The Cultured Girl

When it comes to a folding fitted sheet, I generally just wad the thing up in a ball and flatten it enough so it fits in my linen closet. So I was intrigued by this little step-by-step primer on Target’s Australia site. Though I still couldn’t get my sheet to look like theirs—which had to have been ironed—this is by far the best folding strategy I’ve seen. I tried it at home, and the results weren’t half bad. Look!

When you start a new relationship, learning how to actually sleep together can be far more difficult than “sleeping together” in the euphemistic sense. You have to find that delicate balance between closeness but not overcrowding that will ultimately be more satisfying than sleeping alone. Which is why this charmingly illustrated book, The Secret Language of Sleep: A Couple’s Guide to the Thirty-Nine Positions, intrigues me. It breaks down snoozing positions like a Kama Sutra of sleep and explains what each configuration says about your relationship. At the very least, it should give you some ideas.

I recently moved into a new apartment, complete with a guest room—something I typically associate with parents and other bona fide grown-ups. I cannot claim to be one of those. After all, I live with a roommate, not a husband; our dinner parties often include a pre-meal doob; and our guests are 20-something couch surfers who stay up until 3 a.m. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t have a serviceable guest room.

I got to thinking about some of my mother’s wisdom, which dictates that everyone should sleep in her own guest room at least once, to see how much it sucks and make improvements. (As the guest in many rooms over the years, I can safely say that most people do not do this.) The basic requirements of a good guest room, however, are timeless. Consider these essentials outlined in a funny little book I have from 1922, called A Thousand Ways to Please a Family, With Bettina’s Best Recipes. If a few modern cross-references are any indication, Bettina was on to something. Already I have many of the features of a dream guest room, including:

a well-lighted mirror (check)
a table and a reading lamp beside the bed (the lamp is on the floor, but it’s something)
a shelf of well-chosen books and magazines (check)
a big wastepaper basket (check)
a desk with paper and a really good pen (it’s not a Mont Blanc or anything but it writes)
one desk chair and one really comfortable chair (got that covered, given that our apartment has an excess of chairs)
a closet with plenty of free hangers (the guest room closet is actually my closet, but there are some free hangers in there)
Elvis flip book (ok, so Bettina didn’t mention this, but I have one, and I think it will provide hours of guest entertainment)
alarm clock

As for sleeping in the guest room, I guess I’ll get around to that, just as soon as I get my boxes unpacked.

Parents can come in handy sometimes, like when they tell you about grown-up things you don’t know. After seeing my recent post on renter’s insurance, my dad passed on this tip: In addition to buying a policy — which isn’t itemized but simply a lump sum based on the estimated worth of your possessions — you should also take photos of the items covered by your policy (basically all of your valuable stuff). Store them on a disc, and keep the disc somewhere safe that’s not your apartment. That way, if something does happen, you’ll have a record of what you had to present to the insurance company. Insurance adjusters will feel far more comfortable writing a big check if they know you’re telling the truth about what you lost.

Of course, if you’re like me and you take photos of your apartments to show your decorating prowess to friends, then your job is done. Just be sure to take more snapshots when you buy something new and valuable.

Two kids. A dog. A white picket fence. Sometimes growing up means realizing that our childhood ideas of domesticity aren’t all they’re cracked up to be. So how come we still cling on to notion of a well-manicured front lawn? While I admit there’s something about the smell of freshly cut grass, a non-profit called Edible Estates does make an interesting point. It contends that the American lawn is nothing more than a “suburban carpet of conformity”–a water guzzling, pesticide-ridden waste of space that could be put to far better use. To prove his point, Estates’ founder Fritz Haeg is traveling around the nation to nine homes, turning swaths of crab grass into sustainable, food producing gardens.

Before and after shots:

And if you live in LA, Haeg is looking for volunteers:

We are currently seeking the skilled, eager and adventurous occupants of one conventional American house on a typical street of endless sprawling lawns. These L.A. citizens should be brave enough to break this toxic uniformity, by having their entire front lawn removed and replaced by an edible landscape.

And if you aren’t one of the chosen few, you can read his how-to guide online.

Filling out a renter’s insurance questionnaire can really force you to examine your maturity level:

Do you own any china? No.
Fine jewelry? Furs? Nope.
Collectibles? Depends. Do 150 snow globes count?

But even if your most prized possession seems frivolous — a $400 pair of shoes, a $650 metal lunch box — that doesn’t mean you don’t deserve renter’s insurance. In fact, it is utterly silly not to have it, because the policies are incredibly easy to get (you can do it in under an hour) and very affordable. I pay about $250 a year with State Farm to cover the replacement cost of every single one of my possessions in case of most scary eventualities, such as fires, robberies, and water damage (with the exception of natural disasters like earthquakes). You can get a policy from any number of providers, including AAA, Geico, and sometimes your bank, but the important thing is to just get one already.

The recently shuttered Budget Living used to be one of my favorite magazines. Though toward the end, they veered a bit too far from their thrifty roots, I deeply miss the early, glory days of the magazine. My back issues, plus the two books, Home Cheap Home and Party Central, are endless treasure troves. So, I was delighted to see that some of the BL refugees have now launched a blog. Adorably dubbed Shelterrific, it’s a daily dose of good buys and thrifty ideas for hip homemaking. Check it out.

It’s a good thing that Treehugger “reminded” me this week that I should unplug my cell-phone charger and turn off my power strips when I’m not using them—because honestly, I had no idea. Apparently, both gadgets are constantly leaking power (creating the ominously named “phantom load”) and wasting energy if they are plugged in or turned on but not being used. Just one of those little things a socially aware cultured girl can do.

This has already popped up on Boing-Boing, but I would be remiss not to mention Switch, a cool online show devoted to technically focused DIY projects for women, by women. (Nice article by Rachel Metz here.) Even if the specific projects don’t interest you (I can’t imagine why would I ever want a talking picture frame), the skills involved—from stripping electrical wires to using a soldering iron—would be good for any cultured girl to know around the house.