Line the bottom of shoe storage containers with tongue-and-groove cedar planks. The aromatic wood helps neutralize any odors and helps maintain a fresh-smelling closet.
Located stateside in the charming town of Washington, Connecticut, is a true gardening wonder: a quintessentially English garden.
Hollister House Garden, named after the 1760 house around which it is built, was created by art and antiques dealer George Schoellkopf in the manner of such famous English landscapes as Sissinghurst and Great Dixter: formal in its structure, yet rather wild in its style of planting.
Resources
For more information, visit hollisterhousegarden.org.
In summer, the mere mention of chores can evoke reactions usually reserved for dentist appointments and haircuts. To make tasks less tedious for everyone, print them on strips of paper, color-coding to distinguish "grown-up jobs" from "kid jobs." On chore day, have everyone draw and complete a job.
Digital pictures, tucked into card-stock tags with windows, identify the contents inside each garment bag. Breathable and inexpensive, the canvas bags can be dressed up with colorful bias tape, applied with an iron and fusible webbing.
Twenty-inch cloth napkins (or same-size squares of fabric) become protective covers for coats and vests that don't need to be stored in garment bags. Each is pierced in the center and reinforced with a grommet to slide over a hanger.
Are your towels holding less water than they used to? It may be that your choice of washing detergent contains fabric softener, which has residues that cling to individual fibers, rendering towels less absorbent. The next time you clean a load, add a cup of distilled white vinegar to the rinse cycle; it will remove the residue and restore towels' soaking power. In the future, avoid detergents with fabric softener when washing towels.
