The Bürstenhaus Redecker ($6) is made from beechwood and has incredibly stiff palm leaf fiber bristles. It removes things like burnt eggs from cast-iron pans with ease. I was a die-hard fan of the OXO scrubbing brush, but this is better. — MF

For years we’ve had silverfish darting around our guest bathroom. I bought some silverfish traps (little cardboard boxes with sticky goo to ensnare them) and those helped, but didn’t stop them. A few weeks ago I read that lavender oil is a good silverfish repellent. It’s only $8 for a small bottle on Amazon, so I decided to give it a try. I wetted the end of a Q-Tip with the oil and ran it around the perimeter of the bathroom floor, adding a little extra to the seam between the floor and the wall. It smelled nice and we did not see a single silverfish for two weeks. When I finally saw one, I reapplied lavender oil on the perimeter of the floor and haven’t seen any since. — MF

For the past decade I’ve found the place to get least expensive decent-sized real Christmas trees is at the local Home Depot. The trees are wrapped up commodities. I don’t even bother unwrapping them to inspect them before I toss one into the car; they are all extremely uniform. I haven’t been disappointed. — KK

We’ve been making our own cleaner spray for years. It’s mainly water with rubbing alcohol, vinegar, and corn starch. It cuts right through grease, smells much better than commercial cleaners, and costs less than 50 cents a gallon. The recipe is called the “Alvin Corn Homemade Glass Cleaner” and is posted here. — MF

I bought a bunch of these extra large microfiber cloths ($10) and now I keep them everywhere — home drawers, office, car, purse. I spend at least 10 hours a day staring at a screen and/or wearing glasses. I never knew I needed something so much in my life. — CD

I bought this small $10 clock so I could avoid looking at my phone in the morning. The alarm is progressive and the ticking is as close to silent as possible. There’s a button to illuminate the time in the dark that also doubles as a snooze button. Perfectly simple and useful. — CD

The strange American habit of switching hours twice a year for Daylight Savings is a real bummer if you have wall clocks. Glancing at a clock, BTW, is a lot more handy than pulling out a phone. The solution to Daylight Savings hassle is to get an “atomic radio” wall clock which uses radio signals from government atomic clocks to keep perfect time and update themselves during seasonal changes. They come in analog or digital varieties. For several decades we’ve used La Crosse analog atomic clocks (about $22) in our kitchen and office for constant precise time and never need to think about them. — KK