The abundance of new hobbies that Americans have taken up this year is certainly one good thing to come from 2020. The uncertainty of life in a pandemic world may have left us feeling overwhelmed, stressed, and bored, but it certainly brought out our need for doing something. Anything. We baked bread, cooked new kinds of food, and dug in and got dirty in our flowers and vegetable gardens.

We renovated and refreshed our homes with all kinds of DIY home improvement projects. We learned how to grow our own food and flowers and painted our living rooms...

There’s no sugarcoating it. Sometimes exercising stinks. Your body hurts, your mind says no, and you just don’t want to. It’s a lot easier to just stay snuggled in bed than to get your body moving.

But nothing good ever came out of living in a comfort zone. And this gets to the heart of the matter...

2020 has turned every industry upside-down, especially affecting everyone involved in higher education. Whether your university of choice will be conducting classes face-to-face, remotely, or a mix of both, school supplies are still a must-have to ensure your academic success.

This college school supplies list will be a lifesaver, especially if you are a college freshman. Colleges don’t give you a list of supplies you’ll need beyond the textbooks, and it leaves many freshmen wondering - What should I bring to college?...

What is the difference between letter size (also called US letter size or standard size) and legal size paper?

Simply put, the legal-size paper is just 3 inches longer than letter size paper. Legal size paper is 8.5 x 14 inches, whereas letter-size paper is 8.5 x 11 inches...

If you’re like me, it’s difficult to find just the right printable daily planner; sometimes I don’t like the design, the colors, the layout, or they don’t have a realistic amount of space to write.

After trying out tons of store-bought planners and free printable planners, I decided to go ahead and design my own. And why not share them with you?...

Currently, the COVID-19 pandemic has millions of people working from home. But as you’re working remotely, it’s important to remember these key tips and office etiquette standards for when we eventually return to the workplace. You don’t want to allow proper manners to slip your mind when making the transition back to work. So keep these 18 office manners in mind and be sure to practice the ones you are able to, so when you do return, you are still at the top of your professionalism game.

As an office employee, what is considered right and wrong can be subjective to your individual place of work. However, if you stick to some key universally accepted principles you’ll have no issues fitting into your office environment...

Working from home has recently become the new normal. And we’re still adjusting. With adults and kids at home, all day, every day, there’s one thing we can count on. Paper. Lots of it.

There’s always a steady stream of paper coming into our homes. Unopened mail, files, folders, office paperwork, and schoolwork piles up and we’re left staring at stacks all over the house. Paper clutter breeds disorganization which has distressing results on our efficiency and our psyche...

More than four million American adults practice scrapbooking today. The hobby actually started in England during the 15th and 16th centuries. However, cameras hadn’t been invented yet so early scrapbooks contained quotes, poems, calling cards, religious cards, and other small pieces of decorative paper.

No scrapbook albums existed yet either, so Important documents and ephemera that had sentimental value were kept inside regular books. These collections could include just about anything the collector had on hand - recipes, greeting cards, snippets of paper memorabilia, tickets, or playbills.

Embellishments of the day included small pieces of paper cut from ornately designed paper and glued to the pages...

How do you organize your recipes? Maybe you have them on your phone, or stuffed in a drawer somewhere; if you're like me, you have a stack of old, stained cookbooks with sticky notes inside.

None of these methods are ideal for organizing recipes. Digital can always fail, as phones can die or break with no way to retrieve your files. Unprotected sheets of paper can tear and get lost, and flipping through cookbooks of recipes you'll never use just to find a single one is a waste of time and energy.

I found that the best way to both condense and protect recipes is with a recipe binder and page protectors. You can rest assured knowing your info will be spill and tear-proof. You'll never have to skim through recipes you will never use, and you can rearrange pages and dividers exactly how you like them...

Life doesn’t always go as we planned. That knowledge hit us pretty hard during the past weeks as the entire country grappled with the COVID-19 outbreak. Social distancing and working from home have become the new norm and life as we knew it, even a short month ago, has come to a standstill.

When you’re stuck at home indefinitely, what can you do? Eating out at restaurants and enjoying a cocktail at our favorite bar aren’t options now. Downtime means finding new ways to have fun. You’ll learn pretty quickly there’s only so much reading, movie watching, binge eating, and game playing you can do.

Something else also happens when you’re at home for too long. You look at it – a lot. And judge its flaws. Like the dripping bathroom faucet (why hasn’t your husband fixed that already?) And the huge stack of bills and important papers on the kitchen counter that needs to be organized and put (correctly) away...

The current coronavirus pandemic has affected everyone in the U.S. and abroad. Schools, bars, and restaurants have closed. Large events like conferences, concerts, festivals, and conventions have been canceled. You may be reading this article because you’ve been instructed by your employer to work from home, or maybe you’re in the service/retail industry and you aren’t able to go into work at all.

Though the virus is not fatal for the majority of Americans, for some people with compromised immune systems the virus poses a serious, dangerous threat. To avoid knowingly spreading the virus and putting others in danger, the government has instructed citizens to practice social distancing.

So if you’re stuck at home, here are a few ideas for ways you can pass the time while waiting to return to your normal life. Start/Tend to a Garden...

In the age of keyboards and computers, it seems that handwriting is becoming obsolete. You may have scribbled down a shopping list or a reminder on a sticky note recently, but when was the last time you hand wrote a full memo or letter? The digital age’s texting has completely changed the way we communicate.

Laptops haven’t just replaced handwriting words, though - modern music software programs like Garageband, Logic, and Musescore have made writing and notating music easier than ever.

If you are a guitar songwriter, think about how you write songs. Do you pick up your guitar and noodle around until you find something you like? Maybe you save your tunes in your head or have them recorded, or on a piano roll in music software...

Today, I’m taking a stand for the sometimes forgotten 11" x 17" size paper documents that get crammed into binders that simply don’t fit.

Go ahead, see if you can get them inside a regular-sized binder without damage. They get folded, ripped, spotted, and stained because there aren’t too many binders and page protectors sized to fit. And what if you have both sizes of paper - 11" x 17" and 8 ½" x 11" - that you want to place together - and maybe even show off - in the same binder?

Don’t larger paper documents deserve a special binder too?...

Each New Year presents a moment to pause and reflect on milestones and accomplishments of the past 12 months, and to review what we’d like to improve.

Fresh starts are invigorating. It feels good to set goals for the new year. If you set yearly goals, you’ve probably learned that it’s relatively easy to be motivated in January and February. You may start a new diet, stop smoking, or join a gym. You’re into it, going strong.

But then, something happens and you stop. It’s hard to stay motivated and strong when the weather’s bad, you have the flu, or you experience a change in your job or your personal life...

Browsing through my loose recipe collection instantly takes me back to my Mom's kitchen in the 1970s, as my sisters and I learned how to make the dough and bake holiday sugar cookies. She must have been very patient to watch as the three of us did our best to roll out the dough and cut shapes with metal cookie cutters.

As we've all gotten older, those memories are even more special and started family cooking traditions we still practice today.

Food has a special power of bringing people together, especially during the holidays. It soothes and helps us celebrate. It’s something we look forward to. And our most treasured recipes are special because.....

Not that I’m still bitter about it or anything. Prickly might be the better word.

My two sisters and I had to stack three cords of chopped firewood for my Dad so we could earn money to see Barry Manilow’s 1977 concert in Charleston, W.V.

Pretty smart of my Dad, I have to admit. What he didn’t know was that I thought blisters and splinters were a small price to pay for the chance to see my dream performer. Nothing would stand between.....

It’s July and it’s already time for back to school shopping. Supplies to organize paper are usually at the top of the list.

Regardless of whether you’re a parent, teacher, or student, keeping school papers organized is tough. Most families use a kitchen counter or table that’s dedicated to the piling and sorting of paper. In addition to your own papers, if you have school-aged kids, you have their daily paperwork too.

Creating mounds of unorganized piles mean you’re bound to.....

Maybe keeping a travel journal is an old-fashioned, romantic notion. But writing down life in the moment, as seen through your eyes for that particular time, takes on a kind of magic when it’s read after your vacation. You’ll never again be in that place, at that age, at that time.

Later, when time provides some perspective, reading old travel journals can inspire tears, laughter, even wistfulness. Good travel journaling tells the tales of our lives.

In the words of Norman Douglas, writing in the 1920s, good travel writing.....

Americans love their stuff. And we sure have a lot of it. According to Becoming Minimalist, Americans spend $1.2 trillion annually on nonessential goods — in other words, stuff we don’t need (The Wall Street Journal).

My own basement pays an overstuffed homage to all the stuff I don’t really need. Plastic bins were full of old photos that my Mother “gifted” me. Stacks of original hardbound American Heritage magazines from my husband’s family. And books, books and more books. I could go on. But you get the picture. Family history and memories are bound so tightly into this stuff I could never just give it away or sell it. So I keep it.....

Yep, it’s a thing – collecting drink coasters. And you don’t have to visit a bar or restaurant to find them. Known as beer mats, drink coasters, and bierdeckel, drink coasters have found their way out of man caves and into the mainstream.

These small pieces of art and branding history started out as humble pieces of felt. Over the decades, they’ve evolved into fanciful testaments to beer, bars, and all things drinking, from all over the world...

OSHA requires industrial workplaces to keep track of all safety hazards, illnesses, injuries, and close calls/near misses. Their housekeeping regulation requires certain employers to prepare and maintain records of serious workplace injuries and illnesses.

Anyone acquainted with OSHA's numerous safety regulations and the related documents understands why the housekeep regulation can seem overwhelming. So just what is the best way to organize and store all these documents?...

Imagine this scenario. It’s the fall of 1776 and British battleships are gathering off the coastline of Staten Island. George Washington has been ordered by Congress to hold New York City. Remarkably, he stops reviewing his maps and documents – and writes a letter.

It wasn't just any letter. This letter, to the steward of Mount Vernon, Washington’s estate in Virginia, provided exact instructions on how he wanted one of his gardens laid out...