Materials: Ivar shelving, lumber (luan, pine plank, molding), various mending plates, L-brackets, handtools (saw, screwdrivers), power tools (circular saw, drill, Dremel). Description: My flat is rather small and I have a large computer workstation so maximizing space and being able to integrate work and living space is important to me.

This is a guest post from Chris Guillebeau, author of The $100 Startup, available from Amazon.com or your favorite local bookstore. You can also read his free blog at ChrisGuillebeau.com. Guillebeau is a long-time reader and supporter of GRS and one of J.D.’s good friends. You’ve probably heard the line about following your passion to the bank.

If there’s one thing I suggest that people do before they go shopping for any reasonably expensive item, it’s that they make a list of the features they actually need before they go and stick to that list. There are several parts to that simple suggestion, though. First of all, how do you know what features you need?

You need people. You can’t, shouldn’t, couldn’t do it alone. Anywhere worth getting to will take a cast of caring, lucid, master minds beside you. Everything I’ve accomplished has had inner circle support — high-minded, big strategy, sleeves-rolled up kind of support. No secrets, souls-bared, nuts and bolts hashing it out.

Materials: Mandal Headboard Description: Not really a hack but a modification. I love the look of the Mandal but our recent downsize left us with a very cramped bedroom. So we chopped the ends of of two Mandals and mounted them on the side walls. The only addition was to add a extra strip of wood along the back of the side pieces to keep all the slats from moving about.

This post is brought to you by Life Khaki from Haggar What’s this? Illustration by Ted Slampyak Have any other first date style tips? Share them with us in the comments! No related posts.

Every Wednesday is Tip Day. This Wednesday: 8 tips for how to behave yourself, from sixteenth-century scholar Erasmus. One thing is true about happiness: there are very few new truths out there.

All Unitasker Wednesday posts are jokes — we don’t want you to buy these items, we want you to laugh at their ridiculousness. Enjoy! A few years ago, my husband and I got rid of all of our dining ware except for our Wedgwood White bone china.

As a journalist, I sometimes write columns and blogs that people don’t agree with. Sometimes I feel so lambasted when people leave comments about what I’ve written that I literally can’t read them. I have a pretty tough skin, and I am aware that I’m not always right—but still, sometimes I get angry and hurt. My goal in writing something controversial is to never regret writing it.

The biggest difficulty Sarah and I have with our relationship is our respective abilities to overfocus on the task at hand. If one of us knows that we really need to get something done, we can both slip into this zone-like state where almost nothing will interrupt us.