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You know how sometimes a million small annoyances in your home can suddenly reach an apex of complete bother? That happened to me this week, so I thought I’d share some small things that made my life easier!
In our last edition of Stuff We Like, I mentioned having trouble keeping the dog out of rooms that the cat has access to, and Brianna mentioned the Door Buddy Door Latch from Chewy.
IT’S PERFECT! Thank you, Brianna!
The door stays open the exact right amount for Wilbur to get into my office and have his food, but the smaller Old Dog cannot! It’s saved me from having to clean the rug in my office every other day. Thank you, Brianna!!
Next up: speaking of rugs!
I slipped on a rug in my dining room, and nearly dropped my glass of wine.
NOT OKAY.
We also have a round rug in another room that constantly gets wrinkled and buckles in the middle because the table is on small wheels and we move it around.
Enter: Carpet tape!
Note: definitely use a box cutter because this tape is very sticky and scissors did not get the job done.
We put pieces around the perimeter of a round rug, and it hasn’t moved. And the dining room rug that was very slippy is now Not Moving, much to my delight. My elderly dogs appreciate the tape, too, because already slip on the floors too easily and don’t like rugs that move.
It took about a half hour to cut and apply the pieces of tape, and wow, do the Not Spilling my Wine solutions make me happy!
And speaking of Elderly Good Dogs: sometimes they’re itchy.
I’ve tried the Zesty Paws Aller-immune bites for the smaller Old Dog, and he wasn’t wild about the lamb flavor but would eat them. The larger Old Dog, Buzz, is very finicky about treat flavors and was not feeling the lamb at all.
These were a hit with both of the old gentlemen!
Please note that the bottle pictured is salmon flavor, but we have the chicken, and the chicken is a very big hit. Plus, the smaller Old Dog, Zeb, has a lot of seasonal allergies and these give him some excellent relief from scratching and chewing his feet. He (and I) can relax.
We also have a new cat, Katie, who is currently enjoying the quiet isolation of my teenagers’ bedrooms while we introduce her to the rest of the zoo.
Katie is about 7, a very small but determined lady, and has been dubbed “Lady Katherine Megatron” by the teens, who volunteered their bedrooms for her when we found out she needed a new home very, very quickly.
So there’s a cat box in their bedrooms, which means there’s litter, even though we have this nifty mat below the Kate-box.
All this to say: putting a small broom and dustpan in multiple locations around the house makes cleaning things up SO EASY and fast.
Between spilled cat food, scattered litter, and random pieces of cereal (how do they migrate?!) I’m constantly grabbing this set to clean up:
To help Lady Katie adjust to all the new humans and other mammals, we bought her a felt cat cave, which we call her “bean.” It’s bean shaped, and she sleeps in there all the time when all the mammals are just too much for her:
It gives me no end of amusement that the company is called “MEOWFIA.”
Wait. What if there were cat shifter mafia romances? Are there? I bet there are.
Anyway, Katie loves her bean, and retreats into it for long cozy naps until she’s ready to demand pets. So far, the introductions seem to be going okay.
Another thing that is saving my sanity: ear plugs. But not because of cats! Because of dogs.
I’m extremely protective of my sleep, because not getting enough sets off a cascade of awful. Because of the aforementioned Old Dogs, there’s frequently low-level noise at night from Restless Dogs and Their Toenails, which wakes me up.
I can wear these ear plugs to dampen the noises that would otherwise pull me awake (or prevent me from falling back asleep) but I can still hear things like alarms, beeping, etc.
Please note: Adam doesn’t hear anything with them in, including me talking to him, so your mileage may vary depending on how sensitive your hearing is!
Tara: It’s kind of expensive, but Kerastase Fresh Affair Dry Shampoo is totally worth it:
I loooooove it. A little goes a very long way and I’m using it preventatively instead of just to deal with oil and it’s awesome. Not at all crunchy or clumpy. My hair feels soft.
Shana: I bought a color-correcting undereye concealer that magically makes me look less tired. It’s pretty much the only makeup I wear now.
Elyse: For travels:
Sarah: I love giving power banks and portable batteries as holiday gifts! They’re never not useful or appreciated, especially when I include a short 6″ cable as well.
I am researching a body cream with retinol, so if you have any suggestions, please let me know? My skin is very dry all of a sudden, and seems to be changing in its tolerance as I grow older and more fabulous.
What about you? What have you bought lately that made your life a little easier and solved a pesky minor problem?
I bought a ChomChom pet hair remover brush and damn does it ever work well. We have a long hair orangie boy and his hair on furniture could get a little crazy. It’s quite satisfying using the Chom Chom .
Welcome to Team Earplugs! Phones, cat screeches, appliance beeps, and slamming dishes/doors seem completely unaffected to me (eternally bummed the max NRR is only 33), but at least they cut the TV that is never! turned! off! I don’t wear them at night because having them in your ears 24/7 is “bad,” apparently *pfft*, but I’ve taken a couple of naps that were profoundly restorative without every little noise jolting me alert.
Sorry, I can’t get past the teenagers part.
@PamG: Me neither!!
One of the most useful things I have: a shoe rack that hangs from the closet bar, made of sturdy fabric and full of square compartments that each hold a pair of shoes.
We rely on timers for all sorts of tasks but abhor sudden loud noises. We are very pleased with the FCXJTU Digital Kitchen Timer which can signal with a flashing light and no, medium, or louder sound.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B07YYCB8VQ?psc=1&ref=ppx_pop_mob_b_asin_title
I am prescribed an emollient cream, I’m on a different one now, but Ultrabase was my favourite. It is well absorbed, really works, and has a light rose fragrance – not enough to interfere with any other scent you may wish to wear, but pleasant while you are putting it on. It is not cheap, but a little goes a long long way, so even if you have to pay for it* I reckon it would be worth it.
*Being in the UK and because I am over sixty I don’t pay for prescriptions.
That cat bean is so cute, it looks like a lovely smooth pebble to me.
My favorite little problem solver: washable puppy pads. My elderly bunny still uses the box, but he tends to piddle and make certain messes in the places where he naps/eats hay, so washable puppy pads are a must. He’d probably be fine with regular puppy pads like what line his litter box, but they’d look messy, be slippery, and they’re even worse when cleaning up leftover hay each day. He’s nibbled the washable ones a tiny bit, but he’s only done damage once–and in that spot I just added a double weave seagrass mat so he’d bite that instead.
I also got him Inflammation and Pain Support Poppers from The Well Kept Rabbit and they really seem to be helping his arthritis, even on just two a day. My doe however says they’re “not food” so she’s just sticking with medications alone.
Mine are more about using something for a new purpose than necessarily buying something new. One, a lidded cupcake carrier lined with silicone cupcake liners. I take the whole contraption to the farmers market and have them tare it out for me. I fill it with peaches, nectarines, pears and any soft fruits that otherwise tend to be bruised and sad by the time I get them home. I actually bought it for fruit but have since used it for cupcakes. I have had so many people stop me to comment on what a good idea it is. It also functions as a place to store fruit on the counter without subjecting it to fruit flies (though moisture can build up so you need to be mindful of that).
Two, we don’t make homemade pasta often so I repurposed the wooden pasta drying rack, the kind with removable thin dowels, and I use it as a drying rack for my plastic and Stasher bags. So much better than trying to prop them in the sink or a regular dish drying rack or, worse, hand-drying them.
Thumbs up for ear plugs!! I used to use them way back in college when I was waitressing, which is why I’m only half deaf. Cool tip: if you’re in a loud place, ie; a bar with live rock bands, and can’t hear what someone is saying, stick your finger in your ear. It’s a miracle. Now I use them whenever I travel. I don’t sleep well in strange places, or when I’m sharing a room. Ear plugs have made the difference between a great trip and being overtired and cranky.
@SBSarah, regarding lamb flavored treats. I wonder if doggie distaste is linked to some long standing race memory. We trained them for thousands of years to protect them so maybe deep down it just feels wrong to them. We had a Malamute that would not stay in the house when my Mom was cooking lamb.
@DonnaMarie, you may be on to something — are dogs in fact born with sheep smell receptors connected to do-not-eat neurons? So much other, apparently surprising, dog behavior is hard-wired.
Instinctive behavior is mystifying to me, and in human form, a little unsettling. A human raised by aliens would surely smile when wanting to appease and seem friendly, even if they’d never seen anyone smile or met anyone who understood the gesture. There are dangers to thinking about the subject too much: if you pay close attention to the motions of your feet when walking, your gait becomes awkward.
Paula’s Choice has a retinol skin-smoothing body treatment. I can’t vouch for this particular product, but I do use a lot of her other products as my skin is extremely sensitive and these are all fragrance-free. (Also, the products are not tested on animals.) I use the AHA body lotion and the body butter, both of which are excellent.
A question re carpet tape: Does it damage the floor underneath? I once used a carpet pad underneath a rug in the bathroom. I’ve no idea what it was made of (some kind of flexible rubber/plastic?) but it left residue on the tile floor that couldn’t be removed.
Oh hey, I was just this week thinking that I need to find a quality dry shampoo. I’ve tried several drugstore brands that don’t really do much. I’ll give this one a try.
Seconding the recommendation for Paula’s Choice products. I used the retinol body cream and it did not feel either too heavy or too drying. Depending on if you plan to use it all over or just on certain areas, the bottle lasts a decent amount of time.