Articles by Judie Lipsett Stanford

Some of you may recall me talking about living in Taiwan when I was a child. One of the necessary skills that I learned, that I can still recall, was how to eat with chopsticks. This has come in quite handy as an adult, because I’ve grown very fond of eating sushi. 😉 Those who haven’t mastered fashioning two pointy sticks into their fork and spoon – whether because they don’t have the patience or they don’t have the dexterity – will understandably get a huge kick out of the Clothespin Chopsticks from Useful Things.

For years I kept a kitchen timer on the back of my stove. Yes, the stove had a built-in timer, but it never failed that I would be cooking multiple dishes that each needed timing; hence the extra gadget. Now that I no longer have a stove with a back on it, I no longer have an out of the way place to keep my extra timer. Why not on the side of the refrigerator? Say hello to the Magnetic Rotary Kitchen Timer, available from Useful Things.

I know that this has to have happened to you; see if you can picture the scene: You’re laying in bed, and you wake up absolutely positive that it is time to get up, but in reality it’s just the middle of the night. It’s not too big of a deal when this happens to us adults, because we’ll simply look at the alarm clock and immediately realize that we still have some quality sleeping time left before we have to get up. We gratefully roll over, and we go back to bed, right? Young kids on the other hand,…