As theStock Market Continues to Plunge and Millions lose their Retirement Savings...

We can take comfort in keeping our house in order. Here's the answer to a question that must have been plaguing most of us for decades.

Question:How do you keep hangers from making marks in the shoulders of shirts? And how do you keep clothes from falling off hangers?

Lorna Lover

Indian Rocks Beach, FL

Answer:Use only padded, wooden, or plastic hangers. And use felt circles to keep clothes from slipping onto the floor.
Go to RealSimple.com to stop getting hung up on your hanger worries: http://www.realsimple.com/realsimple/content/0,21770,1850470,00.html?xid=askrsnews

Thank God Someone's Paying Attention to What Matters in America Today

From Real Simpleton Magazine

Question:What is the best way to store multiple curling irons, hair dryers, and flat irons?Ann MarksKirkland, WA

Answer:Invest in a plastic or wire organizer that mounts to a wall or inside a cabinet door.
A place for everything and everything in its place. That’s the ideal, right? Take a step in the right direction by organizing your collection of hair tools.

Although this issue is important, I still believe it takes second place to the story last year about the woman who didn't know how to organize her jewelry

Real Simpleton

Have you ever seen this magazine, Real Simpleton? What a void this publication has filled! Who will ever forget the stirring article about the woman who was distraught because she couldn't organize her jewelry collection? Or the online help topic: Help, my shoes squeak? Another popular feature of the magazine is taking ordinary household items and finding other uses(called the 'Aha! use) for them. I won't go into this now. But I myself, dear reader have found an 'aha' use for the mundane devilled egg platter.

If you like to use ceramic for your watercolors (plastic makes the paint bead up) and the palattes at the art supply store are too small for larger works, or for working on multiple paintings at a time, the lowly devilled egg platter could be just the thing for you. Stephen Quiller makes a huge square ceramic palatte which is totally groovy, but it's almost as large as my art studio and weighs 40 pounds. Not so the devilled egg platter, which features nice, deep wells perfect for washes and mixing large amounts of color.

I might mention that it's perfect for fluid acrylics. the color can be allowed to dry up in the deep wells and peeled off so you can re-cycle appropriately instead of throwing it down the sink into our drinking water.

Unfortunately, the devilled egg platter has no discernable effect on the quality of your paintings. I'm working on that one.