Room Ideas

There’s an Easy Way to Keep Your Kitchen Sponge Sanitary—And It’s Hiding in Your Junk Drawer

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Kitchen sponges are notorious for turning nasty relatively quickly. After just one use, sponges, which are filled with tons of pores, can collect grossness and gunk from your dishes and flatware. That gunk plus moisture equals bacteria and mildew. Before you know it, your sponge is Nasty with a capital N. While you’ve probably heard by now that you need to replace your sponge on a very regular basis (we’re talking a matter of one week or so), there is something you can do to help extend the life of your sponge.

We have two words for you: sponge holders. A sponge holder helps your sponge dry between uses—which helps it stay cleaner for longer.

There are plenty of sponge holders on the market, if you would rather opt for something store-bought. (We

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Garden

A Legendary Design Writer’s Renovated 1930s Home

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It’s hard to imagine now, but until recently, this now renovated 1930s property was actually two completely separate apartments. Despite their disjointed state with no internal access, design writer Stephen Crafti had been living across both apartments for years, until finally engaging Robert Simeoni Architects to combine the two.

The objective was to cohesively amalgamate the apartments by retaining the existing fabric wherever possible, while inserting new elements clearly distinguishable from the property’s original features. While the apartments weren’t heritage protected, they were treated as such during the design process. ‘The aim of not trying to do too much, or as the Burra Charter suggests “as much as necessary, as little as possible” informed the thinking behind the design,’ says Robert of Robert Simeoni Architects.

A compact, dark stained timber and raw steel staircase was introduced to connect the two previously separate levels of the building. This staircase is located

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Room Ideas

Transparent Glamping Cabin Immerso Airbnb

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Published: about 2 hours ago

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Sleeping directly under the stars might sound romantic to you. Or it might sound like an invitation for bugs to crawl freely over you as you sleep. That’s where the transparent cabin comes in. With a clear roof over your head, you can feel as if you’re sleeping under the stars, while also staying sheltered from the elements.

One such cabin is currently available for rent on Airbnb. Called “Immerso,” the prefabricated structure was designed by architects Fabio Vignolo and Francesca Turnaturi to be quick and easy to install. 

The cabin has a birch plywood frame, anchored by metal to a plexiglass roof and walls. It’s just big enough for a double bed and coffee table, which makes sense, considering it’s basically a fancy tent. It

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Garden

A Cascading, Compact Garden That Envelopes Its Newtown Home

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Mark Bell of Bell Landscapes cautions against minimalism when designing a garden on a small footprint space. ‘There is the perception that using lots of plants encloses the space and makes it feel smaller.’ But rather, he says, empty pockets make the space feel sparse and underwhelming.

By carefully considering the compact dimensions and curating a thoughtful selection of plants, Mark devised a planting scheme of varied textures, shapes and sizes to create an illusion of depth in this suburban Newtown garden. This clever trick of layering is no more apparent that in the ground coverings, which are dense and varied, each offering different heights and textures of foliage.

Mark;s initial brief was to envelope the pre-existing terrace house with greenery. With a rear terrace, rooftop garden and internal courtyard to work with, his focus was to spread the plantings across various levels and sections of the site. Sticking to

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Room Ideas

How to Clean a Mirror: Step by Step with Photos

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Lots of frustrating things can happen when you’re cleaning, but finishing with a less-clean surface or space than you started with is probably at the top of the list. Prime example: when you’re performing a labor of love on your bathroom mirror (or really, any mirror), but you end up with twice the work you set out to do because of streaks. The good news is, if you take the right steps, it doesn’t have to be this way!

If you’re looking for totally clean and streak-free mirrors, start with the right tools. First: Consider your cleaner. You probably know using an all-purpose cleaner isn’t the best idea, since it’ll make the glass cloudy. But even mirror-specific products like Windex, while effective at cleaning, can leave your mirror full of streaks because they contain so much soap.

While streaks are annoying, they aren’t the only issue that can come

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Room Ideas

Maximalist Home Office Update for $140

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Working from home has plenty of pros, but when your small office (or dining room table desk combo) is cramped, cluttered, or dark, it can make every day feel like a Monday. Susie Levache (Bananashed Home) had a work room that had been collecting dust before—but now that she was working from home on the regular, she no longer wanted to settle for a subpar space. “My office was the smallest room in the house and had become a dumping ground—a cemetery for old clothes and useless furniture that was redundant from other rooms!” Susie says. Plus, the dark, dim environment made it tough to decorate. “It was such a dreary north-facing room that I struggled to decide on wall colors to begin with,” she says.

While Susie had always

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