Have you ever tried any of the now-OTC allergy medication? I’ve been on almost all of them, and now that they are OTC, they are much easier to get than pseudoephedrine, plus they are more intended for long-term use.

A lot of cold and allergy medicines have more than one active ingredient, to cover multiple symptoms. For example, it is common to combine an antihistamine with a decongestant. The antihistamine could be helping you even if the decongestant isn’t. You might even be able to save a little money by buying something that…

The other problem with gossip is that, even if the person you are talking about doesn’t overhear, the other people who do hear you are liable to wonder what you are saying about them when they are not there to hear it.

Yeah, that’s weirdly specific. Proximity to a national park doesn’t tell you very much by itself, except that you’re probably in the western U.S., since that’s where most of the national parks are. Plenty of areas have great state and local parks and wildlife areas. What gets designated a national park is a matter of…

It’s not exclusively an American airline problem, but it is more likely to be an American airline problem, I think. (You can always lose your specific seats if your flight is canceled and you get moved to another one, but overbooking absolutely sounds like something American airlines would be more likely to do,…

First, it’s often an additional cost to pick a seat, which some people can’t pay and more people just don’t pay, and then they end up randomly assigned to sit separately from their minor children, which ends up making a problem for whichever other passengers get seated next to them instead. Even if picking a seat is…

Wipe your curtain rods when you toss your curtains in the wash.

Good for you! Good customer service is a skill, and de-escalating is at least half of it. Being able to actually fix problems is good, but people are always having a crappy day by the time they ask for help, so it’s just inevitable they’ll be cranky, and if you can’t deal with that, you can’t help them.

This is all good advice, but it only works if the company you are calling gives their customer service people appropriate tools and training.

“You should definitely spend 6-7 times as much for a device that doesn’t work any better for what you want to use it for” is not much of a life hack! A better one would be “don’t buy more device than the recipient is going to use”. 

This. “Tablets” is way too broad a category to be useful here. The Fire and the iPad are different devices with different purposes.

My best trick is to pack clothes that all match everything else I’ve packed. All the tops work with all the pants and skirts, and all the sweaters work with everything else. If you mix it up right, then you won’t even notice you’re wearing the same clothes over and over. It also cuts way down on the need for…

I think kids tend to get really upset to the same degree that their parents emphasized the “realness” of Santa. Most kids gradually learn the difference between real and pretend and they don’t just immediately stop pretending. They also learn that pretending is not the same as lying.

Alas, no. There are still places where you can’t even get good enough cell service to effectively even use unlimited data. (This is especially a problem if you live in the U.S. but not in a major metro area.) Or, depending on how much data you normally use, it’s cheaper to pay for a lower-price data plan and use WiFi…

THIS. There’s another tradition of going all the way through Candlemas, which isn’t until February 2! You can do what you want for yourself, but it doesn’t make any sense to tell other people they have to take their Christmas lights down when Christmas isn’t even over.

Such a bizarre take to insist you must take down your Christmas lights halfway through Christmas.

January 1? Huh? In what reality?

Christmas lasts for 12 days. It’s still actually Christmas until January 6, Epiphany. You are definitely not keeping your Christmas lights up for too long if you keep them up while it’s still Christmas.

Nothing is scared of fake owls (except me, if I see one unexpectedly and it startles me). People who study hawks sometimes use owl decoys to lure the hawks in closer.

Most of the common clovers in North America (e.g. white clover, red clover) are invasive weeds. They come from Europe.

FYI, it can be useful to know that Excedrin Migraine is exactly the same medication as Excedrin Extra Strength. This is a labeling/marketing difference, not an actual difference—the pills contain the same drugs in the same amounts.