I’ve been driving my friends and family nuts over the past few months, ranting constantly about choice paralysis and the need for human curation in a world of limitless options. (Apple Music came out yesterday, and its curated playlists are amazing.) At the same time, our house is in a weird state of limbo due to […]
Episode 66: Conserving Energy In Your Home
This time I decided to focus on extreme temperatures and money – two things I have a problem with. For this conversation, I invited Duo Dickinson (who happens to be an architect with a passion for such matters), writer Bob Tedeschi, animal rescuer (and farm gal) Kathleen Schurman, travel industry goddess Katie Gerhard, and our […]
Wither Winter
The advent of winter is more than a religious season for my Episco-homies, it’s the time of ecumenical energy freak out. That first oil refill, gas bill or cord of wood delivery creates an economic edge to an environmental truth: mammals do not make enough internal heat to be warm when it’s cold. Reptiles need […]
Clutter This
When Siddhartha sat meditating under a Bodhi tree for six years, he came to understand that the desire for worldly comforts was a poison. And that our need to constantly accumulate possessions was the source of all the miseries of mankind. After sitting under a palm tree on a Caribbean beach with a cooler for six hours, […]
Episode 59: Organizing Stuff
“That’s meaning of life isn’t it – trying to find a place for your stuff.” George Carlin. The man is a genius. Our family downsized about three years ago, and, after we donated/sold/pitched out box after box of junk, it occurred to me that “stuff” might be a good topic for the Guide. I invited my architect […]
Men Stank, Humidity and Basements
On this week’s episode, we riffed on Olde School’s great Man Cave space. Most American homes actually have a built-in cave – a basement. Ever since Cliff May invented the Raised Ranch (which is truly a dumbed-down version of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Prairie-Style homes), sunlight got into more Great American Suburban Home basements. More light […]
Decorate, Deconstruct or Divorce
Houses are a lot like human beings: they have characteristics that are often genetic and cannot be overcome. Even with an aggressive 12-step program, many homes are beyond rehab by redecoration. There are two types of house dysfunction. First is the simple need for repair: things are broken and need to get fixed. Whether it’s […]
Kitchen clean-up: sponge or paper towels?
One of the things that screws us up in life is the fact that we often end up doing something the way we’ve always done it, without stopping to think about about whether or not it’s really the best way. In my case, it’s an ongoing insistence that the proper method for cleaning your kitchen […]