Five Hard-to-Kill Houseplants for Your Home or Workspace

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By Adam Pash (Edit, to draft, Slurp)

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Plants can transform your home or workspace into a more peaceful, tranquil, and beautiful place, but if you’re not good with them, your improved space can quickly turn into a depressing chamber of death. The solution: Get some more resilient plants.

All-things-home weblog Apartment Therapy rounds up five hard-to-kill houseplants that will keep your peaceful, plant-adorned space alive even if you’ve got the brownest of thumbs. Those five:

• Dracaena marginata
• Sansevieria
• Ficus
• Philodendron
• Bromeliad

Click on any of the images below to see a closer look at the plants.

• Dracaena Photo by kogakure.”> Dracaena Photo by kogakure.” title=” Dracaena Photo by kogakure.”>
• Sansevieria Photo by sausagecemetery.”> Sansevieria Photo by sausagecemetery.” title=” Sansevieria Photo by sausagecemetery.”>
• Ficus Photo by ndrwfgg.”> Ficus Photo by ndrwfgg.” title=” Ficus Photo by ndrwfgg.”>
• Philodendron Photo by cliff1066.”> Philodendron Photo by cliff1066.” title=” Philodendron Photo by cliff1066.”>
• Bromeliad Photo by Casa Mac.”> Bromeliad Photo by Casa Mac.” title=” Bromeliad Photo by Casa Mac.”>

Note that some of the plants aren’t pet-friendly (actually, all but the Bromeliad is listed as toxic to cats and dogs by the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals), so you’ll want to either avoid those if you’ve got a pet or make sure your pet isn’t a plant-eater.

We’ve also covered plenty of other methods for helping keep your plants alive and kicking, like the previously mentioned wine bottle plant nanny and the self-watering garden. We’ve also highlighted plants that give you better air and plants that don’t need much water, so between all those posts, you should be able to find a plant that works for you.

If you’ve had good luck with any particular plants despite your lack of a green thumb, let’s hear what resilient plants you’ve had luck with in the comments.

Setting Up Home: 5 Hard-to-Kill Houseplants [Apartment Therapy]

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Choose the Right Sized TV for Your Space with a Simple Formula

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By Azadeh Ensha (Edit, to draft, Slurp)

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So you’re in the market for a new HDTV, but don’t know what size screen to buy. You could go with the “bigger is better” adage, or you can precisely calculate a more suitable size by applying the following formula.

Gadgetwise blogger J.D. Biersdorfer and NYT personal tech editor Sam Grobart demonstrate how to determine the right television size using one simple formula.

According to the duo, the process involves taking the viewing distance from the screen (in inches) and dividing that by the number two. Why two? According to Jude, salespeople will tell you to divide the distance by 1.5 because they want you to buy a bigger set, whereas non-salespersons typically suggest 2.5 as a benchmark. The “pragmatic thing” to do, she says, is to split the difference between these numbers and divide by two instead, which should provide you with a proper screen size.

Check out the above video clip to see the simple calculation in action. If you don’t want to hassle yourself with all that inconvenient math (or you just want a more forgiving scale of sizes within maximum and minimum viewing distances (not everyone is sitting exactly the same distance from the TV, after all), this previously covered TV-to-space chart can do the trick, too.

Choosing the Right Size for Your New TV [Gadgetwise]
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Etiquette – Dealing With Others’ Tardiness

By Jason Fitzpatrick, Credit – Lifehacker.com

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Taking control of your own schedule is one thing, but what do you do when it’s always the other party showing up late? Photo by Street Spirit.

WikiHow, purveyor of all manner of how-to guides, posts a guide to dealing with those plagued by perpetual lateness. Their guide deserves points for both usefulness and brutal honesty, opening with this first step:

Call it what it is – a respect issue. When it comes right down to it, that’s what it’s all about. Why is your time any less valuable than your friend’s? Why should you put up with a lack of respect for your valuable time? The answer is, you should not. … There are no excuses to justify this kind of behaviour, and you need to make your friend clear on that.

The principle defense against the tardiness of others is to establish clear boundaries. Perpetually late people have gotten by in life—albeit with a fair number of penalties along the way—because people tolerate the tardy behavior. Establish boundaries with your friends and coworkers by specifying the window in which you will wait should they be tardy, but that you expect them to be on time. Equally important is to structure your plans so that the chronically late party is not absolutely critical to the outcome of the event. Don’t leave the concert tickets in their hands or the presentation on their laptop. Invite another, more punctual friend along. Should it come time to rehash your plans without the oops-I-missed-the-bus-again friend, you’re not left flying solo.

An occasional missed appointment is one thing and easily forgiven, but a pattern of lateness is a less than subtle gesture of disrespect for both the tardy party’s time and that of the companion left waiting. For more tips and tricks on dealing with chronically late people, check out the full entry below. Have your own tactics for solving tardiness issues? Sound off in the comments below.

Dealing with Someone Else’s Latelyness [wikiHow]

Credit – Lifehacker.com

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