Newsletters
5 Reasons I’ll Never Put a Command Center in My Kitchen
The kitchen is the de facto command center in most homes. This is where families gather for breakfast and dinner—and homework and work work, too— every day, and it’s the spot to catch your kids or your spouse if there’s something you need to communicate about your day. So no wonder companies and bloggers make a big deal about putting a command center in the kitchen. It sounds so good: a designated spot, bulletin board and all, for controlling your household.
Ayn-Monique Klahre
Nov 15, 2018
9 Little Ways to Upgrade Your Kitchen Without Renovating
You're not stuck with what you've got.
Ayn-Monique Klahre
Nov 7, 2018
6 Inexpensive Things You Should Stop Wasting Your Money On
I am all for saving money. And since I started writing about cooking—and more recently spending hours researching prices for groceries and other goods at my local grocery and bulk stores—I’ve become an obsessed price-per-ounce reader and comparison shopper. But even though I believe in getting the best possible price for comparable goods, there are some products where the list price doesn’t reflect the item’s true value.
Ayn-Monique Klahre
Nov 7, 2018
The Totally Free Super Cleaner You’re Not Using
There is something in your kitchen that’s a super-cleaning agent, and you’re probably not using it often enough. And that’s silly — because it’s free (or almost free). That super cleaner is hot, hot water, and it costs about $0.0005 a gallon even in New York City, where everything is expensive! Few stains or debris stand a chance against super hot water, and it disinfects surfaces, too.
Ayn-Monique Klahre
Oct 4, 2018
The Most Ingenious Way to Clean a Slow Cooker Is Also the Easiest
You can actually get your slow cooker to clean itself.
Ayn-Monique Klahre
Sep 23, 2018
The Best $30 You’ll Ever Spend on Your Kitchen
When it comes to our kitchen cabinets, most of us are stuck with what we’ve got. Sure, if you own your place, you can do a full remodel — but even if you’re going the IKEA route, a renovation will easily cost you tens of thousands of dollars. And as anyone who’s ever done it knows, painting kitchen cabinets is an enormous pain. But there is one thing you can do for your kitchen cabinets that will keep them clean, preserve them long-term, and make them look better, too.
Ayn-Monique Klahre
Sep 10, 2018
3 Super-Smart Packing Tricks for Your Next Move
These little tricks will make it much easier to pack up your kitchen.
Ayn-Monique Klahre
Aug 24, 2018
7 Things You Should Never Do with Dish Soap
Dish soap is great! It’s handy not only for dishes, but also for cleaning all sorts of other things. It cuts right through grease and makes things squeaky-clean. I truly believe that with a good sponge, dish soap, and lots of hot water, you can clean just about anything. But I’ve learned — through research and real life experience — that there are a few things you should never do with dish soap. Here they are. When it comes to cleansers, you should never, ever mix them.
Ayn-Monique Klahre
Aug 9, 2018
The Surprising Place You Don’t Even Need to Clean
Keeping the kitchen clean is hard work. Every single day, multiple times a day, you spill food across the floors and countertops. You chuck crusty dishes into the sink. You splatter sauce or grease. And the effort of keeping it all spic and span— all that wiping, sweeping, and scrubbing! — can get totally tedious day in and day out.
Ayn-Monique Klahre
Aug 5, 2018
10 Brilliant Storage Ideas to Steal from These Tiny, International Airbnbs
If you want to (affordably) escape to an amazing city, renting a tiny Airbnb might be your best bet to get the perfect location. And one of my favorite things about staying in an Airbnb, especially one that’s someone’s home that they rent out versus one that’s really working as a hotel, is seeing the clever tricks they use to make living in teeny spaces work out. While we don’t usually recommend stealing from Airbnbs (that’s wrong! And illegal!
Ayn-Monique Klahre
Jul 25, 2018
4 Things You Should Never Clean with Baking Soda
From scrubbing pots and pans to deep-cleaning appliances, baking soda is such a great cleaning agent that it’s tempting to want to use it on everything. But even though it’s gentler than some alternatives, baking soda still has some downfalls. Because it’s abrasive, you have to be careful with surfaces that are lightly sealed or that have a finish that can be worn away (the same way you would be careful with scrubbing too hard with a scratchy sponge).
Ayn-Monique Klahre
Jul 5, 2018
The Cost of Painting Kitchen Cabinets Depends on These 3 Things
To DIY or not to DIY? That is the question. That is almost always the question. You can certainly paint your kitchen cabinets yourself. As long as you know that it’s a labor- and time-intensive job that, if done wrong, can be a pretty big screwup.
Ayn-Monique Klahre
Jun 25, 2018
The 6 Things You Should Do in Your New Kitchen Before You Unpack a Single Thing
Packing up to move is the worst—and the kitchen just may be the trickiest space of your whole house because of all those small, fragile items you have to carefully wrap and contain. On the flip side of that: Unpacking in your new-to-you kitchen (as long as nothing’s broken) is just about the best. I know, because we just moved into a new house and we got to start all over—yay! Starting fresh in a new place is an opportunity to really make that space work for you.
Ayn-Monique Klahre
Jun 14, 2018
5 Kitchen Items You’re Storing the Wrong Way
Your kitchen is the workhorse of the home, and the items you store in it — serving pieces, utensils, and all that cookware — are among the toughest items in the whole place because they have to stand up to daily use. And even though these items are super-durable, if you store them incorrectly, you could potentially damage them (or, at the very least, waste space you could be using for something else). Here are five kitchen items you may be storing the wrong way.
Ayn-Monique Klahre
Jun 5, 2018
11 Smart Secrets to Steal from People Who Never Overspend at the Grocery Store
Recently I was talking to a friend and the subject of budgeting came up. Actually, it’s one of our favorite subjects, but this time the subject of our grocery budgets came up specifically. We both felt like we were spending way too much on groceries for our families of four (sometimes upwards of $300 per week), and on top of that, felt like our cabinets were full and a lot of food went bad or leftovers went uneaten.
Ayn-Monique Klahre
May 13, 2018
The One Thing You Need to Finally Eliminate Kitchen Clutter
In my family, everything happens in the kitchen: work, bill paying, meal planning, arts and crafts, homework, evening gardening. Oh, right — and cooking and dining, too. Even though those are the main purposes of the space, so much other gear can creep into the kitchen it seems like sometimes there’s no space at the kitchen table to eat, or on the kitchen counter to prep food!
Ayn-Monique Klahre
Feb 24, 2018
Never Clean These Things with Baking Soda
Most of the time baking soda is our go-to basic cleaner, but not for these items.
Ayn-Monique Klahre
Dec 31, 2017