You can complain that your high-end oven doesn't bake evenly...But then the same thing happens with the new oven, and darn it what's going on? Obviously, *all* ovens behave this way, and oven technology must simply be not ready for prime time. Ovens can't cook anything better than the old fashioned open fires that were good enough for our mothers. Ovens were invented just to improve energy efficiency, not to make it possible to cook food better and more easily. No, it is much better to stick with the cheap, reliable open fire. Oh, and don't even think about installing an oven inside your house. Ovens were not designed for house interiors. The fact that myriad Europeans have had ovens in their homes for years is irrelevant; their homes were built hundreds of years ago, before architects perfected the special oven-unfriendly building techniques in use today. Besides, the Europeans need ovens, since their open fires are so wimpy - hardly any flame at all, to speak of. Oh, but if you must install an oven in your house, the only one to consider is Whirlpool's new Suet Snort, since it has special "gas whumpeters" engineered for inside installation. This is the only model that has these gas whumeters, at least the only ones inscribed with the letter "W", and based on unsupervised head-to-head trials with a few of Whirlpool's old models these ovens are far better for indoor use than all the competition from every manufacturer. We know that this is true, since someone from Whirlpool customer service said so on this very forum! - DR

My mother is a hoarder. She's not a nauseating hoarder; but she hoards useless stuff she'll never ever use. She just piles it all up in her two bedrooms and bathrooms. And she has a fit if anyone touches any of it. She was always a hoarder and I was always too embarrassed to invite friends over. Now, as a result of growing up in this environment, I was very neat and organized when I moved out. Everything had to be in its place. Even when my son got old enough to toddle around, I managed to keep the house clean. The rules were, his toys belonged in his room, not scattered throughout the house, and he put his toys back in the toybox when he was done with them. A few years ago, I got very sick and lost all energy. Shopping made me feel better so I often shopped and dragged things home. But after a couple of years, I realized suddenly that I had completely cluttered up my home. You'd never guess I was always a neat freak. Once I regained my health, however, I began decluttering. The hoard absolutely drove me nuts. One of the things that works well for me is that I've designated the guest bedroom as the "transitional center". I regularly go thru my house and pull out anything I feel comfortable with letting go. And I move it to the guest room. If I'm afraid I can't let it go, I just leave it in the guest room for a while. If I'm ready to let it go, I list it on Craigslist or Freecycle to get it out of the house. Eventually, I'll reassess what is difficult to let go, and most often, after a month of it "vacationing" in the guest room, I'm ready to move it out. I love watching Hoarders because it reinforces my desire to minimalize and never get in the position that those people get into. I've found that it's a good incentive to continually go thru my stuff and declutter so things don't pile up like they do at Mom's. The more I get rid of, the more eager I am to get rid of more. The more free space I uncover, the more I want to uncover. My goal is to get back to a minimalistic lifestyle where everything is neat and clean. And I'm learning that things I thought I couldn't live without actually make me happier when they're at someone else's house.

It is amazing how judgmental and accusatory some "Pro"fessionals can be! I posted a question on this thread as I'm planning a renovation on a home we purchased that I have not yet lived in. My current city makes it prohibitively difficult to recycle as curbside recycling was repealed and even when one goes through the effort of taking the recycling to the refuse facility with limited hours, the bins are unreachable and I've heard that the recycling is taken to the trash dump after all and after bleach ruined the carpet in my vehicle, it isn't worth it here. Like funkycamper, I limit as much of my my purchase of packaged items as much as possible, shopping the perimeter of the grocery store. Packaged items include cereal or cracker boxes, plastic milk and juice cartons, small plastic trays or cups, bread bags, applesauce cups to berry containers to plastic take-home containers when we eat out, to toilet paper rolls. Even purchasing perishables and limited processed food produces much recycling. With two teenagers with many friends in our home, we consume quite a bit of food--good, healthy, mostly homemade fresh food. While under renovation, I have begun separating my recyclables in my current home and taking them to my new home. It has been eye-opening how a majority of my trash is recyclable. I can fill two lawn sized trash bags per week with recyclables. Since I won't have to walk downstairs, but only down the hall to the garage to empty my recycling, perhaps it won't be a big deal to empty my recycling every few days as it fills. It is just that most recyclables tend to be bulky, so folding them just to fit them in a too-small recycle bin could be avoided if there were larger cabinet options. My kitchen designer originally drew my cabinets to have a 24" dishwasher to the right of my sink and a 24" bank of drawers to the left of my sink, but placed the 18" trash pullout to the right of dishwasher--completely out of reach. It made no sense to me, but I could see that her goal was to create a symmetrical look, despite the lack of function. If symmetry is so important to kitchen designers, one would think that by now, since most people want their trash under or next to the kitchen sink, there might be a good 24" solution by now to go opposite the dishwasher other than the smallish bins in the 3-part recycling center. I was hoping for some insight on this thread, not instructions on how to take out my trash, how to stomp on cans (which I'd never dream of doing on my new wood floors--though I seldom use canned goods anyway), or telling me that I'm not working hard enough to fold my recyclables. When I considered a compactor, I called Waste Management who said NOT to use one. And, by the way, not that it is anyone's business, but I have a bad elbow so certain motions including breaking down boxes and crushing things by hand can be painful. I can hardly lift a small omelet pan with my right arm. I also live in a state where we have to consider returnables as well. There is a 10 cent deposit on every can or bottle. Those must be stored separately and returned at a grocery store where when you walk in, instead of the sweet smell of fresh bakery items, it smells of stale beer like a dump! I find it grotesque to purchase my food in the same place where I dispose of recyclables. So I really only want two compartments in my pullout for trash and recycling. I put returnables back in their original boxes, stored in my pantry, to transport back to the grocery store, and my paper goes in a large wicker bin that my children dump in a recycling dumpster at their schools. My grandparents lived in the middle of a 60 acre orange grove--everything was recycled (literally as in re-used, including ziplock bags) or burned. We never needed plastic jugs for orange juice--we'd re-used milk containers and dump the orange peels over the fence across the road for the cattle to eat. Thanks AnnKH and funkycamper for sharing your experiences in a constructive Houzzworthy way! :-)

Mich, I've seen that in the stores and wondered about it. Some detergents don't have enzymes, I stear clear most of the time, however not every load is tragic, so not every load needs enzymes. If there's not a bunch of stains and the clothes just have the normal dust and body oils, that bottle of All probably does a nice job on darks and colors. I'm a powder fan but lately I've been enjoying some liquids, lol. Actually I have found liquids without enzymes make my sheets feel very smooth, I've been using a new boutique one I've run across, I'm not sure yet though if its the lack of enzymes or because its a liquid, but they do feel better I'll send a pic of it in a sec.