Hot Trends, Bad Ideas

Before every storm, the TV news shows people running to the grocery store to empty the shelves. Should you go, too? When I was living with my parents right after college, the power went out for three days. The good news is that their house had a fireplace. The bad news: being hoarders, my parents had too much junk around the fireplace to use it. Being a child of hoarders, I was well-conditioned to leave the hoard alone. We shivered. But it doesn't have to be that way. If your household is well-prepared, you shouldn't need run out and get supplies or suffer in a house that only feels like a meat locker. Since an emergency like a power outage can happen anytime, so it pays to be prepared. Here's what I keep at home: Meat in the freezer . (Much more filling and nutritious than the bread and milk everyone runs out to buy.) I stack the packages vertically, like books on a shelf, making it easier to get them out.  Canned goods (and hand-operated can openers). A kerose...

There's a popular FIRE guru who went to the same university I did, graduated the same year, got rich mostly through a charmed life, and now harangues his blog readers if they don't live like hillbillies. I, too, worked my ass off and saved money...and at age 28, I didn't have $50 to attend my high school reunion. I did not live a charmed life. So I'm thinking about starting an early retirement blog myself. I'll write a lot about how awful it is to have to get up and go to work every day*, but how wonderful it is to spend the day growing a garden, walking in the forest and playing with my dog. Then I'll spring the pitch: there are houses for sale in Indianapolis for as little as $10,000! These are legitimate, GOVERNMENT sales! You can own a house, retire early, and tell the The Man to take a hike! I'll have a friend who bought and rehabbed a few houses and rents them out tell readers that this is FOR REAL!** I haven't decided how to handle informatio...

I saw that ad, and boy, was I mad! The stereotyping, the ugliness, the assumptions, the negative portrayal--and it wasn't even for a product I use! Of course, I'm talking about ads targeted to women of a certain age. Never mind that I'm in good health (I take no medications), that I might like to take a vacation, and I have a house that occasionally need repairs. I've watched travel and home repair videos, so you might think Youtube would show me ads for travel destinations or local home repair goods or services. Yet Youtube was showing me nothing but ads for wrinkle creams and age spots and medications. Play some heavy metal videos and they think you have psoriatic arthritis. Approach age 50 and they think you look like the Crypt Keeper. I finally shut off Google's ad settings. So I can kind of understand why some men hate Gillette's new ad--they're tired of being lectured to and lumped in with badly behaved men. People would be up in arms if an ad pro...

Should you run out and replace your straws, appliances, car and house with new, efficient models? Probably not. An article in The Times describes how the author became an eco-Puritan. She acknowledges that in her circle, at least, it's a bunch of virtue signaling. I know some people really are passionate about helping the environment, but if your friends are looking down their noses at you for your wrapping paper, maybe it's time to find new friends--ones that won't trade YOU in for a more efficient model. Let's consider some of the ways people try to "save the environment." Upgrading your refrigerator (or car, or any appliance). A new refrigerator might be a lot more efficient, but your buying one isn't doing anything to "save the environment." The old refrigerator will be hauled away to a recycling center or used appliance shop, cleaned (boy, do they stink when they get to room temperature), sold, and delivered to a new address. Now, t...

No. The diet portion is based on dated, anti-fat advice that's been debunked, and the app is connected with pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline. From  23andMe's blog , Lark and 23andMe have teamed up to offer customers the opportunity to integrate their genetic results into coaching programs to spur you toward your health goals this year. 23andMe recently signed a deal with GlaxoSmithKline to share customer data (aggregated and de-identified), and Glaxo bought a $300 million stake in 23andMe. See  this . GlaxoSmithKline makes beta blockers, which lower blood pressure, and a number of bronchial drugs. Do you think an app they're plugging is going to help you avoid using those drugs? Screen grab from ourLark video.  Starchy beans--just what you don't need to prevent diabetes. Fox, meet henhouse. 

Are they rotten? Are they broken? Do you need an egress? No? Then probably not. My house has the original "drafty old basement windows" from 1931. The previous owners stuffed insulation into the window recesses and nailed boards over them to keep the insulation in place. I had to take the insulation off a few months ago to get some of the glass replaced (note: don't paint your windows black--it can overheat the glass and break it, even on the north side of the house) and started thinking how much nicer the basement would look without the boards and insulation. I made plans to make covers for the insulation. In the meantime, I put large bubble wrap over the panes as insulation. The basement is unheated and I've had a clock with a thermometer down there since I moved in. I check the temperature in the winter because I start seeds in the basement then, and they won't sprout if it's too cold. How much colder do you think the basement is without the insulation...

Should you follow today's hot decorating trends to make your place look au courant? Probably not. I've held off decorating my house since moving here three years ago. Around the time I moved, I saw the magic that happened when the hoarder house I grew up in got cleaned out: it looked like a home. A year later, got rid of a bunch of stuff and decamped to another state. Flush with cash in a low cost of living area full of beautiful antiques, I...got rid of more stuff. I had ataxaphobia (fear of clutter--everything is a condition nowadays) and most of my pictures are still stacked in the extra room. My fear of clutter has subsided enough on its own that I've thought about decorating. I have lots of decorating magazines (I bought them a few years ago for normative cues as to what a house should look like inside), watched several decorating videos, and formed some opinions. Should you knock out the wall to your kitchen? Probably not. If your kitchen and adjoining room are...

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I got a lovely housewarming gift from my parents: a pot that cooks entire meals in minutes instead of hours. It saves time, it saves energy, doesn't heat up the whole kitchen in the summer, and it's perfect for someone like me with no patience. It was kind of neat being the only person I knew, besides, my mother, who used one. But I wondered why more people didn't use one--that pot was (and is) great, even after over 20 years' use. Of course I'm talking about a pressure cooker. Evidently, they needed more doo-dads and a new name (Instant Pot) to become popular again. And popular they are, even though they're two to three times the price, or more, of a plain old pressure cooker and they take up counter space. Instant pots also function as slow cookers and warmers, but it's the instant part that's appealing to people. If what you want is a pot that will cook your food in a jiffy, a pressure cooker will work. Put it on the stove, add your food with su...

"The baby shower from hell"--that's how a coworker described the baby shower she was putting on for someone. Between the special invitations, special food, special party favors and maybe a special venue, it was a lot of work. And she's an organized, capable person who already has a lot to do. Someone else on a forum I read had a very special baby shower planned by family members who were going to fly across the country, stay with relatives two hours away, cook food at their house and transport it two hours away to the shower. That plan alone has a lot that can go wrong, but the family members got nasty when the OP called and asked how the plans were going. Probably, the relatives offered to do the shower on a whim without considering the time, money and logistics involved. People used to save that kind of bother for weddings. They're not alone with celebrations gone awry. One recent survey says shoppers racked up an average of $1,054 in holiday debt this year...