Posts made by author 'Paige O. Roberts'
15
Organizing In The New Year
As silly as it can feel to make New Year's resolutions, each December I still seem to find myself considering what I want to shift or change in the year to come. There have been years where I made big plans and stuck to them, others where I fell short, and some years where I made no resolutions at all. This year, however, I am giving a lot of consideration toward trying to change some habits regarding the amount of stuff I own and how it exists in my house and my life. This isn't necessarily a new resolution being put into motion in 2026, as it's something I've been working on in recent months—although, I will admit, I've been a little halfhearted in my efforts. Still, I see the New Year as a chance to recommit to this, and I feel good about...
2
So Your Kitchen Appliances Are From The 1980s—This Might Be A Good Thing
My sister and brother-in-law bought a house over the summer, and from the start, they have wanted to change and update the kitchen. It is dated both in appearance and somewhat in functionality. While I was visiting them for Thanksgiving, my sister told me that she opted to get Thanksgiving dinner from a local restaurant rather than cook at home because her oven is so small. This is true; the oven itself is tiny, though the entire stove and oven unit itself is normal-sized. This had us talking, and put us on the topic of finding out just how old the oven truly is.
After some quick research, we determined her oven was a model made in 1982—making it over 40 years old! Albeit small, that oven works completely fine, and so does the stovetop. It reminds me of my late grandmother's house, which was a scene ripped out of a magazine from the 1970s. Each one of her appliances was that Coppertone brown from that era, but they all still worked: The fridge, dishwasher, washing machine, and dryer were all still in operation when I last was in that house, which would have been sometime in the 2010s, right before she sold it.
23
Does Your Home Have A Secondary Heat Source?
It's officially winter, and we've already seen several days and nights where the temperature has gone below zero. I remember a few Decembers back, we were hit with a stretch of fifty-degree days filled with rain and heavy winds. The wind caused a ton of damage, leaving a lot of people without power, one of them being me. Without any power, I also had no heat, and it seemed as though in a matter of hours the warm rain was replaced by bone-chilling cold. To this day, I don't know how I made it out of those few days without a frozen-pipe disaster.
8
Could Your Yard Become a Sniffspot?
On Facebook, there is a fairly large group dedicated to dog-friendly spots throughout New Hampshire. The group also serves as an information hub for both locals and visitors, oftentimes where people will post questions regarding dog walkers, groomers, etc. I saw a post earlier this week from someone looking for a safe and private place to walk their dog that wasn't a public dog park, as their dog wouldn't do well in that type of setting. I scrolled the comments and over and over I kept seeing mention of something called
4
Community in a Small Town
When I was a younger person, growing up in Small Town USA could feel so boring at times. I would have given anything to live near a shopping mall, just to have a place to hang out with my friends that wasn't one of our parents' basements. The mall was like an exclusive foreign club, and every other teenager I met from anywhere-but-here had a membership to it. I was desperate to be in that club; desperate to have that club nearby to even have the option to be in it at all. Back then, I truly never thought I'd want to stick around my hometown of 500 people—all who seemed to be my parents' age or older, too.
But then I grew up, and now I'm the age my parents were then, and I get it. In this phase of my life, I am often reminded why I love living here so much, and one main point of that is the closeness of the community. People show up for one another in times of need but also in times of celebration. I am sure that exists in other places, but it's hard to envision an entire city coming together for somebody in the same way a small town does.