No filter, side hustling and more like Martha

Dear Rachel,

Do air purifiers really work? Or are they the electronic equivalent of a couple crystals and a white woman waving incense? I just figure that my house isn’t airtight, so unpure air keeps coming in, and these thousand-dollar doohickeys just run up filter costs for sucking up what would have eventually blown out the front door anyway.

– Consumer Reports

Dear Impure Thoughts,

I’ve never paid for an air purifier for the house where I live and breathe 20-some hours a day. But I have paid for an air filter for my car, especially when I’m at the quick oil place and they show me my air filter with half a dirt road and (sometimes) a chipmunk caught in it and they tell me I better replace it or my car will explode. Now, maybe this is just their standard dirtied-up air filter from the back room they use to scare people. But others are always watching me from the waiting room, so I always say yes to the filter.

– Dusted off, Rachel

Dear Rachel,

I started my own business during the pandemic and I have steady online sales. The problem is the sales are basically $20 a day. Not bad for a little extra spending $$. Horrible for actually supporting myself. That doesn’t even cover rent on my water heater. How can I 10x my sales and quit my crap job?

– Scaling Up

Dear Enter Pre Newer,

If I were any good at 10xing anything, this Ask Rachel business would be running in 10x the newspapers, with 10x the fans, 10x the letters and 1,000x the likelihood of being inked to some lucrative megadeal. Or maybe I’d still have this one half page but have to answer 30 letters a week. This is why I never risk growing as a person.

– Danger danger, Rachel

Dear Rachel,

I have company coming for Labor Day weekend. I barely bring my own girlfriend over, let alone an old friend from college and his WIFE and their THREE-YEAR-OLD. I don’t think I live in squalor, but looking around I realize, I still live like I’m in college. I really have grown up! I’m just a cheapskate who never bought matching plates or real water glasses. How can I up my home game to avoid embarrassment?

– Yard Sale Decor

Dear Martha Stewart,

You mean, besides buying matching plates and real water glasses? This would be a move quite counter to your intrinsic identity, since it definitely costs money, but I might recommend taking them out to eat. Then dropping them off at a motel afterward. Then never calling them again. Alternately – and possibly more expensively – you could just buy an air purifier.

– Welcome home, Rachel