Ask the Bitches: Why Are Painted Mason Jars the Internet's Only Solution to My Tiny Apartment Woes?

Ask the Bitches: Why Are Painted Mason Jars the Internet’s Only Solution to My Tiny Apartment Woes?

In finance, Piggy and I are as the knuckle-dragging Australopithecus. We’re upright, we get the job done, don’t yell at us! But we’re the clumsiest possibly hominids. Our knowledge is erratically cobbled together from history books, finance podcasts, Kitty’s racist-yet-thrifty grandpa, and poorly-sourced socialist Facebook memes.

Thankfully, there are other areas where we are Homo neanderthalensis: graceful and erect, with powerful bodies and minds, superbly adapted to the cold, with cosmopolitan attitudes on interspecies breeding. Our knowledge in these areas is instinctual, virtuosic. And one of these areas is organizing small spaces.

Today we have a great reader question from our Tumblr on this very topic:

Hi! I love your blog and I find it really helpful!! I’m a mid-20s human in the SF Bay Area. I got a job and and was able to get an extra $15k in my salary (thanks to your advice!), and have now moved into my own little studio. My problem is this: Everything to help you “save space” on the web seems to actually be “how to move your entire kitchen into hand-painted mason jars”. Any advice on how to organize my space without buying useless storage buckets on Amazon?

Is… is this what I think it is? PERMISSION TO GO ON MY BIG RANT ABOUT MASON JARS? Oh, thank the stars! (Jars?)

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Why Is Short Hair Controversial? An Examination of Expensive, Annoying Beauty Standards

Our recent article on looking weird at work got a lot of great feedback, so I thought I’d do a follow-up on hair length as well. It’s a fascinating topic by the standards of someone who greatly enjoys very boring topics.

Hair is a very weird thing.

It’s a body part like no other. Science tells us it is made of rhinoceros horns. Don’t argue, it’s science. It is malleable in ways that our necks, toes, forearms, areolas, and most other body parts are not. It moves, sways, bounces, and whips around sexily when you’re standing on a beach thinking about the lover you left behind when time traveling back to dinosaur times. Again, this is science speaking.

OH HOW PRETTY.

It’s also one of the most immediately visible differences between men and women. And as such, it’s one of the most important cultural signifiers of femininity. Which is why women cutting their hair is so often interpreted as some kind of subversive act.

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Can Looking Weird at Work Be Good for Your Career?

This morning I was clip-clopping through the third floor stairwell of my office building, looking weird. Y’know: like I do. I don’t work on the third floor, it’s a completely separate department with which I have no contact; it’s just where the good coffee lives.

I passed someone on the stairs, and we glanced at each other and gave polite smiles. Then I heard her do a double-take behind me.

“Hey,” this perfect stranger said, “I don’t mean to be rude, but can I ask where you work within the company? My friends and I have seen you in the hallways and we keep trying to figure out where you work.”

It’s a strange question, right? But I know why she was asking.

It’s because at work, I’m usually looking weird.

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Fast Fashion: Why It’s Fucking up the World and How To Avoid It

As you can tell from our witty banter on the Bad With Money With Gaby Dunn podcast, Kitty and I consider ourselves to be eminently fashionable gentlewomen. Look good, feel good! That’s our motto! (Just kidding that is definitely not our motto. We don’t have one. We’re still workshopping it. Do you even realize how long it took us to come up with the name of this blog? A long time… and many Excel spreadsheets.)

And yet, I don’t spend a lot of money on clothes. I rarely go shopping for myself. And when I do, it is with all the precision and swiftness of a predator drone. Get in, get the goods, get out. I love me a good thrift store find. Few things give me more materialistic glee than purchasing a unique garment at the flea market. And yes, I still shop at fucking Target, but those expenditures are few and far between.

This is partially because of my frugal nature. I just don’t buy a lot of stuff. But it’s also because in recent years I’ve tried really hard to avoid an industry that is damaging to both the environment and to human rights on a global scale.

I am speaking, of course, of fast fashion.

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