Single-Stream Recycling in Hartford

The City of Hartford will be moving to single-stream recycling beginning the week of October 26th. After a successful 4,500 resident pilot program, the City has decided to expand the program to everyone living in a 6-family building or smaller. We were not part of the pilot program, and just received the formal notice of the change in the mail this weekend. In addition to making our recycling lives easier, the change also allows us

Questionable Upgrades: Pocket Drawers

Have you seen the commercial for the Pocket Drawer? I look forward to watching each time it comes through the ad rotation on HGTV. For those not familiar with the product, it is basically a drawer mounted into the wall. From the company website, “it is 14 inches wide by 6 inches high by almost 5 inches deep.” The idea is perfect for marketing – it fills a plausible need (can take advantage of unused

Refreshing Our Dining Room

Kyle and I have settled into our house fairly well in the 5 years we’ve lived here. We’ve done lots of projects, but always have a running list of renovations and improvements we’d like to make in the upcoming years. The priority of the list is always shifting, it seems to keep things interesting. The latest project we’re tackling is “refreshing” our dining room. There are some features that we really like about the room

Preparing the Home for Winter

With Labor Day behind us, it’s time to begin getting our home ready for winter. We probably should have done most of these things earlier, but it’s so hard to focus on preparing for the cold months when we just want to enjoy the sun. First up is the annual furnace maintenance. Just about every heating system should be serviced each year to make sure it is operating safely and efficiently. Oil and gas systems

Anyone Want Some Styrofoam?

My education about the ubiquitous white packing material began with an electronic smack-down from the good folks at Dow Chemical who invented Styrofoam(R). Their product is an extruded polystyrene, and far superior to the white material (expanded polystyrene) of everyday life. The real Styrofoam(R) was used by the US Navy to make life rafts during World War II, and continues to be used for insulation and craft projects. They specifically distance themselves from the coffee