Domestic Affairs · Works & Repairs
The scald when someone flushes is not a quirk of old pipes. It is an unregulated pressure split, and it has a standard part number.
By M. Plumb
Domestic Affairs
The dent behind the door is not an accident of use. It is the predictable output of hanging a swinging slab beside a fixed obstacle and shipping it without a stop.
By Hollis Carver
Domestic Affairs
The musty note in the bathroom is not a nuisance to mask. It is an early-warning chemical signal, and your nose is absurdly good at reading it.
By Vera Stipple
The Kitchen Desk
Water boils cooler as you climb, so the seven minutes that produced a hard egg at the trailhead produces a raw one at the summit. The pot is not the problem. The sky is.
By R. Dunmore
From the Editor's Desk
We are a manual with a masthead. Everything in these pages is real, testable, and faintly insulting in how obvious it turns out to be.
By The Editor
Domestic Affairs
You cannot end the laundry. You can stop making decisions inside it: one wash class, one buffer quantity, one identical load, forever.
By Iris Petty
Domestic Affairs
The pre-rinse feels diligent and is counter-productive. Modern detergent is built to attack food residue. Remove the residue and you remove its target.
By Vera Stipple
Diversions · Puzzle of the Day
Every letter in the grid belongs to a word. There is no filler, in any direction. You may circle the entire thing.
Attempt it →
The Sections
What the household owns, cleans, stocks, repairs, and shares its premises with.
Food, cooking, and provisioning meals that continue tomorrow.
What the household reads and watches, listed rather than reviewed, and kept here all year: the registers, the tens and the family files.
The puzzles page, and the strip. Sincerely presented. Quietly impossible.
Notes on the edition, and notices from the paper.
