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After more than a decade of organizing people’s homes and offices, there are certain things that I’ve often wished never existed. The ubiquity of these, and the speed at which I do away with them, has me convinced that the world would truly be a better place if I never saw another one.

Sounds harsh, but read on, and I’m sure you’ll agree. Here are my top ten:

1. Party favors— It’s bad enough that children today get trophies for playing on a team and getting a haircut, but do we have to give them trophies for attending parties? Does anyone need a trophy saying, “I Had Fun at Ethan’s 6th Birthday Party”? Does anyone need a bag of cheap, plastic crap or candy after having cake and ice cream? Why are we bribing children to come to parties?

2. Reply-all emails—Unless I’m the one organizing the meeting, bake sale, or party, I don’t need to know that you’re coming, too.

3. Tote bags—Used for anything other than toting. If it’s stuffed with junk in your closet then it’s no longer a tote bag—it’s a garbage bag.

4. Monogrammed gifts—They can’t be returned. And people have a very hard time discarding anything with their name or their child’s name on it. Even when they don’t want it. Need I say more?

5. “Economy” sizes—They’re the opposite of economy. Unless you’re raising the Gosselin eight, how much ketchup can you really use by the expiration date?

6. Paint your own pottery—Slapping paint on a pre-made ceramic is not creating art. It’s creating junk…that’s expensive… that your child will then want to display. Find another way to entertain your child.

7. Poster board—Or rather, school projects on poster board. A three year old can navigate an i-Pad, so a school age child can certainly figure out how to use Power Point.

8. Pedestal sinks—Where are you supposed to put the toilet paper and extra soap?

9. School half days—Either give the children a day off, or keep them all day. Anything in between is annoying and hard to plan around. And while we’re at it, let’s also eliminate parent participation events that start in the middle of the day. Most parents work, and it’s convenient for no one, stressful for everyone.

10. Work parties—That’s an oxymoron if I ever heard one.

The post Eliminate These Items and Make the World a Better Place appeared first on Tips on Life and Love.

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 This exceptional breakfast creation marries fluffy, omelet-style eggs and floral fig jam with buttery Taleggio cheese and crispy English muffins. From Orange, Lavender, & Figs.

For those who linger at the Sunday brunch table, this sweet and savory sandwich makes for an extraordinary sit-down delight. For busy weekday mornings, break out the tin foil and wrap it up for easy on-the-go eating.

SERVES 4
½ cup Orange Lavender Fig Jam (recipe follows)
6 large eggs
½ teaspoon kosher salt
¼ teaspoon coarse black pepper
4 English muffins, split in half
1½ tablespoons unsalted butter
8 ounces Taleggio cheese, rind removed and sliced
1 cup baby arugula

Make the Orange Lavender Fig Jam and place it in the fridge to cool down while you prepare the rest of the ingredients.

Position a rack 4 to 6 inches from the heat and preheat the oven to broil.
In a bowl, whisk the eggs with the salt and pepper. Toast the English muffins until golden brown and set aside.

In a large nonstick skillet, heat the butter over medium-high heat. When the butter begins to foam and sizzle, pour the eggs into the pan. As the bottom begins to cook, lift up the outside of the eggs with a heatproof spatula so that the runny center flows to the sides of the pan. When the bottom is fully cooked—about 30 seconds—carefully flip the eggs so that they’re now top-side down. If you’re not comfortable flipping the eggs, scramble them with the spatula until soft and fluffy. Immediately remove the eggs from the heat and divide into 4 portions.

Spread all 8 toasted English muffin halves with fig jam. Top 4 of the halves with even portions of scrambled egg and Taleggio, and place them on a baking sheet. Broil until the cheese is melted, about 45 seconds. Top the melted cheese with arugula and the other half of the English muffin.

FANFARE TIP
To achieve a tasty meal on a hectic morning, think ahead. Prepare this sandwich the night before, wrap it in foil, and refrigerate. When you roll out of bed, head to the kitchen and pop the package into a 350°F oven. Twenty minutes later and you’ll be on your way with a breakfast to boast about.

Orange Lavender Fig Jam
Today could be the day that you pat yourself on the back and congratulate yourself for making fig jam. I’m very proud of you. This fragrant, juicy spread can do no wrong, and there’s nowhere it can’t go. Try it on crackers, on toast, in a wrap. Try it in a box, with a fox, with a mouse, in a house.

Wait, I got carried away. Just try it. Trust me.

MAKES 2 CUPS
1 pound fresh figs, stemmed and halved (or ½ pound dried figs, stemmed)
1 teaspoon grated orange zest
3 tablespoons orange juice (or ½ cup if using dried figs)
1⁄3 cup packed light brown sugar (or ¼ cup if using dried figs)
½ tablespoon fresh lavender* or 1 teaspoon dried
Pinch of kosher salt

In a medium saucepan, combine the figs, orange zest, orange juice, brown sugar, lavender, and salt. Bring to a boil over medium-high heat. If using fresh figs, mash with a potato masher. Reduce the heat to medium-low and simmer for 10 minutes. If using dried figs, now you can mash with a potato masher or pulse in a food processor for a very smooth spread. Refrigerate the jam for at least 20 minutes before serving.

FANFARE TIP
Make entertaining easy on yourself. A few elegant crackers, several varieties of artisanal cheese (Saint André, Drunken Goat, English Stilton), and a bowl of this fig jam will win you hostess of the year in a pinch—of lavender.

*Growing up with a certified energy healer for a mom meant that in our house, essential oils were as common as spice rubs. When I’ve succumbed to stress, the sweet, floral aroma of lavender cradles me like the therapeutic arms of my mom. I incorporate the calming herb wherever I can, as its soothing flavor further enhances an already harmonious treat like fig jam.

The post Orange, Lavender and Figs Recipe: First-Prize Breakfast Sandwich with Orange Lavender Fig Jam appeared first on Tips on Life and Love.

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According to a recent article in the Wall Street Journal, engaging in some form of physical activity every day may serve as the most effective way to lower your risk of developing Type 2 diabetes, as well as the most important step in managing the disease in those that have already been diagnosed. A 2014 […]

Since women now have options for living a fulfilling life without marriage, holding out for the right person has become possible in a way that it wasn’t for earlier generations. I was able to find a partner as a direct result of being able to live my life the way I wanted. Read more about the contemporary lives of women in my book All The Single Ladies.

Back when women needed a man, truly needed one, to earn money, provide social standing and a roof, needed to be married in order to enjoy a socially sanctioned sex life or have children who wouldn’t be shunned, standards could be lower. They were necessarily lower. A potential mate could more easily get away with offering only a pay check, a penis, and a pulse.

Today, women want much more, and holding out for better partners is part of how we’re improving—and thereby saving—marriage.

The lion’s share of finding love is luck, in tandem with privilege, since key to propitious circumstance is opportunity: the opportunities on offer to us when we are born, the resources and options made available to us as we grow.

These were the circumstances by which I wound up married: One night I was headed back to my apartment; I was planning to work late. When I got off the subway, I decided to stop at a favorite neighborhood restaurant, a place I frequented with my girlfriends, to get some takeout pasta. After I ordered, I sat at the bar to drink a glass of water, and noticed a handsome man sitting next to me, eating by himself at the bar. He was reading a magazine and drinking a glass of wine. I watched him in the mirror above the bar and felt, suddenly, that I wanted to know him. Unconsciously, I dropped my glass of water and it broke on the bar. He looked up, and we began a conversation.

I was neither looking nor not looking for love; I was looking for dinner.

There was no strategy. It might just as easily never have happened.

There was nothing special about what I was doing or wearing or how I was acting or my approach to the relationship or whether he called me back. In fact, he was in the late stages of grief and initially hesitant about entering a relationship: If I had listened to the advice from He’s Just Not That Into You I would never have pursued him, never wound up discovering exactly how easily we fell into each other.

The only action I took in my life that had a direct impact on meeting the man I wound up marrying was that I didn’t marry anyone before him. This wasn’t on purpose: I had wished many times that I could will myself into non-excellent relationships, because I had little evidence that better ones existed, and I thought that maybe I just needed to come to grips with the fact that if I really wanted to be in love, it wasn’t going to be perfect.

But, mostly, I didn’t pursue people I wasn’t crazy about because I was busy doing other things that I enjoyed more than I enjoyed being with men I wasn’t crazy about. That abstention meant that, when a good relationship with someone I was crazy about became a possibility, I was free to pursue it.

I wound up happily married because I lived in an era in which I could be happily single.

The post How Being Happily Single Can Lead to Being Happily Married appeared first on Tips on Life and Love.

Did you know that a simple shift in your posture will lower stress and boost your confidence? It’s been scientifically proven. Try the “power poses” shared in MONEY Master the Game to immediately change how you feel for the better.

You can change the way you think by changing the way you move and breathe. Emotion is created by motion. Massive action is the cure to all fear. Think about it, fear is physical. You feel it in your mouth, in your body, in your stomach. So is courage, and you can move from one to another in a matter of milliseconds if you learn to make radical shifts in the way you move, breathe, speak, and use your physical body. I’ve used these insights for almost four decades to turn around some of the world’s greatest peak-performance athletes, financial traders, and business and political leaders. Last year, Harvard University did a scientific study that proved the validity of this approach.

Social psychologist and Harvard professor Amy Cuddy offered a “notech life hack” in her famous 2012 TED Talk when she asked the audience to change their posture for two minutes. Cuddy’s research showed that just assuming “power poses” or postures of high power (think Wonder Woman with her hands on her hips and legs firmly planted on the ground; or the guy in your office leaning back in his chair, hands clasped behind his head, elbows out wide—you know the one) increased testosterone (the dominance hormone) by 20%, while simultaneously reducing cortisol (the major stress hormone) by 25%. The impact of this biochemical change immediately transforms your willingness to face fears and take risks. All within just two minutes of changing your body. In Cuddy’s study, 86 percent of the power posers reported feeling more likely to take chances. But when the second set of volunteers were asked to stand or sit for two minutes in more passive poses, with their legs and arms crossed tightly, their testosterone levels dropped by 10 percent, and the stress hormone rose by 15 percent. Far fewer of these men and women, only 60 percent, behaved assertively. Remember, these weren’t just psychological changes but actual biochemical changes, hormonal changes. What I have taught for 38 years and what all of my students knew was true through experience was now validated by science. What does this mean? It means, basically, you rock. You’ve got some swagger in your step, you’re ready to put yourself on the line, to take the necessary risks and shape your world. Two minutes of posing can lead to the changes that either configure your brain to be assertive, confident, and comfortable, or really stress reactive. Our bodies are able to change our minds!

The post How to Boost Your Mood in 2 Minutes Flat appeared first on Tips on Life and Love.

If you have your retirement savings in a traditional IRA, you may have considered rolling over that money into a tax-free Roth IRA. But what are the advantages and disadvantages of making that move? Find out more in How to Make Your Money Last.

You can roll any amount of money from a traditional IRA, 401(k), or similar plan into a tax-free Roth IRA regardless of how much income you earn. There’s a cost to this transfer, however—perhaps a big one. You pay current income taxes on the money you move even though you don’t withdraw any of the cash. Sometimes the tax is worth paying, sometimes not.

You might want to switch to the Roth if: (1) You don’t expect to need the money until your later age, if ever. (2) You plan to leave most or all of the Roth to your heirs and want them to receive it tax free. (3) You expect to be in the same (or a higher) tax bracket when you retire, although you can’t know for sure. (4) You’re young enough so that the future growth in your investments could more than offset the cost of paying the current tax. (5) You can pay the taxes due from outside funds without having to take money out of your tax-sheltered retirement account.

You might not want to switch to the Roth if: (1) You’ll have to use funds from the IRA to pay the tax. That greatly reduces the amount of money left to grow tax deferred. (2) You expect to drop to a lower tax bracket when you retire. (3) The Medicare tax on the transfer would bump you into a higher bracket. (4) You’re 65-plus and expect to withdraw a substantial amount of your IRA during your retirement.

In short, Roth conversions are great for people who don’t need the money and want to pass most of it to heirs tax free. For the average person, however, the size of the current tax might overwhelm any likely benefit from future tax-free growth.

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