Newsletters

Elizabeth Giorgi

Liz is a writer and filmmaker from Minneapolis. She was nominated for a Webby and won an Emmy for Science of Watchmen, a documentary short about the physics in the comic book movie. She’s a tech obsessive, verified nerd and total Anglophile.
    Using Your Phone as an Alarm? Here’s Why You Should Stop
    For the last few years, I’ve been using my smartphone as an alarm. It seemed innocuous enough, until I came upon an alarm clock that I found quite cool and decided to try using it instead of my mobile. The results were surprising. Here are five reasons I’m ditching my smartphone in the bedroom: 1. When your phone goes to bed with you, you spend your last few minutes before sleep staring at a glowing screen. This is bad for falling asleep.
    Elizabeth Giorgi
    Nov 25, 2019
    Stick N Find Bluetooth Stickers
    Product: Stick N Find Price: $49.99 Rating: Recommend* For people who are constantly losing their Kindle, keys, pet, wallet, iPad, or any other important or expensive thing, the Stick N Find is bound to be your new favorite product. Want to page your wallet? Me too. Here’s how. The Stick N Find is easy to set up. Simply download the app, place the stickers (without the backing removed) right next to your phone, and pair them with your device.
    Elizabeth Giorgi
    May 4, 2019
    How To Teach Pets to Not Eat Cords
    Pet owners know this scene all too well: you walk into a room and find your beloved pet eating your television cord, your phone charging cord, or some other important electronic cord which should not be gnawed. If this sounds familiar, worry not: here are three steps I’ve taken to train two dogs and two cats to leave cords alone: 1. Always correct the behavior when you catch them in the act. If you find your dog chewing on a cord, use your disciplinary word of choice.
    Elizabeth Giorgi
    May 4, 2019
    Tory Burch for FitBit
    Product: Tory Burch for FitBit Price: $38.00 – $195 Rating: Strong Recommend* FitBit users are a passionate bunch. And rightly so. The app and corresponding wristband have achieved quite a bit of notoriety for creating one of the most all-encompassing body, health and fitness trackers on the market. The minimal band of the FitBit was always missing something for me, though. Enter Tory Burch.
    Elizabeth Giorgi
    May 4, 2019
    The Truth about Long-Term Yurt Living
    Yurts were at the center of a really fascinating trend in 2014: glamping. Or glamorous camping, if you will. And while most yurts featured in the design community are in warm, scenic locations – this one struck me. It’s just north of Bemidji, Minnesota and it’s the full time home of two very brave souls. Grace Brogan and John Kamman bought a used yurt for $5,000 and moved into it last year, full time. It’s not their vacation home. It’s their home.
    Elizabeth Giorgi
    May 4, 2019
    LESS Co. Studio
    Name: Grant Spanier and Veronica McCracken of LESS Co. Location: The Everest Building, St. Paul Size: 1,400 Square Feet Years occupied: 1 LESS Co. is the kind of place that really lives by its name. The crisp white walls are offset by smart and efficient black furniture. Every detail, plant and tchotchke is lovingly thought out and has a meaning to its owner. That’s why it comes as no surprise to me or others that the LESS Co. space is just as much about the people in it as the stuff.
    Elizabeth Giorgi
    Feb 20, 2019
    Jordan’s Proper Man Den
    Name: Jordan Weinstein Location: Sunnyside; Denver, Colorado Size: 670 square feet Years lived in: less than one year; Rented Ask Jordan what he does for a living and he’ll tell you, “peddling male vanity.” It’s an unusual cause, but one we can get behind. The owner of Denver’s now iconic Proper Barbershop has a strong sense of manly style that evokes both the dapperness of the 1920s and the dark corners of ’80s punk rock.
    Elizabeth Giorgi
    Apr 17, 2015
    Workspace Winners: A Guide to the Best Affordable Standing Desks
    Who would have thought that desks would be the big buzzed about item in tech in 2014? On a weekly basis, I got more emails about standing desks than I did about any other category in the industry, save Bluetooth speakers. The truth is that while this trend is an important one for our health, it’s also exceptionally expensive with only a few distinct exceptions.
    Elizabeth Giorgi
    Jan 10, 2015
    Cool Gifts & Gadgets for the Tech Lover on Your Christmas List
    It’s rare to be surprised anymore by new innovations coming out of the tech industry. After all, it’s not been that long since our phones were wired. But if you want to surprise the serious tech heads in your family this holiday season, you need to check out these seriously innovative items: Here are five items that will seriously make you say: really, that exists? 1.
    Elizabeth Giorgi
    Nov 20, 2014
    Better Cord Management with Recoil Winders
    Product: Recoil Winder’s Cord Management Price: $9.99 and up Rating: Strong Recommend* One problem hasn’t gone away in this time of rapid tech innovation: the array of cords required to live a modern, digital life has only grown. I have an entire drawer in my home dedicated to cords and they’re a mess. And yet, the products out there to address the issue largely leave something to be desired. They’re highly manual, often fray the cords and aren’t always compact.
    Elizabeth Giorgi
    Nov 16, 2014
    A Plan-Ahead Survival Guide for Holiday Travelers
    Air travel anytime can be a hassle, but during holiday rush times, it can really get stressful. The crowds, delays, winter weather, a packed schedule once you arrive at your destination; it all adds up. But, there are things you can do to make the whole process easier. Start planning now to avoid headaches later: While most common airlines in the U.S. are still offering free carry-ons, Spirit and Frontier no longer offer free carry-ons, ONLY personal items.
    Elizabeth Giorgi
    Nov 14, 2014
    Digital Housekeeping: 3 Tidying Tips to Do Today
    When people talk about organizing their lives or cleaning up their homes, they don’t often mean their digital lives or their tech spaces. So much of our effort when simplifying our lives gets dedicated to the kitchen, living room, closets and bedroom, but if you think about it, we spend much of our time online and that’s a space that often gets ignored. Here are some things you have probably never done to your digital life that you should totally consider: 1.
    Elizabeth Giorgi
    Oct 29, 2014
    Brookstone’s Tranquil Moments: Portable Sleep Machine
    Product: Brookstone’s Tranquil Moments Bedside Sleep Sound Machine Price: $129 Rating: Strong Recommend* Sleep machines have been around forever without much change or evolution. For years, I swore by sleep machines, especially when traveling.
    Elizabeth Giorgi
    Oct 27, 2014
    Blumoo Review: Turn Your Phone Into a Universal Remote
    Product: Blumoo Price: $129.99 Rating: Recommend* The high tech universal remotes you bought your parents for the last few holiday seasons are out. Turning your phone into a universal remote is the future. And why not? It’s always with you. It connects with Bluetooth to many devices already. Add the TV and gaming systems and suddenly lots of remote problems are solved. That’s where Blumoo comes in. The Blumoo is easy to set up. Start by downloading the app for ios or Android.
    Elizabeth Giorgi
    Oct 6, 2014
    5 Tips for Displaying Designer Toys
    When we shared Chris’ Apartment Tour last week, we heard one thing loud and clear: everyone loved how he integrated his designer toy collection with all his other décor. For people with collectibles that are maybe of the more colorful variety, here are some helpful hints for integrating them seamlessly: 1. Spread items throughout the house: It’s important not to cluster your entire collection in one room.
    Elizabeth Giorgi
    Sep 22, 2014
    Chris’ Casually Artful Studio
    Name: Chris Location: Denver, Colorado Size: 800 square feet Years lived in: 2 years; Rented Chris is the kind of dude you want to get a drink with. He has incredible taste in art, an appreciation for smart furniture from all eras of design, and he’s a talented artist, but too humble to point out his own work in his apartment. Nestled just outside of downtown Denver, it’s easy to see from the minute you step into Chris’s place that it’s going to be great.
    Elizabeth Giorgi
    Sep 13, 2014
    5 Ways to Use Tablets in the Kitchen
    Every space in our homes has become more high tech over the last decade. The one outlier? The kitchen and dining room seem to lag behind. It’s partially a good thing. Using smartphones at the dinner table is just rude. But these alternatives are well-mannered and a lot of fun. Here are five ways to use a tablet in your kitchen right now: On-Demand Recipe Conversion: Ever find an amazing new recipe from another country but realize it’s in the metric system?
    Elizabeth Giorgi
    Sep 13, 2014
    How To Make Your Own Kitty Teepee
    My cat loves small, dark spaces. Only problem is that these kinds of spaces are hard to come by in my open floor plan house. When I came upon a cat teepee in one of the expensive pet boutiques, I knew it was the perfect DIY-able solution. The project was surprisingly easy to to make with the help of three rectangular garden trellises, some leather cord, a yard of fabric and some safety pins. Oh and a saw. It’s critical to create a small opening in the teepee.
    Elizabeth Giorgi
    Sep 12, 2014
    Lithium’s Neon Glam Meets Tech
    Name: Lithium Technologies Location: San Francisco, California Size: 50,000 square feet Years worked in: 1 year, 2 months Neon. Glamorous. High tech. These three things don’t often find themselves in the same sentence together. Ok, maybe neon and tech. But glamorous? Yeah, that’s a rare combination, but a welcome one. San Francisco based Lithium embraces this style with verve.
    Elizabeth Giorgi
    Aug 11, 2014
    The Best Resources for Finding Pet Sitters
    Finding reliable and trustworthy pet sitters is a seriously intense job. While many pets do just fine at pet hotels and kennels, pets who experience severe anxiety when taken out of their environment (or those that just do better at home) require a little more work. Plus, finding someone you trust to enter your home while you’re not there can be panic-inducing.
    Elizabeth Giorgi
    Jul 24, 2014
    A Masterful Trick for Staying Motivated to Complete Home Projects
    I moved into a new home in March, and I often find myself getting really upset that more projects aren’t done. Plenty of boxes haven’t been unpacked. Nearly half our rooms still have paint swatches on the walls. Simple projects like hanging curtains have even gone ignored. So I went looking for inspiration. Most people make a full list of ALL the projects they want to complete in a new home. In fact, this is exactly what I did. My realtor then pinged me with a new idea.
    Elizabeth Giorgi
    Jul 16, 2014
    Is a Clean Office the Key to Happy Working?
    I hate to admit it, but of all the rooms in my home, I’ve spent the least amount of time designing my office. That lack of effort from a design perspective has caused some other bad habits, including using my office as a general stopping ground for things that don’t have a place. When a friend recently came over and said my office looked like it was in the wrong home, I immediately started making a list of changes I wanted to make to the space. On the top of the list?
    Elizabeth Giorgi
    Jun 4, 2014
    Five Minute Methods for Overcoming Eye Strain
    While posture, the quality of your chair and the ergonomics of the mouse and keyboard can be big factors in how long you can sit at your desk, for me, it always comes down to eye strain. Without question, if I stare at my screen for more than four hours straight, I’m guaranteed to have a headache. So how can one battle eye strain? That’s the very question I put to my optometrist the last time I went to visit.
    Elizabeth Giorgi
    May 28, 2014
    The Easiest Way to Figure Out the Perfect Desk & Office Chair Height
    So we all sit too much. That’s not just some rhetoric about our modern working world. No, this is a fact that is definitely backed by science. If we’re all sitting so much, we should be putting more thought into HOW we’re sitting and yet, so many of us do it wrong. So what’s the easiest way to determine if your desk and office chair are at the right heights for your spinal alignment? It’s easier than you think.
    Elizabeth Giorgi
    May 15, 2014
    3 Tips to Declutter Your Digital Life in 5 Minutes or Less
    I read a remarkable statistic the other day: When Benjamin Franklin died, he had over 70,000 pages of documents in his home. Today, you and I can easily carry around that much data on our smartphones. Admittedly, our data probably isn’t anywhere near as brilliant, but the ease of storing this information means we accumulate far more digital clutter than we need. If you’ve got five minutes and would like to reduce the amount of digital clutter in your life, try these quick tricks: 1.
    Elizabeth Giorgi
    May 7, 2014
    Easy Entertainment Access with LaCie Fuel
    Product: LaCie Fuel (1TB) Price: $199.99 Rating: Recommend* Digital storage is the new frontier. Think about it. It won’t be long before media cabinets are no longer sized for DVD and Blu Ray cases and will be built around hard drive RAIDS instead. However, access to media on hard drives is less intuitive than popping a disc into a player. Fuel may just be the answer.
    Elizabeth Giorgi
    May 6, 2014
    Homepolish’s Modern/Vintage Mix
    Name: Homepolish Location: NoMad, New York, New York Size: 1,000 square feet Years worked in: 1 year When you’re a design team known for creating fabulous office spaces for high tech and high profile clients, the pressure can really be on when it comes to your own workspace. This was Homepolish’s challenge — and one that they’ve risen to with comfort and grace. The folks at Homepolish are known for mixing vintage treasures with modern and classic pieces.
    Elizabeth Giorgi
    Apr 29, 2014
    Good Deed of the Day: Providing Patient Parental Tech Support
    My parents are not what I would call “high tech” — or really even any tech. My dad only recently started texting and my mom doesn’t own a computer, but they often run into technological quandaries despite their lack of gadgets — which means it often falls to me to help them out. It’s easy to grow impatient and frustrated when providing a little parental tech support, so I thought I’d round up some advice from people who have been there.
    Elizabeth Giorgi
    Apr 24, 2014
    Vintage Fabric Lovers Guide to Identifying Textiles for Cleaning
    I’m addicted to picking up new and vintage textiles online and at my local boutiques, but one thing that always worries me when I’m considering a purchase is whether I’ll be able to figure out how to clean it. Well, no more. I found this helpful guide from Pacific Fabrics, which includes a test to help you determine just what kind of textile you have in hand before you try to clean it. And get this: it involves burning. I know, it sounds scary, but it really works.
    Elizabeth Giorgi
    Apr 15, 2014
    Running Out of Space? How To Improve Your Phone Storage in 5 Minutes
    Carrying around a small computer in your purse is both a gift and a curse. Having a camera, email access and games at the ready is helpful, but it’s easy for a phone to become overload and run out of storage. Here are a few quick ways to keep your phone’s storage needs in check: 1. Streamline email accounts: The hiding eater of storage on many smartphones is email accounts.
    Elizabeth Giorgi
    Apr 9, 2014
    Fancy Tiger’s Crafty Cute Shop and Classroom
    Name: Fancy Tiger Crafts Location: 59 Broadway, Denver, Colorado Size: 4,000 square feet Years worked in: 2 years Fancy Tiger Crafts is kind of like a knitwear wonderland. With wall to wall shelves of wool and felt yarns being stocked by lovely ladies in hand-crafted sweaters, it’s definitely a place a shopper can really escape to for a while. But it’s not just a great little shop: it’s a community classroom for sewers, knitters and crafters of all skill levels.
    Elizabeth Giorgi
    Mar 27, 2014
    The Ins and Outs of Owning Feathers
    Sometimes a House Tour does more than just inspire people to try a new paint color. Recently, we featured a house tour with many beautiful elements throughout, including these feathers. It sparked a debate in the comments about the rules for finding, buying and owning feathers. Well, here’s the skinny. The Migratory Bird Treaty Act (16U.S.C. 703-712) states that no person shall own any parts of a bird, which includes feathers, unless exempted by other regulations.
    Elizabeth Giorgi
    Mar 26, 2014
    Grovemade Maple Phone Dock
    Product: Grovemade Maple Phone Dock Price: $99 Rating: Strong Recommend* Charging stations usually don’t impress me. I mean, what’s to be impressed by? Usually it’s a clock with a charger or a simple plastic dock. The Grovemade phone dock changed all that. It’s lovely, impressive, and weighty enough to do double duty as your secret weapon. Let’s start by talking about the weight of most docking stations.
    Elizabeth Giorgi
    Mar 24, 2014
    Rabble + Rouser’s Creative Workshop
    Name: rabble+rouser, Christina Schroeder, Principal and Founder Location: Blake Street, Denver, Colorado Size: 7,000 Square Feet Years worked in: 3 years There’s nothing quite like an old warehouse space embracing color. It bolsters creativity and just makes everything feel alive. At rabble+rouser, bright blue and orange feature walls keep a space that once served as a furniture workshop feeling new, vibrant, and fresh.
    Elizabeth Giorgi
    Mar 17, 2014
    Alexandra & Christine’s East Meets West
    Name: Alexandra and Christine, plus cats Rishikesh and Watson Location: Denver, Colorado Size: 1,000 Square Feet Years lived in: 1 year; Rented John Muir once said: “The Mountains are calling and I must go.” Sitting in Alexandra and Christine’s space with a cup of tea in hand and soothing incense burning nearby, it’s clear why they both chose to relocate here a little over a year ago.
    Elizabeth Giorgi
    Mar 14, 2014
    Nothing Says I Love You Like Digital Storage
    Soon Valentine’s Day will be upon us, and couples everywhere will be buying flowers and candy and jewelry and fragrances and all kinds of other silly novelties. But you know what says true love to me? Digital storage. And lots of it. Wondering what to get your honey that’s both practical and bound to save a major headache later? Gigs and Terabytes. Hear me out.
    Elizabeth Giorgi
    Feb 10, 2014