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Thursday’s Workwear Report: Braided Cardigan with Openwork Details

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A woman wearing a white top under an ivory cardigan with dark blue denim pants

Our daily workwear reports suggest one piece of work-appropriate attire in a range of prices.

This gorgeous cardigan from Mango looks like it would be a great option for summer. The open-weave design makes it look a little bit summery, but the thick knit will be wonderful for air conditioned offices.

Layer it over a dress for the office, and tie it around your shoulders for drinks after work. 

The sweater is $69.99 at Mango and comes in sizes XXS-4XL.

Sales of note for 7/8/25:

115 Comments

  1. My husband and I were talking yesterday about how he grew up eating dinner with his family 6 PM everyday (I didn’t) but how we can’t really swing that with our life because while one of us is usually home with the kids after school , the other one is not until 7-8 PM (we alternate depending on the day) and the kids are starving/ready for a meal as soon as they get home from school anyways, prefer kid foods etc. Anyways, I guess I feel guilty for not having the picture perfect 6 pm family dinner, though I never had it and didn’t think it was a big deal. Did you grow up with a family dinner or not and are you doing the same thing for your kids/do you think it matters?

    1. My family sometimes made efforts that the kids generally resented since it wasn’t our routine and because it was hard not for it to feel stressful or stuffy and formal. Maybe my mom felt pressure to make a meat, vegetables, potatoes dinner when setting a table and aiming for picture perfect? When I remember good food on weeknights, I usually remember simpler foods like soups and chilis and pastas, all of which were kid friendly in our household, and serving ourselves from the kitchen. But I have a lot of good memories of communal meals on weekends with my family even if it was often more of a barbecue. So I’m happy we found another way to do communal eating as a family.

      1. A friend once made fun of me for swapping the knives and forks when setting the table, and she told me that her family had manners evenings with white tablecloths. Table manners are of course important but it seemed such a stressful way to live your life. Also, it’s bad manners to make fun of someone for their table manners!

        1. It’s absolutely rude to criticize someone’s table manners but I find the people who are the least stressed about formal dinners are the ones who were used them as a kid.

          We started formal dinners during covid as a way to pass the time when we isolated and now we do them for practice or special occasions when the kids ask for it because they like dressing up. We use the fancy china for whatever celebration the kids want like first day of spring, half birthday, end of exams. We celebrate in more casual ways too like pizza on the beach but they seem to like the mix and are unphased about the difference between a butter knife and a dinner knife or a water glass and juice glass. We did have to limit it to one unbirthday tea party per kid though otherwise it got too chaotic even if there are technically 364 unbirthdays in a year.

          1. This is charming – what a fun way to teach your kids in a painless, even fun way.

        2. So weird to consider tablecloths and silverware as formal. I grew up setting the table every day for dinner. We didn’t eat anything fancy, my mom worked and also had night classes so it’s not a money thing.

          1. Maybe it’s a social class thing more than money, or other kinds of background, but it’s definitely not weird to view those things as formal. They’re not even traditional in many families.

          2. Yeah we never ate with a tablecloth. I mean occasionally in nicer restaurants once I was old enough for that, but never at home. We didn’t even have a dining room in our home and just ate at the kitchen table. My parents were upper middle class when I was ground up and are capital R rich now (partly because they never upgraded from their fully paid off starter home that didn’t have a dining room!)

          3. We set the table for dinner and had placemats, but not a table cloth. I honestly don’t think I’ve encountered a table cloth outside of a restaurant (and those aren’t always present at the very nice restaurants) in the wild, other than my grandma’s holiday parties where the table cloth covers the paint splatters on the plastic folding table.

          4. I thought we were fancy for eating at a table at all; a lot of my friends ate from TV trays in the living room most nights! (80s)

      2. Same, we had plenty of family meals on weekends. Weekdays my parents tag teamed, mom went to work early and we had breakfast with Dad. He often worked late and we had dinner with Mom. I think it was fine for us kids, although I think the lack of couple time wasn’t ideal for my parents’ marriage.

    2. I did grow up with that (but more like 5:30 PM, we’re all naturally really early eaters). I travel a decent amount and have a stupid commute but if we’re all home, we eat together at the dining room table, no technology, candles in the winter. We don’t do kid food, but have an adventurous eater, and there’s no shame in kid food. If we are solo, we do the same, but probably are more likely to eat at the kitchen island.

      With my social science hat on, I don’t think there’s a direct causal relationship between family dinners and kid outcomes. It’s just an easy proxy for stability of family life, resources to prioritise family time, economic resources etc. And you can replicate that together time in other ways – can you have breakfast? A big Sunday lunch? A snuggle in bed on Saturday AM where you talk about your week.

      2. 100 to family together time, whenever that is. It’s also a time to communicate as a family. Doesn’t have to be dinner!

      3. This is what we do too…family breakfast most weekdays, and family meals together most weekends.

    3. My mom was a SAHM with a husband who shares many similarities to Sheldon Cooper as far as physicist with very set routines. So, yes, family dinner was one of those routines. Now, our life just doesn’t happen for sitting down for family dinner on weeknights at 6pm on an everyday basis… not sure if part of that is subconscious rebellion on my part.

    4. I grew up with family dinners around 5-5:30 pm! My parents have been early bird eaters since they were young and I think people tend to eat earlier in the Midwest. We do family dinners with our kid, but more like 5:30-6. I don’t think it’s really quality time though, everyone tends to be kind of tired and cranky. Our kid is a picky eater but you usually eats some version of our food (eg pasta without the sauce and veggies) or something really simple she can prep on her own, so it’s not hard to eat all at once.

    5. My mom was a SAHM and we always had it exactly at 6pm. I don’t do it for my kids because when we were first married I tried and my husband would frequently not be hungry for dinner because he’d just eaten a huge snack 45 minutes before. Or I’d make a healthy low carb meal and then he’d order more food 3 hours later. Then with the kids I tried again but at one point I was making like 3 different meals. Then there were evening activities that interrupted 6pm. I’m also adhd so executive functioning is sometimes hard.

      So I ultimately regret it. We’re trying to get back to it but my oldest has misophonia w/r/t his sibling’s chewing so that’s another complicating factor.

    6. No, we never did, because as you said we all got home at different times. My mom was a SAHM and made dinner every night, but my brother always wanted to eat as soon as he got home from school, I was a picky eater so I always made myself something separate, my dad ate when he got home from work. I think it’s a nice idea but not practical.

    7. I don’t recall when i was really little, but from age 8 onwards we had family dinner 5 days a week. Tuesdays was my dads late night and Saturdays my parents went out. Now, we also try to have dinner as a family about 5 nights a week, but we didn’t start that until our kids were in kindergarten because previously DH’s work schedule didn’t allow it and my kids went to bed fairly early

    8. We did family dinner, with a simple rotation of meals: spaghetti with meatballs, chicken teriyaki with rice, a pan of enchiladas, and a tuna casserole. We used actual plates and learned table manners

    9. I am Gen X and have fled the eat-in-kitchen back to the dining room. We have an island with seats on it, but it’s 4 seats in a row and way too easy to default to eating while looking at a phone or the TV or just diving into the paper (FINE if you are alone). Also, as the main cook / server, I was standing too much and I wanted to just sit and eat with the people I cooked for. The dining room and a table with chairs work better for me (the inmates are indifferent) and gets the kids involved with setting the table and plating food (I just let them serve their plates from the stove; serving dishes are for holiday meals). Usually 3/4 of us are there. But I find the kids sneaking off to the dining room to eat now and it’s an oasis of quiet where you just have one thing going on. Maybe we came to resent it over COVID, where it was one kid’s classroom. But we are using it again and even caring about the table scape (usually just periodic swaps in the 5000 placemats or table cloth). I am starting to care about things like that. It’s also one space not cluttered up with the ephemera of mail and stuff from school.

    10. We used to split family dinner — my brother and mother ate early (circa 6 pm), and I would eat later with my dad (circa 7 pm)

    11. Don’t let perfection be the enemy of good. We both grew up with family dinners but had SAHM or part time working moms.

      We often let the kids have a snack when we get home (fruit/veg tray hauled out from fridge, or avocado toast or crackers etc), and then eat dinner at 7pm. It’s increasingly driven by the kids schedules. DH and I make a plan for each week on Sunday that says, dinner time, who is cooking and what we are having. Sometimes it’s just a jar of sauce, box of pasta, frozen meatballs because we have 15 mins to cook and 15 mins to eat when we can all sit and eat together.

      With the kids in different activities, we aim for the majority of us to eat together on the majority of the days. That means sometimes dinner is 5:30pm and it’s one parent and 3 kids, and the next day it’s 7pm and it’s everyone, and then it’s 7pm but it’s one parent and two kids. We try to always do a nice family breakfast on Saturday mornings as well. Just pancakes but we do different toppings and flavors.

      1. +1 My husband grew up with family dinners, I did not. While I don’t hold any resentment toward my parents, I definitely feel like we missed out. Still today when we are visiting people fill their own plates and eat haphazardly. So, I’ve been very intentional about family meals for my kids – start out as you mean to go on, and all that.

        But it’s a floating target, as you mention. Usually it’s not until 7:30pm or later and then we go right into the bedtime routine (my kids are ages 1-10). After school they have a hefty snack. But sometimes it’s me and the kids before activities and then they have a bowl of cereal with my husband after. We manage family dinner at least 5 times a week.

        There are so many benefits to a regular family meal, but you can bend the “rules” to make it happen

    12. We did have family dinner growing up most nights, usually around 6 or 6:30. I was mostly able to replicate that with my kids, but on a very different timeframe. Once the kids were in activities, it was usually a heavy snack after school and then family dinner around 8 or 8:30 once everyone was home. We still eat late now that the kids are mostly grown. We don’t manage to sit down together every night, but we do so a few times a week. It’s usually pretty casual and we serve ourselves in the kitchen.

      I do echo the comment above that it’s mostly about prioritizing family time. So sometimes it happens through dinner, sometimes it happens through hanging out on the couch and chatting while we watch a show together, sometimes it happens through Sunday brunch. And it has definitely changed as the kids have gotten older!

    13. DH and I both grew up eating family dinner at 6pm every day. We do it too, at least 6 nights a week. My kids (13, 10, 7, 4) have said it’s one of their favorite things about our family and we frequently have kids’ friends over who say they wish their family ate together and they like to be at our family dinner, so that gives us good encouragement to keep it up.

    14. I want to say we always ate dinner together as a family growing up, but to be honest, I don’t know if that’s true. I remember doing it, but I also know that my brother and I had a lot of activities so I it’s not really math-ing.
      Having said that, I do try to have everyone have dinner together when we can. My Husband gets off work at 3:30pm so he is almost always there. I sometimes work evenings/late so I make it when I can.

    15. I think it matters. I’d eat dinner with the kids, the lone adult can eat by themself. I do feed my kids some “kid food”, no shame there. I think family dinner helps model good eating habits it’s not really about the actual food they eat.

    16. My brother and I usually ate at the same time with our mom, but dad was usually at work (he owned a restaurant and therefore would be at work at normal meal times), so it wasn’t the entire family. I honestly don’t remember what time we ate. Nowadays we all eat pretty late (like 7-8ish), but I’m not sure if it was that way growing up.

    17. This is one of the (many) things I dislike about how activitied-up kids are these days. There’s so little family time. So little time to prepare healthy meals and sit down together at a reasonable hour. I don’t want my kid to be eating dinner at 8 pm, it’s way too late if I want them in bed around 9.

      Ours isn’t in school yet but I foresee DH and I clashing over this. He’s very pro-sports and doing all the things. I’m pro-downtime. Ironically, we grew up the opposite – I never had unscheduled time and he never had activities. I guess we both want to make up for what we lacked. Hopefully kiddo will be more on the chill side.

      2. We didn’t do competitive team sports for this reason. In addition to the late evening practices, so many matches clash with church on Sunday. Really a shame.

    18. Gently, I think you’re seeking more fuel for a guilt fire with this question. I think the things that work for your family work for your family, and that’s enough.

    19. I grew up with a SAHM until I was in high school and we always ate together at 1730. My dad was an engineer and walked to and from work in a small city. We are both military offices and generally work 0800 – 1600, though both of us are at a level where we have flexibility and sometimes leave work earlier, especially if plant to work out from home after work because we are allocated that time as part of our work day, or we are working remotely.

      We have five kids between the ages of 2-14 and we eat together every night, in the dining room, with cloth napkins. We have some sports practices to accommodate and so on those nights we tend to do something with advance prep like a pot roast in the slow cooker and eat early at closer to 1700 but otherwise it’s 1730-1800 depending on complicated the menu is. We cook every night, nothing frozen or packaged.

      It can be chaotic but it important to us and we prioritize it over other things but our fundamental work schedules are very compatible. It wouldn’t work with later arrival times to the house. We don’t snack and so everyone is hungry and needs to eat by 1800-ish.

    20. We had family dinner at 5:30 every night growing up. I am pretty sure it was a reason my parents made me quit all my extracurriculars when they got serious.

      My daughter was a competitive gymnast for years, so we moved family dinners to 8:30 p.m. when she got home from practice.

    21. I grew up with family dinners and prioritize them for my own family. Some nights they don’t work because people have staggered activities, but in general we adjust dinnertime to eat when everyone is home. Table manners, setting a table, and making polite conversation over a meal are all life skills, IMO.

      1. It’s so cultural though. My family represents multiple cultures and I see a value in having more life skills, but I don’t honestly enjoy all of the traditions equally either.

    22. No, we didn’t have family dinners. My mom worked. She was an excellent cook though.

    23. It never really occurred to me that it was possible for a family to eat dinner at different times until I heard the rhetoric about the value of family dinners as an adult. In some books I read as a kid the mom would occasionally keep a plate hot for a character who got home late, but that was always presented as a rare, dismal occasion.

      I am too lazy to cook, serve, and clean up multiple dinners. We do a single family dinnertime whenever all members of the family are home. This means that sometimes we eat after sports practice at 8:00 p.m., and some days a parent has to leave the office promptly at 5:00 to ensure time for dinner before evening commitments.

    24. Yes, we had family dinners nearly every day. We ate later than my friends on the block, maybe 7pm onward. My mom insisted on cooking and she was great at it. We had salads on separate plates, etc. from a young age. “Kid food” was rare and I was bummed about that. As we became teens it became a real pleasure though!

      I remember eating dinner at a friend’s house. The mom said to the husband “Paul, LOOK at how she is holding her utensils.” He asked me where I had learned to hold my fork and knife that way. I was probably 8 years old.

      1. I have a nephew who recently graduated from college and still holds his fork in a fist despite having had family dinners during his entire childhood. Family dinners don’t magically confer table manners; parents still have to teach them.

      2. Posted early. As another poster said, I think our family dinners were more about learning how to behave properly at the table. They became more about family connection as we became teens and definitely as young adults. My college boyfriend marveled at my family’s ability to sit at “dinner” for 3 hours!

    25. Yes, I grew up eating dinner with my mother, father, and sister at a table that was properly set by the kids with napkins and silverware and glasses. Food was typically served family-style and passed from person to person, but that changed with the specific meal. Starting very young, we all ate the same thing. There were not separate “kid foods”. (We were often challenged by waitstaff in restaurants when we ordered for ourselves off the regular menu.) Dinner was not at 6pm, it was later, because we had evening activities. Dinner involved orderly conversation about our days, our schoolwork or work, current events, etc. It wasn’t unusual for a dictionary or encyclopedia to come out to look something up (70s/80s kids).

      At some point my every-weeknight swim practices made it unusual for us to eat together and typically there was an earlier date near between whoever was left at home and I ate later, sometimes leftovers and sometimes a frozen meal, after practice. Sometimes they waited for me. We always ate together on weekends.
      To this day I feel overwhelmed by the chaos of other people’s rowdier, louder, and less organized family meals, though I also have developed a real appreciation for them.
      I don’t think not eating sit-down family meals every night is a failure, but I do think it should be something you do regularly and that it should include enforcement of table.manners. Your kids will never regret knowing where the salad fork goes and which glass on a formally-set table is theirs. Most importantly, I think it is nice for the family to have a chance to routinely converse about themselves and also about what is going on in the world, to share knowledge and opinions, values and curiosities.

    26. Yes, we had family dinners every night.

      I don’t know how my Mom did it. Worked full time downtown in a firm. 3 kids. Cooked real food every night. Not fancy, but healthy and fresh. She would call when she was on the train to tell us to get things started.

      I wish she was still here so I could tell her how much I admire her for what she managed to do. I am forever single, no kids and I can barely take care of myself!

    27. Family dinners every night sometime between 7:30 and 8. Mom did a fair bit of meal prep on the weekends and then we had a whiteboard on the fridge with instructions to get the semi-prepped meal completed; whichever kid was home early enough and old enough to safely use the stove (usually the middle schooler) cooked. Mom took the 6:55 train home from work, which arrived around 7:30 and Dad drove home and got in about the same time. We sat down whenever dinner was done and everyone was assembled. As a result, my siblings and I are all very competent cooks since we all spent at least part of our childhood getting dinner for five on the table. In high school if there were activities that kept a kid out late they just ate leftovers when they got home or ate while they were out, but the rest of the family still ate together.
      The kids also set the table (table cloth, properly ordered silverware, folded napkins) and table manners and adult conversation were expected. When we were little we all had to play “best, worst, and middle” where we had to tell about the best, worst, and middle things that had happened in our day. “Fine” was not an acceptable response to “how was your day?”. By the time we were 8 or 9 most of the coaching part of family dinner was over and it was just hanging out.

    28. I grew up eating family dinners, but my husband did not. Now we do family dinner at home on Monday through Thursday at between 6 and 6:30. Timing is based on how early I get home from work to make dinner and what kiddo has for activities. We talk about our days, interesting things we’ve read. No devices for the 30 minutes we sit down.

    29. There’s no one-size-fits-all solution for this. Maybe you can do family dinners (either at home or out) on weekends instead of during the work/school week? Maybe do a special toast or family tradition on those evenings to make it special when you can eat as a family? Maybe you do a Family Fun-Day once a week or once a month instead? We try to do dinners together (as a family of three) on weeknights, but it isn’t always promptly at a set time. If one of us has to work late, we don’t make our 5-yr old wait and get hangry. Our kiddo usually sets the table, which consists of putting out napkins and utensils in random configuration at each of our places. We do a toast and talk about our day. I think family traditions and routines are important, but what that looks like for your family doesn’t need to mirror your husband’s childhood – you can do what works for your family situation.

    30. Grew up with both parents working full time, Europe in the nineties. Yes, there was always family dinner. Sometimes one parent was still at work, on a work trip, doing a long commute or something, but whoever was there always organized family dinner. The kids had one day a week where we made turns making the meal. The meal would be served at the kitchen dining table. Flowers or candle, tablecloth or place settings, jug of water, no disposables. I learnt normal European table manners at home, and the fancy ones, with multiples of everything, at grandma’s.

      I think everybody I knew growing up had family dinners. The idea of seperate meals wasn’t really a thing. If you went to a friends house after school, you’d be asked to join their family meal, in which case you’d phone home and ask to stay for you friend’s at dinner. Nothing about it was picture perfect, it was just how life was set up for everybody I knew.

    31. In my home dinner is served at 6pm. Mid week I am not home to eat dinner at this time but my children are. I prebake dinners for them.

      We used to have breakfast together and I’m going to go back to that in September when they go back to school. It sets them up better for their day and they start off with a solid meal (eggs, toast, oatmeal, parfait, breakfast cake, cocoa date balls, no sugar hot cocoa etc).

      I have special needs kids and they need very strict structure and rules. One child hates the evening meal on a regular basis and gets a plate of apple, carrots, salami and cheese instead. I serve dessert 4-7 nights a week. Might be strawberries or peaches and cream in summer and in winter I do a fruit crumble when I bake dinner in the oven. My eldest daughter’s friends migrate to my home around dinner time these days so I’m now making dinner for 8 kids and shopping for a bigger dinner table.

      P.S. I’m looking for a new job that allows me to finish earlier so I can be home with the children at 6:30pm. The job market is the worst I’ve known it. It feels like the job market is worse than 2008/09.

  2. I have 2 suits that I wore for 1 day each and traveled with them. I’m now probably not going to wear them for a few months. Should I just hang them back up in my closet? Dry clean them first? If I was wearing professional clothes more regularly I wouldn’t dry clean them yet but I don’t know if its a good idea to hang it up uncleaned for a while.

    They don’t look/smell/seem dirty but I did walk around in the heat in them and they were in my suitcase

    1. I would probably steam them before hanging them back up, but not send them to the cleaners.

    2. I always dry clean my suits after travel. They just don’t look right after being in a suitcase. And especially if you don’t wear them often, all the more reason to clean them now.

    3. I use dryel at home. I can hang them up smelling fresh for the next wear, without the hassle or expense of going to the dry cleaners.

        1. Not the OP but it’s a sheet and a bag in the dryer system – all of it comes in the box and you get clothes freshened up in about 30 mins in the dryer. Personally, I find it okay for one last wear but not nearly as effective as the cleaners.

    4. I go with dry clean after travel, it exposes your clothes to so many scents and substances.

    5. I’d dry clean especially if you’ve been sweating and bringing in other substances from traveling. That way they can sit clean in your closet for the next few months without bacteria growing. If you can’t get to a dry cleaner then at least spray with an alcohol/vodka solution, especially in the neck and pits.

  3. Are there fashion sneakers that are similar in style to the Veja Campo but a fresher look? I like the Vejas but don’t want to buy my first pair years into a trend (I’m trying to fight my tendency to look a bit dated and off trend).

    1. Slimmer sneakers are in style now. Check out Gola. The Anthro website also has a surprisingly well-curated selection of fashion sneakers.

      1. I purchased two pairs of Gola sneakers which were SO comfortable, and both fell apart after less than a year…. (I am hard on sneakers).

        1. My golas also fell apart after one season. I’m on year 3 of vejas, they hold up much better

    3. I just got some Adidas handball speziales and I really like them. I’m an old but my teenage daughter approved! Be warned, they have significant arch support, so if that doesn’t work for you then you won’t be happy with them.

        1. I was a high school cheerleader in the mid-90s. These Onitsuka Tigers look exactly like the shoes we wore to cheer.

  4. I asked a few days ago but it was at the end if the day – do you have a pivot bathroom mirror to see makeup better up close? I can’t even see my concealer well without my eyeglasses, sigh.

    2. Yes! I just hit up an e-tailer, nothing fancy. Installed myself. It’s one of those “Products under X Dollars that Improve your Life”

      It makes all the difference! I didn’t want a countertop mirror taking up space and I wanted to make my home bathroom feel like a hotel. Getting a hanging one also allows you to put it right at face height so you’re not stooping or bending.

      (Fortunately I have great lighting so I didn’t need a lit one, but something to take into consideration)

    3. Yes, but I’ve had it for so long that I can’t find the link! I think I ordered it from Home Depot. It’s a rectangle that hangs on the wall, so it doesn’t pivot, but I see a lot of those styles sold on Home Depot’s website. I had the wall space to put it to the side of my sink so I can get up close to it. It has a lighted frame so it needs to be plugged in, but that is a total game changer for me! I absolutely love it. I also am blind as a bat (-8 in contacts) and I can’t apply makeup without it. I struggle greatly when traveling (come to think of it, I should order something for travel).

    4. No but I do have one at my vanity to do my makeup. And yes, sometimes I have to switch to the more magnified side!

  5. It’s incredibly humid where I am, and I’m seeing young people commuting to work wearing silk camisoles under their blazers/cardigans/what have you: not wide strap, high neckline tanks, but more lingerie-like. Now I’m wondering if I could get away with this at my office, which is dressier than business casual but not to the point where I need to wear a suit every day. I think I’m young enough to pull it off, but would it read too bedroom for the office?

    2. If the camisole is thick enough not to be see through, then I feel like people have been wearing some version of this for years. If it’s silk, I would just avoid lace edging since that takes it a couple steps closer to negligee.

    3. I have worn the Quince washable silk camis to work for years. I don’t think it looks “bedroom” when worn with a work-appropriate topper.

    5. Fine if it’s covered up with the topper all day, but inappropriate if worn alone. I like the option to add or remove the jacket or sweater so would never choose as my shell layer.

    6. And don’t get a satin finish. I don’t think any cut saves that from looking like pyjamas

  6. A buttoned-up cardigan as a top — this is what we used those J. Crew sweaters for (with our pencil skirts and sugar maple wedges)? These are just a bit looser?

    1. Since you aren’t layering it over much other than a tank, you can probably use some of those old cardigans. I layer them over old tanks from the low neck sweater with tank days to manage any button gap.

    2. Are you talking about the Jackie? Those were always meant to be unbuttoned. The “wear as a top” styles are a little different with more structure.

    4. I’m confused. There was a recent thread here about how hip length fitted cardigans are hopelessly out of style and to be avoided. Why is this one current?

      1. Because some people are looking at what is trending next in fashion and some people are looking at what is available at their local store. Usually just when someone here declares something completely out of style, they are usually about to come back, just styled differently. So buttoned up cardigans are a current fashion thing.

    5. Living in the SEUS where it’s hot and humid, a cardigan sounds miserable right now. But I’d definitely wear it as my outerwear in January!

  7. I got a Shark dryer and it came with the curling attachments. I tried them this morning since it’s a WFH day. Wowza — this is like an air cannon / hair tornado. It was fast! And furious! BUT. I now look like the mom in That 70s Show. I have shoulder-length baby fine hair, so I didn’t think that a short feathered ‘do was possible but whatever the physics are, I’ve got my hair back in a bun (the curls do make the bun hold better!) until I need to go out later.

  8. For those of you in older homes, how did your contractors handle asbestos when knocking down interior walls? We are taking down two walls and our house was built in the 1950s, so definitely asbestos.
    Our contractor wrote “ Rest assured, we do have measures in place for older homes. During the demolition phase the 2nd floor & basement will be sealed off. We will have negative air machines running to keep the particles down and the windows open for ventilation.” What follow up questions, if any, would you ask?

    1. OP here and I should mention there will be no furniture in the area and all of the flooring (currently carpet) will be removed as well.

    2. I’d ask how long I need to be out of the home and what cleanup they intend to do after the demo, like wiping down walls.

    3. How do they plan to minimize creating dust in the first place. Some is obviously unavoidable. Like do they use different tools or strategies that may take more time?

    4. I’d also want some assurances they’re taking appropriate steps to protect their workers, not just me.

    7. Your post sort of seems to suggest that you don’t have confirmation of asbestos, which I think is worth getting. If you do indeed have asbestos and need it to remediated rather than encapsulated, I think it’s worth hiring a professional remediation company.

      FWIW, we’re doing a bunch of work on a 1950s home right now, including moving walls, and our contractor has encountered asbestos in some floor tiling in a few rooms. No issues in the walls (some initial concern about insulation, but it was tested and is not asbestos). Some of the floor stuff were encapsulating but other parts of it needed to be removed, and they brought in a professional remediation company for that, which process included air testing after the fact to demonstrate things were clear.

  9. I’m looking to get my Project Management Professional (PMP) certification from the Project Management Institute. Before applying for the exam, I need 35 PM related education credits.

    I’m looking at doing it through UNC Wilmington because that’s where I went to undergrad. The program is $1,850 and I get an alumni discount on top of that. However, I live in Charlotte, so I also checked out UNC Charlotte. Their program is $3,804. Can anyone help me understand why the UNCC program costs so much more? I don’t want to just check a box here, I want to really build on my PM skills, but I also want the best value. Both programs are online.

    UNCW: https://uncw.edu/research/centers/swain-center/programs/project-management

    UNCC: https://online.charlotte.edu/programs/project-management-essentials-certificate/

    1. The only way I would do any of those is if my employer paid. Those certifications are worthless when it comes to hiring.

      3. PMP is not worthless for hiring, but I would absolutely try to get your employer to pay. I know you don’t want to just check the box, but if you’re writing off in-person boot camp programs, they are worth another look. They’re often taught by very experienced project/program managers who have good perspective and practical tips to share in addition to test prep. I would opt for something in person over online any day.

    2. Even inside the UNC system, course credits costs differ across schools. You might try your local community college, too. If you just need the credits, I’d focus on what’s cheap and easy for you, if you learn OK both online and in-person.

    3. The PMP is just about memorizing the PMBOK. I would go with whatever course is cheapest, preferably whatever you can get your employer to pay for. You will not really learn anything of value. You used to be able to use outside courses that did not focus specifically on PMP content–I think I used a facilitation course?–to satisfy part of the requirement. If you are paying I’d maximize the number of non-PMP courses so you can learn something actually useful.

      I would also ask around to find out whether the certification is still useful. It was super trendy maybe 15-20 years ago but I haven’t heard about it lately.

    4. You can buy a course on Udemy for under $100 that satisfies this requirement. Look into Andrew Ramadayal’s course, but there are other options as well.

    5. Look at the R eddit to see what udemy course they recommend. That’s what most people use. I would only pay more if your company is paying for it.

    6. As other commenters have noted, there are less expensive options for PMP certification prep courses. Do whatever is cheapest and easiest and knock out the certification exam. There are free ways to build on your PM skills, but most of the courses are designed to help you pass the exam and get the cert. Worth having to add it to your resume, but that’s about it.

  10. I’m stuck bored in a hospital waiting room. Anyone have some secrets or gossip to share?

    1. I am secretly working on a Very Big Project in my hobby that used to be my job. Only my husband and one coach/teacher know about it. My other coaches/teachers and my hobby friends and even my own kid don’t know. It is absolutely an overreach and is doomed to failure, but it’s my dream and I’m not getting any younger so I’ve got to try it.

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