If you don’t know anything about converting a garage into a usable space then you probably live in a place where there are large homes. That wasn’t the case for my home in San Francisco where space is limited and real estate prices are astronomical. Luckily, I was able to snag a small home with an attached garage at a reasonable price.

My small house plans didn’t originally include using the garage for anything but storage. I was moving from a two-bedroom home into this one-bedroom place and I figured that I could just store my excess junk down there until I could do something else with it. I assumed that I’d probably eventually rent out the garage since parking spaces in San Francisco command a good price and the great public transportation here means I don’t need a car myself.

However, I quickly found that my home was too small for my needs and it occurred to me that I could make use of the garage as a functional space. After sifting through some of the garage floor plans available through companies like Archway Press, I was able to figure out how to configure my garage to serve as a multi-purpose art studio and office space. In a city where every square foot counts, it’s made all of the difference in the world!

Technorati Tags: garage floor plans, small house plans, Archway Press

I babysit for some people who have always been worried about their oldest son not eating enough.  When he was little, he mainly ate fruit, and they were always trying to get him to eat more protein, such as tofu and sliced lunch meat.  To try to entice him to eat more protein, they told him that it would help him to grow taller.

Of course, he didn’t care — he was only 3 years old, so he wasn’t really thinking about getting more of a height increase!  He was actually small for his age, but he was well proportioned and healthy, so it didn’t seem like his growth and development was really suffering that much for it.

When I was in college taking child development and parenting classes, one of the things we always talked about is that you shouldn’t actually force kids to eat.  For one thing, it can create aversions by making them eat things they don’t like before they are really ready.  Another problem, though, is one that is starting to come to light with all of the problems with obesity in our society today: By teaching kids to clean their plates, you may be teaching them to continue eating after they are actually full.

Technorati Tags: grow taller, height increase, growth and development, parenting classes, child development, teaching kids to clean their plates, obesity