Leonard got the ceiling-high cabinets she was hoping for, which she complemented with a white marble countertop that extended to the backsplash.
“I just loved the idea of it looking a little more rich and and grand by using that marble slab,” she said.
The real marble was one of the biggest splurges Leonard and her husband made on the kitchen, and she said that even though some people think marble can be hard to maintain, it “was definitely worth splurging on” for her.
“Any of the etchings are great signs of life, and it shows that it’s natural, real stone,” she said.
Leonard chose brass finishes throughout the kitchen, from the hardware to her oven and a rack that hangs by a window. It elevates the kitchen’s otherwise neutral tones.
Leonard also incorporated her personal style through small details, such as the sconce on one side of her sink, which serves as a high-end nightlight they turn on when their kitchen is closed for the evening.
“I just love those little bits of character that are a little different,” she said.
Elon Musk is one of those guys who only has one towel, according to his mother.
In an X post on Tuesday, Maye Musk described her son’s living space in Boca Chica, southern Texas, near SpaceX’s Starbase launch site.
“There is no food in the fridge,” the billionaire’s mother, 77, said. “The garage where I slept is on the right.”
She added, “The shower only has one towel so I left it for Elon. That was okay with me.”
There is no food in the fridge. The garage where I slept is on the right. The shower only has one towel so I left it for Elon. That was okay with me. When I was a child, I’d spend three weeks in the Kalahari Desert without showering. Many times. There was no water. I think my… https://t.co/8XT04q5DQg
Maye Musk wrote that she had been primed to live like this since childhood, saying that she had spent many weeks in the Kalahari Desert as a child without showering because there was no water.
“I think my parents prepared me for this luxury,” she said, adding a laughing emoji to the end of her X post.
Musk’s Boca Chica house is a 3-bedroom home worth $45,000, he said in a 2022 podcast interview.
This is not the first time Maye Musk has ratted on her son’s living conditions.
In 2023, she responded to Musk’s tweet, in which he said he slept on a friend’s couch the weekend prior. She said she has “many memories of sleeping on mattresses or blankets on the floor, on couches, or a bed in the garage,” when she visited him in Texas.
In that tweet, she said it was “still better than on the ground in the Kalahari Desert with lions or hyenas nearby.”
Musk has made headlines several times for his austere and modest lifestyle. The Tesla, SpaceX, and X CEO, who is currently worth about $664 billion and is the richest man alive, is known for sleeping on the floor in his offices and going to bed at 3 a.m.
“Back to spending 24/7 at work and sleeping in conference/server/factory rooms,” he said in a May X post after quitting his role in the Department of Government Efficiency to focus on his companies.
Despite Musk’s slim inventory of towels, he’s previously said the habit that had the biggest positive impact on his life was showering.
Representatives for Musk did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.
Alexa Occhipinti’s family has been through a lot in their home.
Occhipinti, 34, and her husband, Doug Occhipinti, bought their house in Sacramento in 2020, where Occhipinti works at the Sacramento County Department of Technology. It became the backdrop to huge milestones in their lives: getting engaged, married, and welcoming their two children.
As their lives have evolved, so has the house. For instance, Occhipinti turned a second-floor loft into a bedroom for her son, helping to move their home from an adult-focused space to a kid-friendly one.
And in December 2025, Occhipinti was ready to change another part of her home: the open-concept living area.
Saying goodbye to the open concept
Occhipinti told Business Insider that when she and her husband first bought their home, she loved the open-concept layout on the first floor, which combined the kitchen, dining area, and living area into a single rectangular space.
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“Initially, I loved the open concept because I was just young and I was like, ‘Oh, it looks so big and open,'” she said. “Then that kind of changed over time, especially with two toddlers.”
Occhipinti said that as her living room started to double as a play space for her kids, the whole main floor felt less inviting.
“I see toys everywhere,” Occhipinti said. “It’s just overstimulating.”
Likewise, since the TV was visible from the table, she said her children would try to watch it while they ate meals, which she didn’t love.
It was time for a change.
A new layout
Occhipinti wasn’t a stranger to enclosing spaces in her house when she decided to switch up the main floor. She had hired Primespec Construction to turn a loft on her second floor into a bedroom for her son, which made a huge difference in the space.
“I was really scared it was going to close in the space,” Occhipinti said. “It was super open upstairs. It felt big and had a lot of natural light.”
Adding the wall created a real hallway on the second floor, which Occhipinti said made the whole floor seem much larger.
“Putting up the walls is actually making the house feel bigger instead of smaller,” she said.
Closing up the home’s main floor, however, felt a little trickier. Occhipinti didn’t want to create three separate rooms, as the main level isn’t huge to begin with. The house is just under 2,000 square feet total.
“I still wanted it to be open and airy,” she said.
A partial change
Occhipinti wasn’t sure how to break up her space until she stumbled upon some Pinterest images of pony walls, a half wall that can divide a space while keeping it partially visible.
She thought it could be a perfect fit for her home, as it could make the living area feel separate while still maintaining an open flow.
Occhipinti tapped Primespec Construction again to handle the renovation of her living area, sending them her inspiration images. It took just one day and $2,500 to put up the wall.
“He got there at like 9:30 and the wall was built and done by like 4:30,” she said.
The white pony wall dividing the living room from the kitchen and dining area has a column on one side and molding for a design pop.
Occhipinti has the couch leaning against one wall, and the dining table on the other. She hopes to make the table into a nook with bench seating down the line.
She said the renovation “completely changed the look and the feel” of her home, making it more traditional and cozy.
The wall has also made her feel less overwhelmed when her kids are playing with their toys.
“This really helped to feel like we could keep the toys in the living room and not see them from the kitchen counter,” she said, adding that her children don’t expect to see the TV from the dinner table anymore either.
Plus, Occhipinti said she loves that she has more freedom to switch up the decor between her living and dining areas, not worrying as much about the distinct spaces matching.
“I’m so excited now for each season because I can decorate the living room and then do something separate for the dining area,” she said.
I wish I had known about coworking spaces with attached childcare/preschools much sooner in my parenting journey. This community helped me solve a problem I had been stressing over for two years.
I’m a Chicago mom, an on-air contributor on “The Fred Show,” a nationally syndicated morning radio show, and the founder of The Mami Collective, a media platform for ambitious mothers. My workdays aren’t traditional, and they certainly don’t fit into a 9-5 schedule.
My mornings typically start at 4 a.m., and once the show ends at 10 a.m., the rest of my morning is packed with meetings, recordings, and deadlines. Once that’s wrapped up, it’s time to head home to relieve my mother-in-law or sister-in-law of childcare duties. My husband is a fireman for the city of Chicago and has a side gig, so I’ve become the primary caretaker of our 2-year-old daughter every day after work.
For a long time, childcare was the hardest piece to align with our reality. But when I came across a day care and preschool located inside a coworking space, everything shifted.
Traditional day care never worked for my family’s situation
Traditional day care assumes you can arrive by a specific time in the morning. They typically give you a window, and if you miss it, then you’re out of luck.
This kind of set-up works for families with predictable schedules. It doesn’t work when your mornings are spent inside a radio station or when your workday starts earlier than most schools open.
I also didn’t feel fully ready or comfortable dropping my 2-year-old off at day care, where she would spend most of the day without me.
A coworking space with a day care was the answer I needed
What makes this model work for us is flexibility. Because of my morning radio schedule, we don’t rush for the 8 a.m. drop-off. Instead, we arrive after lunchtime and nap (2 p.m. to be exact).
My daughter joins the other kids for the afternoon, where she learns within the Montessori curriculum, plays, and socializes until closing at 5 p.m.
The best part of this all? I get to be there on-site, five feet away from her classroom: working, taking Zoom calls, editing audio, or answering e-mails. That alone changed my life.
I no longer feel like my career and my childcare are working against each other. As a business owner, this setup gives me something I barely had before: carved-out time to get work done while my child is cared for in a structured, enriching environment.
The author works out of a coworking space.
Courtesy of Paulina Roe
I’m not squeezing work into nap windows or evenings. I’m not trying to build my business in fragments. When she’s in school, I’m working, fully present, focused, and calm.
There’s no anxiety around clock-watching. If a meeting runs long or someone is running late to our scheduled podcast recording, the entire day doesn’t get off track. This proximity creates a sense of stability I didn’t realize I was missing.
For my daughter, the benefits are just as meaningful
My child has consistency, peers (yay to friends her age), and caregivers who are fully focused on her development. Her day isn’t shaped by my stress or unpredictability. She gets the social and emotional structure of preschool without any disruption.
At home, socialization was a large missing component for her, so I’m grateful she has this opportunity now.
This isn’t about working while parenting at the same time. I’m not popping in and out of her classroom or blurring boundaries. If anything, I’ve found that this model reinforces them. When she’s in school, I’m getting work done. When we’re together, I’m fully present with her.
I live an unusual life, so I needed an unusual solution
I’ve come to realize that many childcare systems are still designed around a workforce that no longer exists: predictable hours, long commutes, and a default parent with endless availability.
My life just isn’t built like that. And I know I’m not alone.
Coworking preschools are not for every family. They don’t replace traditional childcare or solve every systemic issue. But for parents like me, other remote workers, entrepreneurs, and creatives, and people whose work is flexible but demanding, they provide an amazing option.
I didn’t become a better mother by trying harder. I didn’t become a better business owner by optimizing my calendar. Once my childcare reflected my reality, I showed up calmer, more focused, and present.
This isn’t childcare as a treat. It’s childcare that finally meets working parents where we are. My only regret is that I didn’t find it sooner.
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I visited the National Air and Space Museum’s second location, the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center.
The Virginia museum has over 200 aircraft and spacecraft in 340,000 square feet of exhibit space.
The space hangar featuring the space shuttle Discovery was a highlight of my visit.
The National Air and Space Museum’s flagship location in Washington, DC, is one of the most-visited museums in the US, but the building isn’t large enough to display all of the aircraft and spacecraft in its collection.
That’s where the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center comes in. The National Air and Space Museum’s lesser-known second location, a hangar-like structure in Chantilly, Virginia, offers 340,000 square feet of exhibit space with over 200 aircraft and spacecraft on display.
“What you’re going to see are the first, the last, the only, the last remaining, the most significant. So it’s an A-plus, as far as the collection,” Holly Williamson, the museum’s public affairs specialist, told Business Insider.
Here are the coolest things I saw during my visit.
The Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Virginia, is located on the property of Washington Dulles Airport.
The Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Virginia. John M. Chase/Getty Images
Unlike at the National Air and Space Museum’s flagship DC location, where timed-entry tickets help manage large crowds in the smaller space, reservations are not required at the Udvar-Hazy Center.
Admission to the museum is free, and parking costs $15.
The museum takes advantage of its proximity to the airport with the Donald D. Engen Observation Tower.
Inside the Donald D. Engen Observation Tower. Talia Lakritz/Business Insider
At 164 feet tall, the observation tower educates visitors about the history of Air Traffic Control and provides a 360-degree view of the modern airport in action.
Inside the tower, I watched planes take off and land at Dulles Airport while listening to live Air Traffic Control audio.
The Mary Baker Engen Restoration Hangar gives a behind-the-scenes look at how the museum restores historic aircraft.
The Mary Baker Engen Restoration Hangar. Talia Lakritz/Business Insider
Visitors can watch restoration work happen in real time from a balcony with floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the hangar.
Among the works-in-progress are “Flak-Bait,” a Martin B-26 Marauder that flew 202 combat missions during World War II and participated in D-Day, and a Sikorsky JRS-1 seaplane that was present at Pearl Harbor when it was attacked on December 7, 1941.
The B-29 bomber Enola Gay, which dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima during World War II, is in the museum’s collection.
The Enola Gay. Talia Lakritz/Business Insider
On August 6, 1945, the Boeing B-29 Superfortress bomber Enola Gay dropped the first-ever atomic bomb used in warfare on Hiroshima, killing at least 70,000 people.
The “Little Boy” atomic bomb weighed 9,700 pounds, forcing the aircraft to remove most of its protective and defensive armament in order to carry the enormous weight.
The Enola Gay exhibit sparked controversy when the plane was first displayed in 1995, as veterans’ groups and anti-war activists debated how the historical narrative around the use of the atomic bomb should be presented.
The Boeing 367-80 Jet Transport, the only model of its kind ever built, was the prototype that led to the development of the Boeing 707 jetliner.
The Boeing 367-80 Jet Transport. Heritage Images/Heritage Images via Getty Images
In the 1950s, Boeing set out to build a jet aircraft that could function as a passenger aircraft, a cargo plane, or a tanker used for mid-air refueling.
Boeing began building this prototype jet in 1952, and it flew for the first time two years later. It traveled 100 miles per hour faster than the de Havilland Comet, the world’s first jetliner developed in the UK, and had a range of over 3,500 miles, revolutionizing the air travel industry.
Known as “Dash 80,” the developed version of the aircraft entered service as the first jetliner in the US, the Boeing 707.
The museum also featured a Concorde supersonic commercial jet that was operated by Air France.
An Air France Concorde supersonic commercial jet. Talia Lakritz/Business Insider
The governments of Britain and France collaborated to create the first supersonic commercial jets, which operated commercially from 1976 to 2003.
Traveling at twice the speed of sound allowed the planes to cross the ocean in record time. Concorde’s fastest flight from New York City to London lasted just 2 hours, 52 minutes, and 59 seconds.
The museum’s Concorde jet, which flew for Air France, measures 202 feet and 3 inches long with a wingspan of 83 feet and 10 inches.
One of the museum’s centerpieces is a Lockheed SR-71A Blackbird, the world’s fastest aircraft propelled by air-breathing engines.
A Lockheed SR-71A Blackbird. Talia Lakritz/Business Insider
The Lockheed SR-71A, a supersonic reconnaissance aircraft, was designed to fly high and fast enough to avoid Russian missiles during the Cold War. It was capable of flying at an altitude of over 85,000 feet at speeds of over three times the speed of sound, or approximately 0.7 miles per second.
The aircraft became known as “Blackbird” for its black paint that was capable of absorbing radar signals.
This Blackbird logged 2,801.1 hours of flight time over 24 years of service before retiring in 1990.
The entrance to the James S. McDonnell Space Hangar, with the space shuttle Discovery placed front and center, stopped me in my tracks.
The space shuttle Discovery. Talia Lakritz/Business Insider
It’s hard to capture the full scale of Discovery in a photo, but I found it awe-inspiring to see such an enormous, historically significant spacecraft in person.
The shuttle measures 122 feet long, 78 feet wide, and 57 feet tall, towering over the other artifacts in the hangar. When fully loaded for missions, the orbiter weighed around 250,000 pounds.
Discovery was NASA’s longest-serving orbiter and flew 39 missions — more than any other space shuttle orbiter.
The space shuttle Discovery. Talia Lakritz/Business Insider
Discovery flew its first mission in 1984 and returned from its last in 2012, spending a total of 365 days in space.
Among its many historic accomplishments, Discovery deployed the Hubble Space Telescope in 1990 and became the first space shuttle to dock with the International Space Station in 1999.
Hanging above Discovery was the Manned Maneuvering Unit that astronaut Bruce McCandless used during the first untethered spacewalk in 1984.
The Manned Maneuvering Unit in action. Talia Lakritz/Business Insider ; Encyclopaedia Britannica/UIG Via Getty Images
The backpack propulsion device, powered by nitrogen jets, allowed McCandless to fly around 300 feet away from the space shuttle Challenger. His untethered spacewalk was immortalized in an iconic photo of the lone astronaut floating above the Earth.
The Udvar-Hazy Center is worth the detour from the National Mall.
The space shuttle Discovery at the National Air and Space Museum’s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center. Talia Lakritz/Business Insider
My phone’s step counter recorded nearly 10,000 steps on the day I visited the museum. There’s an incredible amount of ground to cover and objects to see.
I can’t believe I didn’t know that the National Air and Space Museum even had a second location when I started planning my visit to Washington, DC. Now, I’m recommending it to all of the air and space enthusiasts I know.
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman famously don’t agree on much.
The latest point of contention: data centers in space. Musk has made it a priority. Altman thinks it’s a fantasy, at least for now.
“I honestly think the idea with the current landscape of putting data centers in space is ridiculous,” Altman said during a live interview with local media in New Delhi on Friday, causing audience members to laugh.
Altman said that orbital data centers could “make sense someday,” but factors like launch costs and the difficulty of repairing a computer chip in space remain overwhelming obstacles.
“We are not there yet,” Altman added. “There will come a time. Space is great for a lot of things. Orbital data centers are not something that’s going to matter at scale this decade.”
Musk would almost certainly disagree.
While many Big Tech and AI companies are spending billions on data center construction on Earth, Musk’s eyes are on the stars, per usual. Orbital data centers are his latest ambition, as he mentioned in an all-hands xAI meeting in December.
In February, SpaceX said its goal is to launch a “constellation of a million satellites that operate as orbital data centers.” The company has already begun hiring engineers to make that happen.
During an all-hands meeting with xAI employees this month, Musk said SpaceX’s acquisition of xAI will allow them to deploy the orbital data centers faster.
Despite Altman’s skepticism, other tech leaders are also racing to place data centers in space. Google’s Project Suncatcher, unveiled in November 2025, aims to do just that. Google CEO Sundar Pichai told Fox News Sunday the company could start placing data centers — powered by the sun — in space as early as 2027.
Tech and AI companies rely on data centers to power their products, like large language models and chatbots. Those data centers, however, can deplete water resources, strain power grids, increase pollution, and decrease the overall quality of life.
An investigation by Business Insider published last year found that over 1,200 data centers had been approved for construction across the US by the end of 2024, nearly four times the number from 2010.
Now, proposed data center campuses in Texas, Oklahoma, and elsewhere are increasingly facing stiff resistance from local communities.
