From the Editor's Desk · From the Editor's Desk
Every other problem in the house yields to owning less. One does not. We checked it against the definition of Hell and regret the match.
By The Editor
Domestic Affairs
Portland General Electric's residential customers used 20% less electricity in 2024 than in 2000 and paid 141% more for it. The appliances worked. The savings were collected by the unit price.
By Hollis Carver
Domestic Affairs
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 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
The Parlour
A reading list rather than an argument. Eight filings from the register that between them predict most of the rest, and the secondary literature the register was built from — including the book it went to for the bedsheet and came back from empty-handed.
By Constance Tally
Domestic Affairs
It is not a hygiene failure. It is a five-to-ten-year putty replacement that shipped with the sink and was never written down.
By Vera Stipple
Diversions · Puzzle of the Day
Trace a path from START to EXIT. Difficulty: Gentle. Pen, not pencil — we believe in you.
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.
