Kristin van Ogtrop's Blog, page 358
March 21, 2011
Use Baking Soda to Clean Your Mattress
Now that it's officially Spring, it's time to start thinking about spring cleaning. So next time you change your sheets and wash your mattress cover, take an extra step to help freshen your mattress as well. It's easy, we promise. All it takes is a little bit of baking soda.
While your mattress cover is in the washing machine, pour enough baking soda through a sieve or sifter to lightly dust your mattress with it. Leave this light dusting on when you remake your bed, and it will slowly draw out any dirt, moisture, and odor from your mattress.
The next time you change your sheets, simply vacuum up the baking soda from your mattress. And for an extra boost of freshness, tuck a few dryer sheets between your mattress and box springs or bed frame to keep odors at bay.
For more spring cleaning ideas check out Spring Cleaning Shortcuts from our April issue.
Have you started spring cleaning yet? Do you have any spring cleaning shortcuts to share?
Related:
Daily Quick Cleaning Checklist
March 18, 2011
An Easy Way to Remember Your Anniversary
This week, our website pick makes sure that you'll never forget an important date. Whether you use it for anniversaries, birthdays, or other days you have to remember year after year (checking your smoke detectors or submitting your health care reimbursement, anyone?), Anniversary Alert makes it much easier.
Simply sign up for the site and set the date you need to remember. Then choose when you want to get an email alert 1 week, 2 weeks, or 4 weeks before the date. Anniversary Alert will then email you your reminder every year, or until you cancel that alert.
Have you ever forgotten an important anniversary or birthday? What's your strategy for remembering important dates?
Related:
Room, The Final Chapter
Before we get into the discussion, I have great news: the author of Room, Emma Donoghue, has agreed to answer all our questions about the book. So if there's something you'd like to ask her, please include it in the comments field below by Monday, March 28. Now, on to the finale...
I'm so happy many of you are enjoying this book as much as I am. I have to confess...I couldn't stop reading, too. It was nearly impossible to walk away not knowing what happens to Ma. I had a feeling she was going to make it. The chapter title "Alive" kind of gave it away, though it could have been interpreted in many ways. Nicole commented last week that she was surprise Ma overdosed now that her and Jack were finally in the Outside, but it seems that the Outside was just too much for her to bear. Especially in this age of a 24/7 news cycle, where real people who go through unbelievable experiences are also becoming celebrities. What's ironic is that she was so concerned in the beginning about Jack's transition, when it was actually her transition that was even harder to handle.
Jack, meanwhile, has become quite the little philosopher. I think he makes an interesting point in this chapter: "In the world I notice persons are nearly always stressed and have no time. Even Grandma often says that, but she and Steppa don't have jobs, so I don't know how persons with jobs do the jobs and all the living as well. In Room me and Ma had time for everything." The part about Grandma not having a job and being stressed about time made me smile, but I think it's a nice sentiment about simplifying life to make time for what counts. Obviously, we don't want to live in a Room to have quality time with our family, but a day without obligations might be a nice tradition to start. What do you think?
In the end, Ma comes back to take care of Jack. She is ready to move on; he is still clinging to the past (and specifically that Rug). How did you feel when he wanted to go back to the Room. It made me anxious and nervous, but I understood his need for explanation/closure. I was impressed Ma could even step one foot near that place. And then in the end, they said good-bye. What did you think of the ending? The whole book? Please share all your thoughts, ideas, rants, raves, and questions for Emma Donoghue below. It's been a pleasure reading with you!
March 17, 2011
A Fun Way to Stay in Touch with Friends
It's almost inevitable that at some point in your adult life one of your close friends will move away. And while it's easier than ever to stay in touch (e-mail, Facebook, etc.), being digitally connected isn't always the same.
If you and your faraway friend used to trade reading recommendations, a fun way to stay connected is to start sharing books. As you're reading a book make notes about your reactions on sticky notes and slip them in at the end of the related paragraph. Once you've finished the novel, pop it in the mail to your friend, and have her do the same with another title. That way you can "discuss" the books as you're reading them.
Read Staying in Touch for more ideas on how to keep connected with friends and family.
Do you have any fun traditions that help you stay in touch with friends and family who have moved away?
Related
Readers' Tips for Staying Connected
10 Ways to Be Closer to Your Siblings
Why Do You Think I Want Your Hand-Me-Downs?
This is a question one of my friends is dying to ask her next-door neighbor. But she's not sure how to pose it—or even whether it's appropriate to ask—without sounding as rude as the neighbor who foisted the stuff on her in the first place. Here's what happened:
A few seconds later, this conversation occurred inside my friend's apartment.
My Friend: What is this stuff you dumped on the couch?
Husband: Hand me downs. From next door. Didn't she tell you she was giving it to us?
My Friend: No, and what are we supposed to do with jeans since our son doesn't like to wear jeans?
Husband: Dunno.
My Friend: And why would we need helmets?
Husband: [shrugs]
But wait. There's more to this story. A few days later, the next-door neighbor sends her husband over to tell my friend that she wants one of the helmets back! It turns out that one of her friends' children wants "the good one."
How rude is that? Not only does she force unwanted hand-me-downs on my friend without asking first if she has a use for them, but then she takes back one item to give it to someone she likes better.
So now my friend is the recipient of (1) a bag of old jeans that her boy wouldn't want to wear even if they did fit him; and (2) the worse of two old helmets.
"What should I do?" she asked me. "Should I take it to Goodwill?"
"Well, you could," I said, "but then you're just doing the lazy neighbor's work for her." Clearly, the neighbor pawned the stuff off on my friend to avoid lugging the bag over there herself.
"Why don't you put it out on the landing, in her bag, next to your garbage bin?" I suggested, figuring that then the building's super can take the clothes if he wants them, for a boy in his family, or else pass them along to someone else who could use them.
"But then my neighbor will see I put it out next to the garbage!" she said.
"That's the idea," I said.
"But then she'll never speak to me again," my friend said.
[...]
That was the sound of me thinking, "Well, if it was my neighbor, I wouldn't want her to speak to me again."
But maybe I'm just feeling cranky and cantankerous because it's the end of a long winter in New York City (my first here in many years). Maybe someone else has a better, more gracious solution to this problem?
If so, please suggest it! What should my neighbor do to resolve the Case of the Unwanted Hand-Me-Downs?
(image courtesy of Realsimple.com)
Have You Voted Yet, Bookie?
Hi, everyone:
As this post goes up, last month's ohsoclose runner-up, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, leads our April book poll. . .but will it win this time? That's up to you, Bookies: Vote for it—or your pick of the other three books below—by 11:59 p.m. ET this Monday, March 21. Our winner will be announced on Tuesday.
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, by Rebecca Skloot
The fascinating true story of a poor Virginia migrant worker whose cancerous tissue yielded cells that became the catalysts for stunning medical breakthroughs.
The Invisible Bridge, by Julie Orringer
Hungarian-Jewish architecture student Andras Levi falls in love while studying in Paris in 1937, then returns to Budapest and struggles to keep his family safe amid the Nazis' rise to power. A haunting debut novel.
Swamplandia!, by Karen Russell
A declining alligator-wresting theme park serves as the fantastical setting for Russell's first novel, in which a young girl struggles to keep her family together in the face of threats both real (her Floridian family's impending bankruptcy) and otherworldly (her sister's elopement with a ghost).
Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Bronte
Bronte creates a heroine for the ages in Jane, an orphan raised by her loveless aunt who matures into the strong-willed governess of a manor with a terrible secret.
What Book Should We Read in April?survey software
Finding Balance -- In More Ways Than One
This is a post about work-life balance. It begins with a man blowing in my ear, and it wasn't my husband.
Okay, enough with the salacious tease. I was at the doctor's recently having a series of tests because I'm dizzy. It's technically vertigo that occurs when I turn my head to the left. To figure out why you're dizzy the doctor puts a device that blows hot air into your ear and sounds like a power drill. Then they put a bunch of probes on your forehead attached to a goofy cap, and you have to follow a colored light on the wall with your eyes without moving your head. This is followed by a traditional hearing test, where you click a device when you hear a tone.
The vertigo came on in mid-February, just as I was wrapping up a brutal three-month stretch of work. I'm a freelancer, and sometimes when it rains it pours. Since I never know when it will rain again, I almost never turn down work. (Recession is an excellent motivator.) In three months, I completed four projects that comprised roughly 100 interviews and 60,000 words (including a book). The vertigo may be related to too much computer screen time, or to stress.
When it rains work, I disappear into the bunker of my office and the rest of my life starts to fall to pieces. The house turns into a disaster, I exercise less, sleep too little, eat too much unhealthy takeout and miss deadlines that don't relate to work (i.e., my youngest won't be playing soccer this spring because I didn't register in time.) My husband and three kids pitch in as much as they can, but it's kind of like the captain has jumped from the sinking ship and the passengers are bailing water. Even my dog gives me a baleful look when I let her out in the yard instead of taking our usual walk, knowing she's been gypped.
So I thought it was pretty ironic that when I lost work-life balance, I literally lost my physical balance. If I look up at the ceiling and turn my head to the left, the room flips and spins like I've had too many cocktails. If I'm lying down on my left side and stand up suddenly, I walk like I've had too many cocktails. Unfortunately, I'm hardly the life of the party.
I'm finding work-life balance is kind of a holy grail in your mid-40s. I try to create a life that accommodates work, family, friends, exercise, spirituality, volunteering and the relentless household chores and kids' activities. But I think sometimes I'm asking too much of myself. Maybe my life can accommodate all of that -- just not at the same time.
When I feel overwhelmed, I do what my mother, who had eleven children, used to do – look to the season ahead and recognize that in time, it will get easier. She would tell herself, "In the spring, this one will be out of diapers; in the fall, this one will be in school." Then let go and embrace the moment.
Projects eventually end. Work inevitably slows down. And the kids are alright. I managed to take my youngest shopping for an Easter dress yesterday. I made it to the gym this morning, and will meet friends for lunch. Spring arrives on Sunday, and maybe by the summer, I will have regained my balance.
What are your best tips for achieving work-life balance?
Beautiful Two-Word Combinations, Immature and Otherwise
After weeks of mounting evidence, I came to the conclusion last night that if you want to get our youngest son (who will turn 4 on Monday!) to laugh, all you have to do is say STINKY BUTT. Blame it on his two older brothers and the potty humor that reigns in my household, but STINKY BUTT represents the ne plus ultra of word combinations for a certain preschooler. Really, there are no two more wonderful words in the language than STINKY BUTT. If you are nearly 4, that is.
Being much older than nearly 4, I can actually think of quite a few that I would put ahead of S.B., in terms of beauty, promise, joy, loveliness. They are:
NEW CAR
SPRING MORNING
AFTERNOON OFF
OPEN BAR
CHERRY PIE
ENTHUSIASTIC RESPONSE
LABRADOR PUPPY
GRIPPING NOVEL
SISTERLY DEVOTION
FRESH PAINT
BIRTHDAY PARTY
TAX REFUND
EMPTY BEACH
LONG DINNER
NO MEETINGS
LAUGHING KIDS
Which brings me back to STINKY BUTT. And if I'm in the right frame of mind, that one makes me laugh too.
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March 16, 2011
What Is The One How-To That You Want To Master?
How many times have you seen a gorgeous style in a magazine or online, tried to replicate it, and fallen short? For me that is the worst. You finally decided to step out of your routine, but can't figure out how the all-knowing expert worked their magic. What if Real Simple found a way to simplify the process?
What would you want to learn? Personally, I would love to finally figure out the secret to creating a perfect cat-eye line in one swipe or how to recreate a salon blow out at home. Others on the Real Simple staff want to learn how to master a streakless at home self-tan, and figuring out the steps to creating their favorite hairstyles.
If we started a how-to series, what would be the first thing you would want to learn? A smokey eye? The perfect curl? Tell me what beauty task you want a step-by-step instructional for!
Make a Shopping List to Save at the Grocery Store
Along with not going to the supermarket hungry, making a shopping list is one of the most effective ways to avoid making impulse purchases. An extra few things here and there might not seem like a bit deal, but you might be surprised at how much you actually save by sticking to your list.
Studies show that the average shopper spends a full 23 percent less when they avoid impulse purchases at the grocery store. If you're looking for other ways to cut down on your food bill, check out the related links at the bottom.
What is your best strategy for saving money at the grocery store?
Related:
How to Save on Your Grocery Bill
How to Get the Best Restaurant Deal
