Category Archive

Nitty Gritty

This is our category dedicated to the hard topics of occupancy – the realities of having a home. Nitty gritties might involve moving, dealing with appliances, handling passive aggressive landlord notes, or choosing a utility company.

I made a fashionable and FREE bat-proof fireplace cover

Do you ever have an idea so great that you can’t even handle yourself until you make it happen? This bat-proof fireplace cover was one of those ideas for me…

Why you should share your passwords with someone TODAY

Do you have an online life that’s larger than just email or facebook. Do you write fanfic, like me, and have a bunch of people waiting for your next chapter? Maybe you post advice in a forum on a hobby you love. Are you close to people who only know your pseudonym?

Here’s why you should write down and share your passwords to all your accounts TODAY…

How can I get a packrat to stop giving me stuff?

My mother saves everything. I have spent the last decade trying to fight my own packrat tendencies. But I’m pregnant with the first grandchild, and now am receiving lots of stuff from her. Is there any graceful way to communicate that I don’t want to take on curation of a family museum? Or do I have to store it for another 30 years, until she won’t notice that I threw it out/donated it?

How I faced my fear of the dentist: If it works for me (and cats) it can work for you

I’m not just afraid of the dentist. More accurately, I have a “shut down completely, cry when I even THINK about going, prescription drugs are not enough to calm me, once made a dentist too upset to continue working on my mouth, trauma response-level” fear of the dentist. Until this past year, I hadn’t been to the dentist in almost 10 years!

I was recently talking to a friend, who also has a fear of the dentist, and she asked how I conquered my fear and went to the dentist, not once but THREE times this past year. My answer was that I did NOT conquer my fear, but I did do this…

Locate and log your joy: How tracking positivity can help with depression

From therapy I learned how powerful positive self-talk and mantras can be, but only if they are a constant part of your self-care routine. I already kept a journal to help let go of my haphazard thoughts, so I decided to add a few sentences each day to document the positive parts of my day. Ultimately, finding the positive in every day wasn’t as easy as I had anticipated, but I pushed through and gained both a powerful new perspective on my life and some solid coping mechanisms that I could put into place…

How do you know when you’re being different for the sake of being different?

In my quest to be authentic to myself, I have to wonder — whether it’s something as major as changing faiths, or something as minor as choosing a hairstyle — how do you know when you’re being different for the sake of being a “special snowflake” and how do you know when you’re just being you? And more importantly, does it matter?

How have you held private and symbolic memorials?

My son didn’t want to go to his father’s funeral service. But I would like to do something with him, as some kind of remembrance and acknowledgement of loss. Can anyone think of a way for us to privately and symbolically observe an memorial for someone?

How I get over the guilt when exchanging or donating unwanted gifts

As an adult I find that I have a lot of guilty feelings over receiving gifts that I don’t actually want, need, or like. Whenever I receive something that I don’t really want, need, or like I revert to the my polite seven year old self — I smile and say thank you.

But now it’s more complicated as I’m the adult who has to decide what to do with the unwanted thing…