Tip from a veteran plant mom: Buy terracotta pots (cheapo ones are fine). Transplant your plants into them. Buy plastic saucers (I prefer the rigid sort with little bumps so that they don’t make too much contact with the furniture). Water INTO THE SAUCER ONLY. Do not add more water till the saucer is bone dry. The terracotta pot retains some water that the plant will be using.

Once the weather warms up to 50 degrees at night, move plants outside to a shady spot and water daily. Sun-loving plants can be moved to a sunnier position after about three weeks, but may suffer some leafburn. Move plants back inside when nighttime temps drop below 50 in the fall, but make sure you spray them with natural insecticide the day before.

This will give you big healthy plants! I can’t follow my own advice about the shady spot because I don’t have one that’s deerproof, so I always lose a few leaves to sunburn but new ones grow in extremely fast.

Ace Hardware has terra cotta pots.

The one you call a pothos I have always called a philodendron. I have one in my office now that used to live in my office at Lake Forest and before that in my office at Northwestern. It was bequeathed to me by a co-worker who moved to Colorado. A very hardy plant. Definitely a shade-lover. You remember my office at Lake Forest, the tiny window. It did fine there year-round. Doesn’t seem to mind overwatering, but you will get little mites that breed in the soil if you keep it too wet. If you don’t keep it wet enough, leaves will start turning yellow. Just one or two at first, so if you see that, just start watering a little more often. It tends to grow long strings of leaves, so I “prune” mine. Every year I cut all the stems back so nothing hangs over the edge of the pot. That keeps it nice and bushy.