The Stuff of Family Life

The Stuff of Family Life
Author: Michelle Janning
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 239
Release: 2017-05-05
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1442254807

Does putting your smartphone on the dinner table impact your relationships? How does where you place your TV in your home affect your family? The Stuff of Family Life takes readers inside the changing world of families through a unique examination of their stuff. From digital family photo albums to the growing popularity of “man caves,” author Michelle Janning looks at not only what large demographic studies say about family dynamics but also what our lives—and the stuff in them—say about how we relate to each other. The book takes readers through various phases of family life, including dating, marriage, parenting, divorce, and aging, while paying attention to how our choices about our spaces and objects impact our lives. Janning has joked, “I'm not a social scientist who uses large national datasets to illustrate family life; I’m the social scientist who asks people to examine what’s in their underwear drawers to tell stories about their family life.” From underwear drawers to calendars, The Stuff of Family Life offers an illuminating and entertaining look at the complexities of American families today.

Life at Home in the Twenty-First Century

Life at Home in the Twenty-First Century
Author: Jeanne E. Arnold
Publisher: Cotsen Institute of Archaeology Press
Total Pages: 181
Release: 2012-12-31
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1938770900

Winner of the 2014 John Collier Jr. Award Winner of the Jo Anne Stolaroff Cotsen Prize Life at Home in the Twenty-First Century cross-cuts the ranks of important books on social history, consumerism, contemporary culture, the meaning of material culture, domestic architecture, and household ethnoarchaeology. It is a distant cousin of Material World and Hungry Planet in content and style, but represents a blend of rigorous science and photography that these books can claim. Using archaeological approaches to human material culture, this volume offers unprecedented access to the middle-class American home through the kaleidoscopic lens of no-limits photography and many kinds of never-before acquired data about how people actually live their lives at home. Based on a rigorous, nine-year project at UCLA, this book has appeal not only to scientists but also to all people who share intense curiosity about what goes on at home in their neighborhoods. Many who read the book will see their own lives mirrored in these pages and can reflect on how other people cope with their mountains of possessions and other daily challenges. Readers abroad will be equally fascinated by the contrasts between their own kinds of materialism and the typical American experience. The book will interest a range of designers, builders, and architects as well as scholars and students who research various facets of U.S. and global consumerism, cultural history, and economic history.

The Life of Stuff

The Life of Stuff
Author: Susannah Walker
Publisher: Doubleday UK
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2018
Genre: Bereavement
ISBN: 9780857525406

"Only after her mother's death does Susannah Walker discover how much of a hoarder she had become. Over the following months, sorting through a dilapidated house filled to the brim with rubbish and treasures, she goes in search of a woman she'd never really known in life. Hoping to piece together her mother's story and make sense of their troubled relationship, what emerges from the mess of scattered papers, discarded photographs and an extraordinary amount of stuff is the history of a sad and fractured family, haunted by dead children, divorce and alcohol."--

Don't Sweat the Small Stuff with Your Family

Don't Sweat the Small Stuff with Your Family
Author: Richard Carlson
Publisher: Hachette Books
Total Pages: 236
Release: 2013-05-21
Genre: Family & Relationships
ISBN: 140130589X

Featured in Don't Sweat the Small Stuff: The Kristine Carlson Story starring Heather Locklear, premiering on Lifetime This indispensable guide to family in the #1 bestselling series reveals how to avoid letting the minor setbacks in your home life get you down. With his characteristic candor and piercing insight, author Richard Carlson demonstrates how to resolve such common domestic tensions as: Children who are whining or fighting Issues with your spouse Hassles over household chores Difficult teenagers

How to Be a Family

How to Be a Family
Author: Dan Kois
Publisher: Little, Brown
Total Pages: 323
Release: 2019-09-17
Genre: Family & Relationships
ISBN: 0316552615

In this "refreshingly relatable" (Outside) memoir, perfect for the self-isolating family, Slate editor Dan Kois sets out with his family on a journey around the world to change their lives together. What happens when one frustrated dad turns his kids' lives upside down in search of a new way to be a family? Dan Kois and his wife always did their best for their kids. Busy professionals living in the D.C. suburbs, they scheduled their children's time wisely, and when they weren't arguing over screen time, the Kois family-Dan, his wife Alia, and their two pre-teen daughters-could each be found searching for their own happiness. But aren't families supposed to achieve happiness together? In this eye-opening, heartwarming, and very funny family memoir, the fractious, loving Kois' go in search of other places on the map that might offer them the chance to live away from home-but closer together. Over a year the family lands in New Zealand, the Netherlands, Costa Rica, and small-town Kansas. The goal? To get out of their rut of busyness and distractedness and to see how other families live outside the East Coast parenting bubble. HOW TO BE A FAMILY brings readers along as the Kois girls-witty, solitary, extremely online Lyra and goofy, sensitive, social butterfly Harper-like through the Kiwi bush, ride bikes to a Dutch school in the pouring rain, battle iguanas in their Costa Rican kitchen, and learn to love a town where everyone knows your name. Meanwhile, Dan interviews neighbors, public officials, and scholars to learn why each of these places work the way they do. Will this trip change the Kois family's lives? Or do families take their problems and conflicts with them wherever we go? A journalistic memoir filled with heart, empathy, and lots of whining, HOW TO BE A FAMILY will make readers dream about the amazing adventures their own families might take.

The Stuff of Life

The Stuff of Life
Author: Hilary Robertson
Publisher: Ryland Peters & Small
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2014-04-10
Genre: House & Home
ISBN: 9781849755054

In her gorgeous new book, sought-after interiors stylist Hilary Robertson reveals a multitude of different ways to style and display the ‘stuff of life’ – the flotsam and jetsam of possessions, from pictures and ornaments to hats and bicycles, that we all gradually accumulate during the course of time. In her gorgeous new book, sought-after interiors stylist Hilary Robertson reveals a multitude of different ways to style and display the “stuff of life”—the flotsam and jetsam of possessions that we all slowly acquire. In the first chapter, How to Arrange your Stuff, Hilary identifies and illustrates four different approaches to arrangements and shows how each one can be achieved. She also considers the variety of display locations available within the home – blank walls, mantelpieces, windowsills, chests of drawers, tabletops – and suggests how to make the most of them. Next, in Stories told by Real Homes, Hilary shares inspiration from real-life interiors that fall into five different styles—Neatnik, Bohemian, Naturalist, Sculpture Vulture, and Noble Salvage. Some people are magpies—they love stuff; finding, collecting, and displaying it, while their opposite, the minimalists, are on a mission to contain it or tame it.The ideas in this book are sure to appeal to both magpies and minimalists and everyone in between.

The Good Stuff from Growing Up in a Dysfunctional Family

The Good Stuff from Growing Up in a Dysfunctional Family
Author: Karen Casey
Publisher: Mango Media
Total Pages: 170
Release: 2024-08-13
Genre: Family & Relationships
ISBN: 1684811821

Inspirational stories of survivors leaving their abusive households—and drawing on the wis-dom gained from adversity to transform their lives. So many people have experienced bleak childhoods in which degradation, pain, and neglect were common. But as survivors of toxic families, their triumphs are not only powerful but inspirational. This book follows twenty-four stories about finding happiness after surviving a dysfunctional family. With enlightening honesty, humor, and apt quotes, you’ll experience the transformative effects that hope and resilience can have. Thriving means more than just letting go of the past and its hardships; it means becoming your own silver lining. Karen Casey and our narrators explore how your worst experiences can help you create meaningful skills for building a new, fulfilling life. With each narrator sharing the moment they decided to thrive instead of giving up, this self-compassion book will show you that no matter how dysfunctional life can be, you can emerge stronger than ever from it. Promises and positive affirmations to live The importance of nourishing your emotional strength Beginning your healing journey by putting your heart first Forgiving your family’s pain to avoid repeating it, and more “Explores the benefits that result from surviving in a dysfunctional family, including resiliency, perseverance, a sense of humor, forgiveness, kindness, and the ability to discern real love. Simple but authentic points are enumerated at the conclusion of each chapter. With unrelenting optimism and a solid faith in God, Casey helps readers learn to let go of judgment and embrace acceptance. New readers as well as followers of the author’s earlier works will be uplift-ed.” —Publishers Weekly “You just can’t go wrong with Karen Casey.” —Earnie Larsen, author of From Anger to Forgiveness

The Very Best, Hands-On, Kinda Dangerous Family Devotions, Volume 1

The Very Best, Hands-On, Kinda Dangerous Family Devotions, Volume 1
Author: Tim Shoemaker
Publisher: Revell
Total Pages: 252
Release: 2019-05-21
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1493417916

As parents hoping to raise godly children, we may understand the importance of regular family devotions. However, we may find it difficult to get our kids (or even ourselves) fully engaged. But what if devotions looked less like sitting in the living room listening to someone read and trying to pry answers out of reluctant kids and more like, say, electrocuting a pickle? Or converting a leaf blower into a toilet paper launcher? Or lighting toothpaste on fire? These hands-on, kinda dangerous, totally unforgettable object lessons (along with nearly fifty others) are not only more fun than other family devotions--they actually deliver the spiritual impact you desire for your kids. They'll even get dads and any too-cool-for-this-stuff teens jazzed about a weekly family devotional time. So put away the flannelgraph, get out the safety goggles, and start bringing the truths of Scripture to vivid life in your household. Just remember to change out of your Sunday clothes first.

The Hoarder in You

The Hoarder in You
Author: Robin Zasio
Publisher: Rodale Books
Total Pages: 243
Release: 2012-11-13
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 1609611322

We all have treasured possessions—a favorite pair of shoes, a much-beloved chair, an ever-expanding record collection. But sometimes, this emotional attachment to our belongings can spiral out of control and culminate into a condition called compulsive hoarding. From hobbyists and collectors to pack rats and compulsive shoppers—it is close to impossible for hoarders to relinquish their precious objects, even if it means that stuff takes over their lives and their homes. According to psychologist Dr. Robin Zasio, our fascination with hoarding stems from the fact that most of us fall somewhere on the hoarding continuum. Even though it may not regularly interfere with our everyday lives, to some degree or another, many of us hoard. The Hoarder In You provides practical advice for decluttering and organizing, including how to tame the emotional pull of acquiring additional things, make order out of chaos by getting a handle on clutter, and create an organizational system that reduces stress and anxiety. Dr. Zasio also shares some of the most serious cases of hoarding that she's encountered, and explains how we can learn from these extreme examples—no matter where we are on the hoarding continuum.