Category Archives: Hearth and Home

April 23, 2011 · 3:33 pm

Runaway bunnies

We’re still working on our kitchen. Yesterday we—well, not “we” exactly—moved two large book cases out in anticipation of painting. These hadn’t been moved since 1991.

Once the book cases were moved out, left behind were:

  • 1 pilgrim hat, made of construction paper and hand painted by a pre-schooler
  • 1 metal end from a bolo tie (owned by same preschooler)
  • 1 birthday party goodie bag with some contents remaining
  • 1 Ziploc bag containing two Tootsie Pops, a mini box of raisins and a large plastic eyeball
  • 19 years’ worth of dust bunnies

How seasonal.

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April 19, 2011 · 8:33 am

Trash talk

You may have seen the Johnson family of Mill Valley, Calif., on Today or read about them in Sunset magazine though, if you’re like the Johnsons, you might not have any magazines in your house.

The Johnsons have come to be known as a zero-waste family. They generate no trash and very little recycling. You can read for yourself how this family’s desire to live simply and cleanly has decreased their contribution of refuse to our planet. Admirable, I’d say. And guilt-provoking.

I’m a little ashamed of our household’s size 16 carbon footprint. We are the antithesis of the Johnsons. I’m not sure exactly how two humans and two felines can generate enough weekly waste to fill the Johnsons’ bins for more than a year. See for yourself. Not counting the bags of yard waste that already await pick-up at the curb, we’ve filled a 20-gallon can and an even larger sized Hefty bag in less than a week. Plus this large recycling bin and a paper bag’s worth of newspapers joining the yard waste at the curb as we speak.

Granted, we did a little spring cleaning over the weekend. For example, in preparation for our kitchen project, I decided to thin out our spice collection. “They” say kitchen spices go bad after six months and that we should discard them after that time. “They” would probably also say that the bottles should be recycled and the spices themselves composted or trashed, but that presumes the spices aren’t permanently adhered to their receptacles after years of neglect.

As someone who keeps her spices in alphabetical order, I’d appear to have a good grip on this. Over the weekend, I went through all my spices, A to Z. I discarded four bottles of curry powder, while being hard pressed to remember when I’d ever used curry powder in my life. Maybe they were part of my husband’s trousseau. Cream of Tartar? I’m not sure I even know what that is.

I swear there was a bottle of whole cloves that came from the house I grew up in, which we vacated in 1976. Somehow I manage to go through several bottles of chili powder a year, and yet can barely twist off the gummed up lids of nearly a quarter of these fastidiously filed spices. I had samples of every Spice Islands and McCormick’s label design of the last 30 years. Never mind all the other relics I came across while cleaning out my kitchen for the first time in 20 years.

Perhaps the Today show would like to interview me.

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April 4, 2011 · 8:48 am

Any way you couch it

Over the past week I’ve solicited suggestions for topics to cover here. It’s my version of taking requests. While I chew on those having to do with synchronicity, semantic infiltration and the origin of “draconian,” I thought I’d start off with an easier one.

Sue wrote: “How about writing a blog on the use of couch, sofa, divan?”

I don’t know precisely what Sue would like to know, but I have two initial observations. One is that, while the proper name for this piece of furniture is “sofa,” many people call it–correctly or incorrectly–a couch. My other reaction is that there appear to be so many other names for this object. Immediately I thought of about half a dozen.

So, Sue, jump in and take this conversation wherever you like. In the meantime, I’ll follow the two threads.

I was brought up to say “sofa,” which doesn’t make it right, but it also happens to be what furniture stores call it. They would know. I could be wrong, but I don’t believe you would ever enter a store—in person or online—and see something called a couch.

Isn’t “couch” is just a sloppy way to refer to a “sofa?”

I suspect “couch” comes from the French verb, coucher, or to lie down (I think that’s what it means; It could mean more, as in “Voulez vous coucher…”) When I hear “couch,” I envision someone lying, not sitting. A couch is where you spend a Sunday afternoon, watching football or, in my case, working the Sunday crossword under a fuzzy blanket for a committed period of time. Otherwise, with or without someone sitting on it, it’s a sofa.

What else could it be? As Sue points out, it could be a divan. I had an aunt and uncle who called theirs a divan, a term I thought was perhaps unique to their generation. Apparently,” divan” is Turkish in origin; how it got from Turkey to my aunt and uncle is unknown to me. If memory serves, these same relatives might also have called it a Davenport, which I understand was a brand name (like the Norge).

I understand Canadians call theirs a chesterfield.

As far as I know, chesterfields, divans, Davenports, couches and sofas are pretty much alike structurally. Then you get into your settees, love seats, fainting couches and futons.

I can speculate about how these variations came about, whether they are separated by generations, by regions or by structural properties. Better yet, The Word Detective explores this matter in much more detail, so let’s benefit from his research. If that doesn’t do it for you, there are many more blogs that delve into all the nuances.

Or you can consult this sofa and living room furniture glossary. Notice, nowhere in the glossary will you find “couch.”