Today: Our advice columnist shares a few of her favorite tips. Including …
I’ve spent the past five-ish years as the person behind the Ask Wirecutter column, responding to some of the most interesting queries about how to buy, use, or maintain products. (I have the joy of telling people exactly why their spouse’s strongly held opinion is wrong.) You’d expect an advice columnist to be a know-it-all. But the truth is, there are a lot of things I don’t know. Luckily, I’m surrounded by sharp-brained product journalists who will happily pass along the knowledge they’ve gained through their own fastidious reporting, so I often team up with them to answer reader questions. (Please submit your own! We always need more!) The best part for me is that I’ve managed to employ so many of those tips myself. Here are some of my favorite small-but-meaningful revelations from past Ask Wirecutters. We independently review everything we recommend. When you buy through our links, we may earn a commission. Learn more ›
Are you the only person who replaces the empty toilet paper roll? Does it fill you with rage? If these questions confuse you, you are the problem. I am the toilet-paper-changer in my house. Every time I find a fresh roll perched atop the empty dispenser (or worse, an empty holder with no refills), I mumble the Serenity Prayer. So let’s just say I deeply empathized with reader E.W., who wrote to us about this. We included a lot of helpful products in the resulting column, but the best one for me is the skinny-but-stable holder. This nifty little device stacks multiple backup rolls and has an arm for dispensing. I have to replace the rolls less frequently, and it’s one thing in my life that’s less mentally taxing.
It’s a major bummer when you lose your sunglasses. If my Rx shades go missing, it’s a huge life disruption — they are not easily or cheaply replaced. I bought this zip-close hard-sided case with a built-in carabiner after a reader asked how they could prevent breaking and losing their own sunglasses, and I’ve never had to hunt for mine again. I clip it to my bag, which gives me easy access to both my shades and my regular frames as I switch throughout the day.
My colleague Catherine Kast works days and her husband works nights, so she had a ton of hard-won expertise to share when a reader asked about navigating their partner’s opposite sleep schedule. Catherine installed inexpensive, rechargeable motion sensor lights that stick in various places to give focused light in a closet or the bathroom. No need to turn on the overhead fixture and wake anyone up. I installed two of them down a shadowy staircase in my home. Now, if I’m shuffling downstairs in the middle of the night because the dog is having a poop emergency, I don’t have to worry about both of us ending up in a crumpled heap on the landing.
I grew up in a house where there was one pair of scissors, and if someone moved them, well, good luck finishing your science poster on the water cycle by 8 a.m. When a reader asked about their spouse misplacing stuff around the house, I had an epiphany: I’m an adult with free will, and I can put a pair of scissors in all of the places they’re most likely to be used. We now keep the right scissors for each job in the kitchen (scissors for paper and packaging on top of the microwave, food-only shears in a drawer), on our front hall table, in the bedrooms, and in our craft room. I have no shame that my indulgence in life is owning 10 pairs of scissors. And neither should you. It’s life-changing.
One small thing that made our week: I invested in a much-needed upgrade: a new robot vacuum. (It was on sale!) Instead of firing up my manual dustbuster at least once a day to get rid of crumbs and fur, I’m looking forward to delegating that task to my new robot friend and reclaiming those 15 minutes for myself. — Isoke Samuel, newsletters editor
Design director Dana Davis hand-sculpts the tiny figurines featured in the art for every Ask Wirecutter column, and she keeps past creations at her desk. How cool.
Thanks for reading. You can reach the Wirecutter Newsletters team at newsletters@wirecutter.com. We can’t always respond, but we do love to hear from you.
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