naked notes

Finding it hard to cope with a lack of outdoor gardening space?  Small container planting, especially in windows can easily help!   A window box could add a whole new dimension to your home.  It’s unbelievable how different my interior feels when I open the curtains to see an abundance of green and bright colors!

Last week I shared a dirty secret: I had bedbugs. Now here’s how I got rid of them.
I had three things on my mind when trying to figure out how to wage war against my bedbugs: efficacy, cost, and environmental health. Getting rid of the bugs was clearly my first priority, yet I certainly didn’t [...]

I started my plant collection with just a couple little pots on a table next to my window.  Over the years, I have had to adapt to my tight quarters and my wild cats’ desperate attempts to sabotage any greenery indoors.
Smart solutions to plant placement is key: think brackets, shelves, plant stands, hooks and hangers.

Are you starved of plant life in the city?  Most of us aren’t lucky enough to have space for our own gardens outside, but that is certainly not a reason for not having any plants!
Indoor plant material has found a way to work even under the most unnatural of environments.  Some of these plants are [...]

This is the story of how I found out that I had bedbugs.
First things first: I am not a dirty person. I am a highly educated, gainfully employed, mostly normal New Yorker.  I do not engage in unusual social behavior (or at least nobody has ever told me that I do).  Yes, I’m a bit [...]

‘Tis moving season, my friends. If you’re a renter and you haven’t successfully renegotiated your lease, odds are you’re gearing up to haul all your earthly possessions into the next in a long string of rental apartments. I loathe packing, and though I don’t know many people who hate it as much as I do, [...]

By now I hope that most of you know that buying bottled water isn’t getting you anything that’s necessarily cleaner or purer than what flows from your tap. New York City has some of the best drinking water around, so don’t waste your money on bottled water and spare the planet all those plastic bottles, [...]

You were hoping this had something to do with getting naked. Sorry. It’s about saving energy, a decidedly less-sexy topic. We’ll make it a quickie: Use power strips. Here’s why.

I have a really small mailbox so I hate it when the mailman jams catalogs into it and crumples things I actually care about, like a birthday card from my mom or a financial statement that I don’t want to care about but am legally required to by the IRS.

Plants are wonderful things. In some ways, they’re like a really great mom: they clean up all sorts of messes and they make you feel good. But unlike your mom, plants suck up carbon dioxide, thereby doing more than we humans are to clean up this little “whoops” we created called global warming. They can [...]