Kate Reardon - Your Mother Was Right: All the Great Advice You Tried to Forget

ALSO BY KATE REARDON

Top Tips for Girls:
Real Advice from Real Women for Real Life

For my friends.
Thank you for letting me pick you.

BEAUTY
or Its not all in the eye of the beholder.

BODY
or Either do something about it or shut up.

COOKING
or This has never happened to me before, I promise.

ECO
or Is my shoe closet a reflection of my carbon footprint?

FAMILY
or Proceed with caution.

FITNESS
or Fit or fat, the choice is yours.

FRIENDSHIP
or Cling to the goodies, but be ruthless in dumping the baddies.

GIFTS
or I love it! (How could you?)

HAIR
or If they can put a man on the moon, why cant they fix the frizzies?

HAPPINESS
or Dont postpone it.

HEALTH
or Remember those magic words, OK, you better not go to school today? Now that Im grown up, I sometimes say them to myself.

THE HOLIDAYS
or Brace yourself

HOME
or One of the great questions of philosophy: Where do all the socks go?

LIFE
or Any other business.

MONEY
or As my grandmother said, Money is very good for the nerves.

PARENTINGTHE EARLY YEARS
or Damage limitation.

PARENTING IT NEVER ENDS
or Which of you is more freaked out that theyre turning into you?

PETS
or The sane ones in the house (usually).

RELATIONSHIPS
or All he knows about me is that Im a good listener.

SAFETY
or If you cant be good, be careful.

SCHOOL
or If you survive unscathed, office politics will be a walk in the park.

SENIORS
or What? I wish everyone would stop mumbling.

STYLE
or Maybe Id better wear jeans after all.

TECHNOLOGY
or Catch me if you can.

TRAVEL
or When can we go home?

WEDDINGS
or Its not about the big day, its about the days after.

WORK
or Its hard, but it can be fun.

T here are two types of women: those who are a bit vague and noncommittal when you ask what delicious perfume theyre wearing, and those who, when they discover an exciting new method of hair removal, demand that you feel their newly smooth lower leg and examine it minutely for any vestiges of hair as they dial the salon to make an appointment for you.

The website TopTips.com is very much for and written by the latter sort of woman. The site is a community of women who dont feel that life is a giant competition, and that another womans success (whether it be at work or at hair removal) diminishes them in any way. It attracts women who actually like other women, and who enjoy giving each other advice.

Welcome to Your Mother Was Right, the second book of practical, funny, and brilliant tips gleaned from TopTips.com. Since the first book was published, tens of thousands more tips have been submitted to the site, so we thought it would be crazy not to put the best together into a second volume. There are even more hard-won words of wisdom on an extraordinary range of subjects, from how to calm a screaming baby to how to react when you find naughty texts on your partners cell phone, how to make perfect meatballs, and how to find a suitable mate in later life. And there are two new and exciting categories that apply to everyone: friendship and happiness.

Most of the problems posted on the site prompt two or three tipsters to post solutions. But the question, How to be happy? has elicited (at the time of going to press) an awesome 113 answers. Happiness is the one thing we all crave, and evidently its the one thing about which most people feel they have some good counsel to share. So, thus inspired, we launched the Campaign for Happiness to disperse some of this wonderful advice; scores of celebrities shared their tips, the press gleefully reported our efforts, and every day we suggested a simple act of happiness for everyone to commit.

The Friendship chapter (covering everything from how to be a good friend to how to cope when things arent going so well) was prompted by the following exchange: Someone posted the problem, How to turn little friendships into true ones when you need a shoulder to cry on? I was delighted when a tipster called Pienkfly replied, Let me give you the perfect answer. We at Top Tips are your true best friends. We are here 24/7. So if you need to cry, we are just a click away. I subscribed to this website 18 March 2008, and you know what? I submitted my problems, and got so many true, straight answers and solutions. Although we dont know each other, we give you honest help. Some friends lie to one another just to make them feel better; we dont.

One of the benefits of TopTips.com is that its anonymousyou can discuss anxieties you wouldnt dare voice even to your best friend. Written and read by a community of women from all over the world, it allows you to post problems (from the prosaic to the profound), and those with a view pile in with their suggested solutions. Encouraging you to leave something handy behind when you go, TopTips.com is the ultimate interactive advice column.

This book is the result of a collaboration among the thousands of women who have submitted advice on TopTips.com. Editing it was simple, but not easy: Starting with a spreadsheet of the 26,409 tips that have been submitted since we compiled the last book, I whittled it down to about 800. Which was toughthere were so many brilliant tips that it was incredibly hard to choose. Those that were heartbreaking to delete Im saving for the next book.

I ended up picking ones that answered my own questions or made the most sense. A word of warning: I havent tested them all so if you follow any of the advice, think it through first. If a tip doesnt work, or you end up turning your toenails green, please let me and the rest of the world know by going to TopTips.comso we can get it right for the reprint.

As you are now the proud owner of a copy of Your Mother Was Right: All the Great Advice You Tried to Forget and presumably have read at least some of it, you are entitled to enhanced status when you register on TopTips.com. How cool is that? Simply enter the word genius in the Promotional Code field and you will automatically be flagged as something of a guru within the TopTips.com community.

B eauty maintenance is a never-ending task. You can view it as terrifically dull, or you can believe that it is pampering, me time. Whatever your attitude and whether you are a nail-clippers-and-hairbrush sort of girl or someone with a more elaborate routine, it is a fact that no matter what you do, you will only have to do it all over again sometime later. All tasks are eventually futile; body hair and nails grow relentlessly and all we can do is try to head them off at the pass with an arsenal of ever-more-sophisticated products and devices. The most wonderful hairstyle in the world will at some point have to be shampooed, and makeup will have to be removed. And yet most women take an intrinsic pleasure in grooming themselves. Whether it is done to ensnare a man or not, dont talk to them about it. Almost all men experience a boredom bordering on narcolepsy when women start talking about makeup; as far as theyre concerned, Mascara is a soccer player. And for them it is an insoluble mystery about the nature of time itself why no woman can accurately say how long she will take when makeup is involved.