Smart Design

Did I tell you I’ve become fascinated (kind of obsessed, actually) with composting? Talk about a great example of smart design — you take a bunch of unusable waste products, add sunlight and heat, and you get high quality, highly usable soil. Brilliant. Apparently it’s hard to beat the genius of Mother Nature.

We’ve just started composting in our own backyard. We’re using these adjustable bins and experimenting to see what works best for us. We add kitchen scraps and grass clippings to our compost bin and we’ve added bushels and bushels of wormy apples that fell from our backyard tree. I would love to get to a point where I’m able to add much of the paper waste our house creates, like homework, junk mail, and food packaging.

For much of my adult life, I didn’t have access to backyard or community composting, and I’m sure the same is true for many people. So when I saw the NatureMill Automatic Composter, a light clicked on for me.

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Once in awhile someone will tell me they don’t have a dishwasher and a look of shock will immediately register on my face. Like “Whaaa? Are you trying to protest or something?” Then I’ll remember that for half of my adult life I didn’t have one either. It’s a pretty common thing. Especially if you live in a small city apartment, or have a fondness for older homes. And if you don’t own a dishwasher, finding the right dishrack becomes an actual thing you think about.

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From what I can tell, babies have been around for a long time. So wouldn’t you think everything that could possibly be invented for babies and their parents has been invented? Apparently not.

This rocking-chair-slash-cradle was recently designed for Ontwerpduo. It’s called the Rockid (nice name!) and I want one. If you have a baby, you probably want one too. Why? It’s a completely practical, usable piece of furniture. When your baby no longer needs the cradle, it converts to a stand-alone rocking chair. And it’s good-looking — the simple lines and straightforward construction would work well in most any decor. read more

Every once in awhile you spot a new product and think: what a simple, smart idea — how in the world did it take so long for someone to come up with this? That’s what I thought about the Susu Umbrella Cover. It’s nothing fancy or mind-blowing. It’s simply an umbrella cover lined with super-absorbent material. So your soaking umbrella can be wrapped and stowed immediately, instead of waiting for it to dry out before you collapse it. read more

Anytime an article about alternative building methods makes it way to my desk or rss reader, I’m fascinated about what I learn — and about what’s happening in this hopeful field. But I’ve never been as intrigued as I am by the building method I learned about last month: Superadobe. read more

What if you could pack a lamp in a suitcase or briefcase? With no protective bubble wrap. No foam peanuts. What if it took up no more space than a folded pair of jeans? It sounds very Jetsons to me, but clearly, the future is now. If you have a 100 foot extension cord and Craighton Berman’s DIY Coil lamp kit, you can have a good-looking table lamp whenever and wherever you’d like one. read more

When I first saw the Puj Baby bathtub, I felt like I was witnessing a giant leap forward for parent-kind. Bathing a new baby can be difficult. A newborn can’t sit up yet, so a bathtub where the baby can lay down is essential. If possible, it’s also easiest to bathe a baby at counter height so you don’t have to double over to reach him or her. But traditional baby baths have 3 irritating problems built in.

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Here’s something awesome for anyone that’s feeling homesick for the World Cup. I think this product is pretty rad. According to many happy children all over the world, the One World Futbol “never needs inflating, requires no pump or needle, and will never go flat or lose bounce, even if punctured.” How cool is that? read more

About a year ago I was introduced to my first purse hanger. Was I late to the game? Did everybody else know about these ages ago? Who knows? All I can say is it was mind-blowing-ly innovative to me.

When I was first handed the purse hanger, I had no idea what it was. It sat in my palm, a flat disk with a metal ring around it, and a sponsor logo featured in the center. I thought, “Hmmm. What an odd piece of swag. Is it a not-very-good paper weight? I hope they didn’t spend much money on it.” And then, someone demonstrated the function to me and I pretty well gasped. read more

Here’s the truth. The idea of maternity clothes is more fun than the reality of maternity clothes. (I write this confidently, in the middle of my 6^th pregnancy.) A 9-month pregnancy lasts through 3 seasons and is accompanied by at least a dozen changes in clothing size. There are few women in the world with the time and money it would require to dress themselves perfectly through a pregnancy — to shop for clothes on an almost daily basis that are size and weather specific over 40 weeks. read more