When your favorite plant turns into a droopy, brown mess, where can you turn for help?

Google Play or Apple have apps to help you choose, care for, and grow healthy beautiful plants. You can use an app to help save a sickly plant, talk to the app’s team of botanists, and set reminders for watering, fertilizing, pruning and other plant care, advises HappySprout.com.

Download PlantSnap.com or PictureThis for help with choosing plants at the nursery that will thrive in your home or garden. Use the app on nature hikes to help you identify edible plants and keep you from walking into that tangle of poison ivy.

Bloomscape’s Vera app offers a great way to document your plants, customize watering and fertilizing schedules, and journal about your plants as well as store pics of them as they grow. Plantnote allows pics with a data backup option, and it integrates with Google Lens to identify plants with Apple Maps or Google Maps.

Reader’s Digest rates Planta as the best plant-care app for 2023, and it’s an Editor’s Choice on the App Store. The paid subscription includes a light meter and access to Dr. Planta for troubleshooting plant disease and other advice.

Kitchens with little workspace, poor lighting, cramped traffic flow, and inadequate storage can easily be redesigned into high-functioning spaces.

Space Planning

Install new cabinets, drawers and countertops that are shallower than standard. With 18” deep cabinets, you’ll have more space and an easier time retrieving pots or dishes than from a 24” cabinet. Buy upper cabinets that go all the way to the ceiling for extra storage. 

Streamlining

You’ll have more workspace if you keep countertops cleared of clutter. You can choose a cabinet that includes a convenient appliance garage to store blenders, coffee grinders, and other small appliances. Instead of building a separate pantry, attach an extra-tall cabinet unit on the end to use for canned goods, brooms, etc. 

Appliances

At 30”-36” wide, refrigerators can hog precious workspace. A narrower fridge between 24” and 28” is more suitable for a smaller kitchen. Microwave/convection/oven units cook multiple ways and can be recessed into a wall. Freestanding ovens with four-burner cooktops come as compact as 20” to 24”, large enough to roast a Thanksgiving turkey.