2 Tremendous Travel Tips

These are not the travel tips. These are the dogs, who spent vacation masquerading as rockers on an album cover from the 70s. 

So on my way home from vacation Sunday I read the magazine article “Packing Hacks”. File this under the “day late, dollar short” category in my life. Because this info would have been so helpful before I went on vacation.

And left all my necklaces at home because it makes me so bitter when they end up a tangled mess at the bottom of my suitcase, alongside other travel oddities. See: hotel sewing kits, baggage tags and money from foreign locales one can’t remember having visited.

But I am happy I learned the most important Travel Tip at the beginning of summer.

If you want to stay healthy (when on germy airplanes to get to some exotic locale where you will get money you will squirrel away in the bottom of your suitcase for the next 10 years), you have to get some Neosporin antibiotic cream.

Next, you have to pop it on a q-tip and swirl it around the inside tip of each nostril. This is gross, but it will also keep germs at bay which makes the gross-ness worth it. And if you have kids or pets this act doesn’t even make the top 10 list of gross things you’ve done this week alone.

Like life with kids and pets, an illness-free vacation is worth it.

A vacation – that includes jewelry and shoes – is also an interesting idea. So I’ll share the “travel hack” info too.

1.      To pack necklaces: cut open a straw and loop the necklace through the straw to prevent tangling. Genius!

2.    To pack germy shoes: wrap them in the plastic shower caps the hotel provides. This way exotic dirt on all your clothes is not one of the souvenirs you’re bringing home.

Happy end-of-summer vacationing, guru girls & guys!

2 Gotta Get's: For A Brighter & Safer February

There are the things you’re supposed to do. And then there are the things you actually do. This is why I’m not so concerned about the latest health news: running is, in fact, quite bad for you. While slow jogging is, in fact, quite good.

For me, running falls into the “things I really should do but never get around to” category. It’s so much easier to admire houses and enjoy the day when you’re slow jogging. Plus there is no wheezing for breath or looking sweaty.

But alas, I also bring this half-ass attitude to things other than physical fitness. Things like culinary prep.

Everyone knows you’re supposed to have different cutting boards for different food groups. This is so there’s absolutely no chance of cross contamination from foul poultry juices on your cutting board.

What I don’t understand is how any poultry juices can possibly survive being hand-scoured by me, in the sink, before being industrially rousted out, by the dishwasher.

Plus how would you ever keep the cutting boards straight? For these reasons – and also, my half ass attitude – we have no separate cutting boards at Chez Guru.

Until now. Because I just saw these cute, little cutting boards that do the work for you. They’re in the shape of the items for which they’re designed. Genius!(Click this link to go to modcloth.com to buy these for around $14 for an entire set.)

Almost as genius as this dog toy. Because what’s better than slow jogging and safe kitchen prep? Fake teeth. For your dog! (Click this link to go to modcloth.com where you can buy doggy teeth for around $14.)

Guess what Stanley’s gonna be doing this weekend? (In addition to slow jogging, of course.)

2 Hands, 1 Heart & A Whole Lotta Homeland

My fella and I are excited. The new season of “Homeland” is about to start. We are less excited that our Showtime subscription has changed.

We can access Showtime online but not on the actual television set anymore.

This means we’re gonna have to get our fix of weekly espionage on the i-pad... a device we’re going to have to share.

This is very bad news.

We don’t share well. In fact, I once told Guru Guy if he didn’t buy himself his own umbrella I was going to leave him. 

We were in San Francisco. It was pouring rain, and we’d spent the day struggling over the umbrella.

We were newlyweds so this explains why we would even attempt such a rookie move as sharing an umbrella. Mental note: just because it looks cute and romantic in the “Pepsi” ad does not mean it is at all cute and romantic in real life.

We are no longer newlyweds. We are hardened veterans (like the Homeland crew this season!). We know what works for us, and it’s not sharing. So I’m getting the TwoHands II gadget. It snaps onto the i-pad and voila! hands-free viewing.(Click this link to go to amazon.com where you can get the TwoHands II for around $10.)

It will free up my hands and my heart. Because I will not spend the evening thinking hateful thoughts about my fella and his bad i-pad holding ways.  

One can only hope Claire Danes experiences a similar epiphany this season. Surely, like guru girl, she can forgive, forget and shop her way out of the darkness.

Happy viewing, guru girls & guys! 

3 Easy Options To Stow Your Gear

These Trofast shelves from Ikea retail for $180. Hooks for coats/bags additional. 

I am the locker whisperer. At least this is what I told the 11 year old this summer when we went to middle school check-in. She was worried her locker wouldn’t open.

And it turns out she was right to worry. Her locker is hard to open! In life, there are some inescapable truths:

You never get assigned the easy-to-open locker. Just like you never get assigned the easy-to-organize family. 

So we embrace the work around. Some WD40 here, a mudroom there, and we’re in business!  

If you don’t have a mudroom but you do have a formal dining room or living room, it’s a no-brainer. Thanksgiving comes once a year. 

Getting your family out the door? 

Every day.

Take an entire wall of this fancy room and trick it out. We’re talking storage, people. Locker storage cabinets or coat hooks and benches with shoe storage. 

The goal is to store at least 3 sets of shoes, coats and bags. There are a million ways to do it. And all of them are better than throwing that stuff on the floor or kitchen table.

This shutter locker storage is from homedecorators.com. It retails for $469 with $40 shipping. And it has a closed-door option too, which retails for $799.

For that twice a year you actually use your formal dining room, you can move the storage system into the garage so you’re not looking at Junior’s smelly soccer cleats over the turkey.

This "bench with shoe storage" unit is from Ikea and retails for $60. Place several hooks over it for coats and backpacks. 

This middle school locker only took us 2 1/2 hours to open. 

I know we like pretty rooms and spaces. Heck, I’m the one who bought the 11 year old a chandelier. For her locker.

But functional trumps pretty. She’s gotta be able to open the locker to enjoy the chandelier. It’s the same principle for our homes: first the function, then the fabulous.

Happy organizing, guru guys & girls! 

Hide Kitchen Clutter In 1 Easy Step

I have a love/hate thing with the whole hidden-in-plain-sight concept.

On the home front, I love the hidden-away idea because I don’t like visual clutter.

But I hate it when a hidden object becomes a lost object.

So I am undecided on this organization tip I just read about. The tip is this: use a bread box as a charging station for your cell phones/i-pads/kindles etc.

Close the lid and voila! you have gizmos charging but not cluttering your kitchen.

In theory, this sounds great. In practice, I wonder how it will work.

Especially for man-lookers. Not that any of those live at my house.

(Man-looker = an individual challenged in finding household items, even those directly in front of eyes. Can be identified by distinctive cry that begins,”Have you seen my…” Gender: either. Age: any.)

I think the breadbox charging station would cause less visual clutter at my house but more nervous breakdowns for the man-lookers unable to find their gadgets.

It’s a trade off. Is it worth it?

I guess it depends how desperately you want to hide said items. Are you Ryan Gosling/Eva Mendes let’s-hide-a-pregnancy-for-6-months desperate? 

Or do you take a more confounding approach, a la actress Zoe Saldana, who appeared preggers on the red carpet but refused to confirm. This drove the talking heads to speculate: is Saldana expecting a real baby or suffering from a burrito baby?

Personally, I find burrito baby musings distasteful. Almost as distasteful as kitchen clutter! But to each their own.

Conquer that clutter any way that works for you, guru girls & guys (but not by shoving it temporarily in the oven, a decision that shows poorer judgement than those of us who spend minutes of our lives opining about burrito babies.) 

The Surf & Sand "It" Bag

Took the dog to a new groomer this morning. They had me fill out a questionnaire describing Stanley’s personality. I wanted to write bouncing psycho.

But I didn’t. 

Even though that dog tried to climb out the window of the car on the drive over to the groomer. This was after Stanley leapt into the car via the front seat and somehow managed to turn on the hazards with his tail.

 

I don’t know how to turn the hazard lights off yet because the car is new, and it’s never been in such a hazardous situation before – clearly, because Stanley doesn’t get to ride in it that often.

So there I was wildly reading the driver’s manual to see how to turn the hazards off. Dog panting in my right ear, children screeching in my left ear, because now we’re late getting to art class. When – of course – up saunters our favorite handyman, Henry.

You know those people in your life you don’t see that often but every time you do see them you look utterly hopeless?

Henry is that person to me.

I seem to be in a ridiculous situation every time he comes over for a project. So it was doubly embarrassing when Henry reached through my open window and clicked off the hazard light button. The one in the middle of the dashboard. With the big hazard symbol on it.

Argh.

So I’m not exactly killing it on the home front today. At least in terms of efficiency and grace under pressure.  But I am gonna kill it on the pool front tomorrow. Because I saw this great, new beach bag that is such a good product it does the thinking for you. (Hear that, Honda hazard light designers?)

It’s a pool bag that also acts as a cooler. It’s insulated so your snacks stay cold. But it’s light enough to sling over your shoulder. Here’s how to make it even more clever:

-         Put ice in 3 or 4 giant Ziploc bags. Cozy these around your perishable items. Then, as the day goes on, pour the melted water into a cup and – voila! – it’s a water bottle you didn’t have to haul.

-         Put a pair of scissors in another Ziploc bag. Use them to cut open yogurt tubes and other tricky snack items. Like those plastic prisons Gatoraide six-packs come in. (Who can slide bottles out of those damn things? I mean, other than Henry.)

Follow these 3 steps (1. Get bag. 2. Ice up ziplocks. 3. Add scissors ) and beckon summertime adventure.

Because you’ve got it covered, and you’re keeping your cool (basically the exact opposite of Guru Girl this morning). 

You can get this miracle bag at your local Sam’s Club or Cost Co., bouncing psycho dog not included. (Click this link to go to amazon.com where you can get a similar bag for around $8.)

Happy pool-time fun, guru girls & guys!

Ditch Antibacterial Soap: Embrace Guru Girl Goodness Instead

Yesterday I saw a mouse skittering across the kitchen. You know how I feel about mice. I jumped on the chair first and asked questions later.

My questions were many:

1.      My friendly pest management guy had recently visited and given us the thumbs up.

2.    It was a very fast moving mouse.

3.    It was mysteriously shaped, almost like a shadow of a mouse.

Today I figured out it wasn’t a mouse at all.

It was a dust bunny! A dust bunny made up of black dog hair that flew across the kitchen when the back door was opened. I discovered this because there is another one, just like it, in the family room!

On the one hand, I’m happy. We have no mice.

On the other hand, I’m dismayed.

We have dust bunnies that double as small animals.

There is no good answer to this except for guru girl to quit the holiday merriment and apply a little elbow grease to the cleaning situation.

I don’t enjoy cleaning, but I do enjoy cleaning products. And this potion, which I shall call Guru Girl Goodness, is the very best of the bunch for 2 reasons.

1.      It smells divine.

2.    You mix it up yourself. So very on trend and DIY!

I got the recipe from some pro housecleaners who did the move-out clean for us this summer. You better believe those ladies know their stuff!

Guru Girl Goodness Cleaning Spray:

1 

I    In an empty spray bottle, mix 1/3 water, 1/3 Mr. Clean and 1/3 Dawn dishwashing liquid. (The specific kinds are: Mr. Clean with Febreze and Dawn Ultra dishwashing liquid.)

Helpful hints:

1.      It’s important you get the Febreze option.

2.    Don’t put in too much dishwashing liquid or you will have bubbles all over the place.  

Use this stuff on any counter that needs shining. It shines it right up, leaving no residue and the best scent ever.

Your kitchen will smell and look as high end as celebrity chef Nigella Lawson’s. But without the cocaine trails. 

And the only mouse sightings you’re gonna have are the ones next to your computer. 

Happy cleaning, guru girls & guys!

Free App That Increases Free Time: Can It Be?

Sometimes there are products that are beyond unnecessary. Such as numbing spray for your feet. This newly invented product eliminates the aching feet that result from wearing high heels.

 

It eliminates the pain by also eliminating any and all feeling… in the body part that is hurting but also keeping you upright, balanced and in motion.

I’m not a science girl, but it seems like this would be an important body part to be able to, um, feel.

This is not a necessary product and, in fact, sounds downright dangerous. But here’s another new product that is the opposite: “Beat The Traffic” is my new, favorite app because it is the trifecta of things I like: necessary, non-dangerous and free!

BTT is a free app for your phone. It pinpoints where you are and shows you how fast traffic is moving on the major highways in your area. If the highways appear in green, all is good. If they’re orange, it’s stop and go. If a section appears in brown, traffic is at a dead stop so take the back way, pilgrim.

So easy, so quick! BTT is your own personal, traffic reporter (minus the annoying d.j. banter and car crash sound effects). In a world that sometimes abounds with these irritating things (and high heels… and high heel numbing cream!) it’s better to focus on life (and traffic) enriching elements instead.

Guru girls & guys, start your engines (but not before you’ve checked BTT). (Click this link to read more about "Beat The Traffic".)

 

2 Organizing Tips For The Ages

I have recently learned 2 hard truths about organizing. Okay, make that 3.

#1 – I myself am not that organized, despite obsessively reading any and all magazine articles about the topic.

#2 – Cute baskets and gizmos from the Container Store are not the key to organizing success. In fact, it is likely they will impair organizing success because in buying these items you are just adding to the clutter.

Want to be organized? Throw your stuff away, say organizational experts. Or donate it. Everything but the items you use and wear all the time.

What you must not do is keep all your stuff and go on a shopping spree for cute baskets. Or else you will end up like me the next time you move – drowning in a sea of stuff and cute containers!

The secret to organization is elbow grease, not wicker.

#3 -- Closet organization is easily achieved if you hang your clothes by outfit. Don’t organize it by color or type of clothing, i.e. shirts, jeans etc.

Instead hang entire outfits together. So you drape your zebra stripe cardigan over the white tank you always wear it with and hang your black pants and zebra belt just behind it. Do this for all of your favorite outfits and you’ll drastically reduce your “I have nothing to wear” days.

I just read about this tip and plan to implement it immediately! As soon as I make my way out of this pile of storage. Happy organizing, guru girls & guys! I promise more "gotta buy it", "gotta read it" tips are on the way. Just have to find my magazine stash!

 

Best LBD Ever: Little Black Dress Jewelry Organizer By Umbra

LBDs are a requirement for any closet. Or so fashion editors tell us. LBDs – or little black dresses – become not such a requirement when the last BTE (black tie event) attended can only be dimly recalled. That’s how far back in the mists of time it occurred.

This is the certainly the case for me. So I am surprised that my runaway favorite closet item is indeed a LBD.

I got this baby a few weeks ago, and it makes my organizing heart sing, just seeing it there in the closet. Because prior to its purchase, the jewelry situation was not so organized.

My necklaces sat, jumbled on a shelf, in an enormous pile. Earrings were scattered, hither and yon. None of it was worn very often, prompting one friend to declare me positively Amish in my approach to jewelry.

Not Amish. Just disorganized. But not anymore. Thanks to this amazing Little Black Dress from the Container Store. I can see everything. And now I wear it too.

 

In a recent magazine, one DIYer recommends making your own little black dress for your jewelry by getting some perforated cardboard and a couple of S hooks. I guess you could do this too, although it seems like the result might be more junky than chic.

Instead, get thee to the Container Store for your own LBD STAT. (Click this link to go to the Container Store website where you can learn more about the Little Black Dress Jewelry Organizer. It's available for $19.99.) 

Color Code Your Bookshelf

 

Summer is my favorite decorating season. Mostly because I don’t teach during summer session so have several blissful weeks to fluff my house. Unfortunately, this summer I’m on the decorating disabled list. Because, as you know, my favorite decorating activity is spray painting.

I’ve tackled lamps, frames, bookshelves. You name it. I’ve spray painted it.

A few weeks ago I spray painted our patio table and chairs. Many cans and coats later, the patio set looked great. My pointer finger, however, did not. It held the spray button down for so long that I gave it a raging case of pointer-finger-carpal-tunnel syndrome. 3 weeks later, my finger is still stiff and weak.

So spray painting is out for now, but my latest decorating project is just as easy as a spray paint makeover and provides just as much instant impact. I’m going to color code my bookshelves!

Here’s how it works: Line up your books by color. Pile some vertically and some horizontally. Throw in some framed artwork and voila! Instant intellectual rainbow. In your living room!

I am on vacation this week but will post my before and after pics as soon as I get this done at home. Happy 4^th of July, guru girls & guys! We are busily preparing for our float in the parade tomorrow. Will post pics of my favorite dancing presidents soon!

Photo credit: From Dwell.com; google "color coded bookshelf" for more in-depth instructions

This Season's "It" Bag: The Thirty-One Tote

Kim Kardashian is going to be leaving the hospital any day now with her little bundle of joy. And I am concerned. Kanye doesn’t look like the kind of guy who knows how to install the infant car seat, and they won’t let you leave the hospital without one.

Seriously. They check. And detain if necessary.

So while Kanye wrangles with the discharge nurses, it’s going to be up to Kim to corral the baby bling showered upon them during their stay. There will be flowers and stuffed animals, as well as diapers, breast pumps, pacifiers and baby’s first blanket (hospital-issued, which every good parent smuggles out of the hospital as a keepsake).

A grocery cart is basically what you need to tote all this stuff. But grocery carts are not glam enough for the Kardashian clan. Here’s what is: the thirty-one utility tote.

I have 2 friends who have ‘em and rave about them. The bag stands up on its own. It’s big so you can load tons of stuff in it, and it comes in really cute fabrics. The trifecta of good! You can also personalize it. If I were to get one for an expectant mom, I’d go with something like “LBLS”, the universally accepted monogram for “Little Baby, Lotta Stuff”.

The thirty-one tote can corral baby bling now and pool or picnic stuff later… like when baby is 18 and the parents finally have the energy to engage in leisure-time activities that don’t involve sleep.

Get this bag today and celebrate your leisure time, the one thing Kim and Kanye don’t have much of these days.(Click this link to go to the website to learn more about the thirty-one large utility tote.) They are available for around $35.  

Why Crafting Space is The Answer *

*to a problem you didn't even know you had...

I love HGTV as much as the next girl. The design shows are particular favorites. But I fear they’ve done us a disservice. There’s now an entire generation of us with the belief that our houses need to look HGTV-ready. All the time. Despite the fact there are no hunky carpenters or camera crews lurking in our kitchens.

In HGTV’s mania for clean and orderly, I think they’ve taken some of the fun out of our houses. Remember kindergarten and finger painting? How about the last time you baked cookies with a kiddo?

Fun is messy. Fun is disorganized. Fun is unrestrained. That’s kind of the whole point.

 

I went to a girls’ night out last weekend hosted by a gal from school whom I hadn’t met before. She has a great house, an even greater margarita machine and guess what else?

 

She has a crafts room. Yes. An entire room devoted to crafts. It was bright and cheerful and filled with crafts stuff. I was struck by how excited we all were about it. We were a diverse group, united by only a few common things: our love for our first graders, our love for the margarita machine and our love for this crafts room!

 

Most of us have a creative impulse. Maybe it takes different forms (quilting, jewelry making, decorating, baking, scrap booking etc.), but it’s there. Maybe we don’t all have enough space to deck out a crafts room. (The party host laughed that she decided to have a crafts room instead of a guest room!) But we need to make the space in our lives and our houses to indulge the creative impulse.

 

Carve out a corner in the family room for it. Make peace with the fact this is part of your house that is messy and disorganized. Don’t frantically clean it up at the end of every creative session. Tell yourself this is a sign of life in your house. Because that’s what houses are for. They aren’t supposed to be sterile set pieces. Houses are where you live your life. The happiest ones show that.

 

If creative clutter on display is an absolute deal breaker for you, try this instead: You know that formal dining room you rarely use? Repurpose it. Put your creative gear in some heavy duty baskets (make sure you get the kind that have lids). Store the baskets in the dining room on the floor and bust out your creative gear when time allows. (Make sure you put a plastic table cloth in too to protect your table.)   

 

 

The act of creating takes us out of ourselves. In that moment we’re not about our jobs or our kids or our efficient life managing strategies. We’re lost in the moment. And sometimes getting lost is the best way to find an important part of yourself.

 

If you have a crafting area part of your house or ideas to share, send me a pic. I’ll share them in a future post. Keep up the creativity, guru girls & guys!

Photo credits:

 Pic 1: Actual photo of my sink, after the 2012 Gingerbread House Debacle

Pic 2: The crafting corner at our house. Yes, I have OCD about stuff being put away. But not in this corner.

Pic 3: The formal dining room that we use 3 times a year. Look at how unobtrusive those crafts baskets are at the bottom of the frame. This would totally work as a crafting area too.

One Very Good Vacuum: The Dyson Digital Slim DC44 Animal

So it’s come to this. I am lusting after a vacuum cleaner and seriously contemplating spending big bucks on it. This is how serious I am: I’m also contemplating giving up my weekly Panera dinner with the Dynamic Duo in order to fund this vacuum acquisition.

 

I love Panera. I love not cooking dinner in the middle of the week. I might love this vacuum more. It’s a Dyson, which we all know makes it the Muhammed Ali of the vacuum world, i.e. undisputed champion but also slow and heavy. This new vacuum model is basically Sugar Ray Leonard, i.e. just as powerful, but lightweight (and also cordless!) (Click this link for more information about the Dyson Digital Slim DC44 Animal). It's available at Bed, Bath & Beyond for around $400. 

 

I’m undecided about the purchase. I have a deeply held belief that household maintenance items should be free since they are simply necessary and not fun at all. I once used this logic in a budget discussion with my fella when we first got married.

 

I argued the grocery bill shouldn’t count in the budget because food doesn’t count as a fun purchase. It’s just a necessary purchase, for, you know, survival.  As you can imagine, this argument didn’t go over too well with my fella who is a Midwesterner and thus very practical, about things like budgets and snow.  

 

Over the years I’ve gotten more practical about basic economics. I get that vacuums aren’t free just because we’d like them to be. Just like carpets aren’t dog-hair-less, despite my ardent wishes.

But the Dyson Digital Slim DC44 Animal could fix my carpet problem. Now if only there was something to fix my budget outlook. I bet my fella would pay big bucks for it.

Craigslist Tips: The Sequel

Don't let your burkini lay around, collecting dust. Sell it on Craigslist!

 

I’m supposed to be writing a blog post, but I got distracted by the latest edition of “People” magazine, which was just begging me to read it. There are questions that need answering.

How is Princess Kate doing with her pregnancy?

Did Christina Aguilera really lose a bunch of weight or is it a styling trick?

Is Miley Cyrus still engaged?

The answers are: fine, it’s a styling trick and yes.

I wouldn’t know that if I hadn’t taken the time to read the entire issue just now. Because my friends are hopeless. They are a busy, high-achieving bunch, but not in the field of celebrity dirt. But perhaps I shouldn’t complain, as perhaps this is exactly why they are friends with me.

I am an expert in celebrity dirt (with sideline expertise in parenting mishaps). And I share my information freely… kind of like my friends who are experts in Craigslist. These friends recently gave me such a plethora of Craigslist information I had to break it into two parts. Here is Craigslist Part II.

Craigslist Tips If You’re Selling

1.      You can get rid of almost anything on Craigslist. People will buy stuff you thought you had to call 1-800-GOT-JUNK to get rid of. I have actually paid money to this outfit to take away weird stuff from our basement. Grrr… why didn’t I just Craigslist it all?

My friends brag that they even sold a bunch of paving stones from their garden. The buyers not only bought the pavers, they dug them out of the garden themselves. Clearly, my friends’ Craigslist ju ju is strong. I am a beginner and can’t hope for such success, but if someone – anyone – would buy the cost-the-earth, blinged-out tricycle that’s been sitting in our basement for 3 years, I would be psyched.

2.    Don’t offer an item for free. Charge at least $5 so you get queries from qualified buyers. If you offer an item for free, the Craigslist crazies come out. You will get way too many e-mails. And these aren’t even serious buyers. Just people who like free stuff and have a lot of time on their hands to e-mail. (This descriptor also applies to me, but I’m sure Craigslist crazies are far less charming.)

3.    Provide a picture with the item you’re selling. Visuals sell, baby. And also babies and breasts, according to Advertising 101… which brings us to our next point, which is:

4.    You don’t need breasts to sell on Craigslist, but it helps. Apparently, female sellers get a far greater response rate than male sellers. This is according to the personal experience of my friends who are married to each other. When it’s the wife selling the item, the response rate is greater. So if you’re coupled up, the one of you with lady parts should be listed as the seller.

 

5.      And lastly, if you have a difficult-to-pronounce name, pull a Prince and change it for your listing. On Craiglist people respond better to generic names, i.e. Bambie is better than Bartholemew.

In sum, Craigslist users like photos, women and easy-to-pronounce names. These also seem to be the guiding principles behind men’s magazines. (A handy pneumonic device to help you remember these Craigslist tips.)

Happy selling, guru girls & guys!