I rarely do brand endorsements of products and in this case, there is probably more than one brand that can accomplish the same purpose. In two very different aspects of little things being convenient, we recently had to replace our washer and dryer. I had thought I wanted one of the front-load washers up on the pedestal, maybe even in one of the new great colors they have. Then I looked at the price and took into consideration the fact our laundry room is exactly that. It’s large enough to have the W&D, the iron and ironing board, various cleaning implements and adequate shelving. It’s not like some houses where the laundry is part of a back entry into a house. I also looked at a Whirlpool on sale (and they have been making appliances for a long time) and saw they had a feature with a specific setting for bulky items/bed linens. You know how it is – you wash sheets and somehow stuff gets tangled in them and literally twists around into kind of a ball. With this new design, the blades of the agitator in the tub are much smaller and between that and whatever else they’ve done, it solves this problem. It doesn’t help in the dryer, but at least there is only one need to untangle instead of two.

Moving into the kitchen, a number of years ago I was put onto the method of making lasagna without boiling the noodles and I love that shortcut. The other  day I was going for lasagna noodles and a box from Barilla caught my eye – lasagna sheets. They are a little thinner, don’t have the scalloped edges and are created as no-boil with a total baking time of 40 minutes instead of the usual 55. They are cut to accommodate a standard oblong baking dish and you place them across the dish instead of down the length. The directions said the noodles will expand while baking to fit the dish. It looked a little odd, but sure enough, 25 minutes later when I removed the foil, the noodles fit the dish as if I had cut them to do so. Another 8-10 minutes for final browning and I couldn’t have asked for a better looking lasagna. Although neither of these things is momentous, they are both time savers.