never been great at washing my face. I will admit, guiltily, that I very rarely washed my face AT ALL (except in the shower) until I was in my thirties, and even then, I would usually use one of those dreadfully wasteful Neutrogena wipes or a Noxzema wipe and call it good. (I know, I know.) I would just… go to sleep in whatever makeup I was wearing and then wash it off in the shower the next morning. (I still find that the Neutrogena wipes are the best way to remove eye makeup.)

But now that my skin seems bent on destroying my life (why yes, I do tend toward hyperbole, why do you ask?), I am much more rigorous about washing my face. And I hate it. 

I’ve been using, on the advice of my dermatologist, Cetaphil facial cleanser. It’s mild and seems to mostly work? I honestly have no idea; my skin seems to flare occasionally of its own mercurial whims, and I have no idea why. (Thankfully, it has yet to flare so horrifically as it did back in late April/early May. I am armed with my sulfur face wash and antibiotics prescription for when it inevitably happens again.) 

In addition to washing my face in the shower (which I do as quickly upon concluding my day’s workout as possible), I wash my face in the morning and at night, at the same time I brush my teeth. (Same general time; I am not doing both simultaneously. I use a washcloth to wet my face with cold water. Then I use my hands to lather up the Cetaphil and apply it to my skin. Then I use the washcloth to wipe away the cleanser. I have a little towel rack on which to hang the damp washcloth, which keeps it both close to hand and away from my dry bath towel.

The thing is… the washcloths don’t last. I change my bath towels every week, and I get that a towel used to clean a dirty face might not last THAT long, but they seem to go two or maybe three days before they start to get a little stinky. And I don’t have that many washcloths! So I go through all the washcloths before I have a chance to launder them (while I change my bath towels weekly, I wash them every two weeks) and when I am out of washcloths I have to turn to my hands. 

I CAN wash my face with my hands. But it’s AWFUL.

Inevitably, water pours down my wrists and pools in my elbows. It also cascades down my face and dampens my sideburn area, a portion of my hair that is prone to corkscrewing wildly at the least exposure to moisture. Water also slides down my chin and trickles down my neck and sets up camp in between my boobs. By the time my face is clean, my entire body is wet and I might as well have just showered. 

Why is this so hard? What am I doing wrong?

I feel like I could probably address a couple of these issues with money. I mean, I could just buy enough washcloths so that I can swap them out daily. Or, if I want to eschew washcloths entirely, I could buy face washing accessories to keep the wetness away. Like, there are cute absorbent headbands and headwraps I could wear while washing my face. There are wristbands (“wrist towels”) as well, which might prevent my elbows from being soaked regularly. But I feel weary at the idea of buying MORE THINGS to address a very simple and regular feature of one’s daily ablutions. Plus, where would I store them and would they also get stinky after a couple of days and would they even work???

Maybe I just don’t know how to wash my face the proper way? How do you do it? How often and when and what products do you use? Even if you don’t have any Life-Changing Secrets, I love hearing how we all do the exact same thing in slightly different ways, so please share your face-washing routine.