How to Choose and Install Flooring for Your Laundry Room

If the kitchen is the heart of the home, then I nominate the laundry room as the all-important hands and feet. This is the space that keeps things running and moving: a clean clothing command center that helps us process the moving parts that keeps us sane each week. 

When it came time to redo our laundry room, giving it the proper respect deserved by such an important space, we knew we wanted to do everything we could to de-beige-ify the space. And that certainly meant changing out the lovely, worn out faux-stone sheet floor you see here.   

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The (Still Existing) Power of a Handwritten Letter

When was the last time that you wrote a meaningful handwritten letter to your spouse, parents, siblings or friends?  Do you remember the last time you received a handwritten letter from someone significant in your life?  The odds are, you’re much more likely to remember the answer to the latter of those two questions because it felt like a special occasion.  Ever since the mid-1990s when “you’ve got mail” became a familiar tagline, handwritten letters have fallen by the waste side - being replaced with emails, texts, and tweets.  For so many reasons, putting down the phone and picking up the pen can be substantially more impactful.

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How to: Dig a Garden Patch Using Only a Shovel

I've always been a big fan of eating good food. But I also can't leave well enough alone, so eating led me to cooking, and cooking led me to gardening.

Originally a means to an end, now there are few things that give me greater happiness than stepping out the back door in the middle of summer and walking across my backyard to the roughly 20' x 30' patch of dirt full of rows of tomatoes, cucumbers, okra, squash, and greens.

When I first bought my house and decided to transform the patch of grass into our home garden, I didn't own a rototiller, but I did have a $20 shovel, an internet connection, and a spare can of elbow grease. After compiling the ideas from several gardening sites and testing it out on my half-acre slice of North Carolina, I had myself a beautifully productive vegetable garden. 

Here's a brief primer on how you can hand-dig your own patch using the time-honored technique of "double digging."

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The 7 Local Haunts Every Man Needs in His Life

I’ve technically lived in five cities so far if we include my college town (Minneapolis, New Haven, London, Brooklyn, and Los Angeles). And I’ve come to realize that as a creature of habit I eventually start frequenting a couple different venues that all have similar things in common. I think every man should have a couple of these. Let me explain…      

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7 Things I'm Totally Obsessed With This Month (March 2018 Edition)

These are thoughts, the artwork, the news stories, the tools, the food, the conversations, and whatever else we just can't get out of our heads this month.    

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My Total DIY Laundry Room Makeover

Ideally, a laundry room would belong in one of the more private sections of your house – a space to do the behind-the-scenes work of running a home, fold unmentionables, and stash things that simply have no where else to go. 

In our house, it's in the dead center of activity. Because of plumbing and venting access, it's the first thing you see when you walk down the stairs into our basement, and in addition to our kitchen and dining room, our basement has become the heart of our home. There, both my wife and I have our own offices where we welcome business collaborators, take meetings, and do

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Crafting Yourself: Why the Stoics Will Help You Become a More Productive and Creative Maker

“As is a tale, so is life: not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters.” – Seneca

The Project

Suppose you are getting ready to start a really big project––a project that will require an immense amount of time and effort, a project that has so many parts and components that you are certain that you will lose your way and make mistakes. It is just that big. And yet the one thing you can be certain about is that the materials for this project are precious and you will not be able to re-start the project once you begin––you'll have to keep forging ahead even if you make mistakes. It will be the summative production

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Totally Awesome Distillery Tour: Kozuba & Sons

You’re at the liquor store standing in front of 5-tier shelf that stretches the entire wall and your just here to pick up a bottle of spirits. There are a lot of different brands and an array of price points for each bottle. What goes through your mind?

I think for those of us who enjoy an adult beverage, buying alcohol, spirits specifically, can fall into two categories:

1. I’m looking for an affordable bottle of spirits that doesn’t taste terrible, and,
2. I know what brand and style I want. I’ve had it before and I’ll enjoy it again

And possibly a third, oft youth oriented thought: I’ll take the cheapest swill there is please.

But do you ever choose a bottle because you know where it comes from? Who made it? The story of how this spirit came to be?

I’d argue the answer to these questions are just as important as cost or a familiar label. There’s something special about knowing what goes into a craft. Even more than that, there’s a tangible connection when you not only know the story of a product, but experience the story first-hand....

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ManMade Recommended: I Think I Just Found My New Favorite Spring Jacket

Some days, I wish I just had to wear a suit to work. I probably don’t actually mean that, and I’m sure you true 9-5ers would laugh at the possibility of giving up working in sweatpants for wingtips. A hardhat and steel-toed boots would work just as well. See, I'm interested in the ease of it. "Oh, I'm at work. Here's my work uniform." Instead, on any given day, I could be several different diverse work environments, both indoors and out, wet and dry spaces, with temperature fluctuations of upwards to thirty-five or forty degrees. 30° F when I leave in the morning, and 65° by 3pm.

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How to Hack Your Aeropress to Make an Even Better Cup of Coffee

I recently posted a photo of my Aeropress setup to Instagram and had a buddy comment with questions about my process. I've only been using my press casually for the last couple of years, so I didn't feel comfortable saying anything authoritative. That begged the question: who would be considered an authority on the subject of Aeropress recipes? Which led me to: if not the victors of the World Aeropress Championship, then who? 

If you're unfamiliar to the world of Aeropress, if you own one and have no idea what to do with it, or if you're looking to tweak your current routine: read on, friends.

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