Three Important Points to Remember When “Kondo-ing”

...ally spilled out during her lifetime. These possessions became a burden, a time-sucking sorting task that claimed many hours of the last years of my mom’s life. This has sparked a, perhaps, overly emotional reaction to quickly get rid of stuff at our own house. We’ve had aborted “Kondo-ing” attempts before but this time I’ve decided to more carefully re-read Kondo’s directions. It’s easy to think that Kondo-ing is just about de-junking. This compl...

Read…

I Organized My Drill Bits and You Won’t Believe What Happened Next

...t through the drawer wasting time better spent actually using the bit. Sometimes, if I couldn’t find a bit, I’d buy another one at the hardware store only to find out that I already had that particular size. Last week, as part of the sort of sweeping workshop reorganization that comes with middle age, I vowed to put an end to the madness that was my drill bit drawer. There is not one true path to drill bit storage but rather many paths leading up...

Read…

Team Human

...here will be no podcast this week due to the fact that I’ve spent too much time glazing windows and too little time booking guests. Rest assured that you can look forward to future Root Simple Podcast episodes involving topics as varied as climate science, lard and rum. If you are glazing windows today and want a podcast to listen to, let me suggest Douglas Rushkoff’s Team Human. While you struggle with the putty, Rushkoff struggles with our troub...

Read…

Fun With Mortises and Tenons

...mortises and a table saw to cut the tenons. Of course, a great deal of the time in the workshop was spent in idle chatter. My workshop is right on the public sidewalk and serves as a kind of conversational trap for every passing neighbor and dog walker. Kelly suspects that the exchange of neighborhood gossip is the real purpose of the “workshop.” I will neither confirm nor deny this. But back to the table. Mistakes were made. While routing out one...

Read…

There’s No Such Thing as a Free Watch

...al media “influencers.” These watches begin not as a practical way to tell time but, rather, as a physical manifestation of social media interactions. Amidst the shifting winds of Alibaba sites, dropshipping networks, Shopify templates, Instagram accounts and someone somewhere concocting the details of “Our Story,” a watch was formed, like a sudden precipitate in an unstable cloud. And almost immediately after being produced, it is reviled, doomed...

Read…