If we could build the perfect room from scratch, what would it look like? What features would it contain? Let’s have ourselves a little daydream… There are two kinds of kitchen-people: those who are content to cram their countertops with every single appliance, fruit basket, and cookbook they may hazard to use in the span of three to eighteen months, and those who want as little as humanly possible out on the counters. The later ...

We had fifteen minutes before my client had to bolt out the door. Fifteen minutes on the dot, because the one thing parents won't mess around with when it comes to promptness is school pick up. Our session had been a successful re-edit of her daughter's closet (it had been at least three years since we last worked together), but I had promised her that we could talk about her kitchen. Normally, I wouldn't divert ...

I have clients at both ends of the holiday-decorations spectrum. Some, as you can imagine, have tubs and tubs of themed decor for each and every occasion. For others, the holiday decorations are scant. Yet, I've noticed a tendency among those in possession of modest decoration collections: there is an underlying belief that to not go balls-to-the-decked-out-walls is to have failed, in some sense. It is to have deprived their offspring of obviously celebratory atmospheres. ...

Last week, we talked ways to win in the fight against moths, pests that really typify that whole straw-camel-back thing. Today, we're sticking in the same interior-headaches vein, and addressing the issue of moisture build-up and offensive smells (which so often seem to go hand in hand), an injustice no space-dweller should have to bare. Injustice? You ask. That's right. You can have the most meticulous, domestic management regime, and the most fastidious commitment to ...

Among the mental catalogue of images I've seen throughout my life is an illustration from The Cat in the Hat. It's the one where the children are sitting at the window, looking, with dismay, at a day of dark and stormy rain. Their despair is palpable. They are pent up, forlorn, and at a loss for how they'll fill their time. Children's books always contain the most wisdom, if you ask me. And so it ...