I just purchased our fourth Nest smoke and carbon monoxide alarm for our home. As our old Home Depot smoke alarms go kaput one by one, I have replaced them with the more expensive, but superior, Nest. They seem to last longer, are smarter, less annoying, and are networked via wifi. In theory (no actual disasters yet), each Nest will broadcast a concern it detects to all the others, so a fire in my downstairs home office would be announced in a message by the Nest in our living room. It also sends alerts to my phone if I am away. — KK

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

Following the advice of Japanese decluttering expert Marie Kondo, I’ve gone through my closet and kept only those clothes that “bring me joy.” The second step was to extend the joy by arranging the dress clothes on uniform, decent wooden hangers, and recycling the mess of wire misfits I had accumulated. I got 30 wooden hangers cheaply from Amazon Basics for $24. Happy clothes!. — KK

My husband and I bought these mesh bags to organize our laundry. We use black sharpie to write washing instructions on them like “no fabric softener, dryer ok” or “cold wash, hang dry.” This has cleared up a lot of confusion. — CD 

The fastest way to download any YouTube video is to add “ss” before the “youtube.com” part of the URL, like this: “ssyoutube.com”. This redirects to you to Savefrom.net, click on “download video in browser” and select the video quality you prefer. Done in less than a minute. — CD

I can’t believe I didn’t know these YouTube shortcuts before! To pause a video press K. To fast forward press L. To rewind press J. To watch frame by frame forward or backward, press the period or comma key. — CD 

Just as I zip through podcasts at 1.5x speed, I recently learned I can speed up YouTube videos too. So now I go through twice as many tutorials. Just click on the gear-circle at the bottom right corner of the YouTube frame, and in the pop-up menu select Speed and your choice up to 2x. — KK

Sometimes I want to watch a YouTube video one frame at a time. This website lets you enter any YouTube or Vimeo URL and it will display the video with buttons that advance or reverse the video one frame at a time. — MF

Fargo. the television series, is my favorite thing in the world right now, but watching it makes me very tense. Some life-changing advice when watching something scary or suspenseful: root for the villain. Once I decide I want the bad guy to win, I actually get happy when he pops up out of nowhere or kills someone off. — CD

I’ve been a long time fan of The Editing Room for their hilarious rewrites of movies in screenplay format. They make fun of movie tropes and call out every cliche. Reading their abridged scripts is like watching a movie with a funny friend. — CD

I stopped watching horror movies a while back, because they seemed to be getting more and more graphic and I couldn’t cut it. Instead, I enjoy reading scene-by-scene spoilers for all the films I am too scared or lazy to watch. The Movie Spoiler is not the best designed site, but it’s been around for a long time and all the reviews are well written. — CD

Flixmetrix is a website that combines film ratings from Rotten Tomatoes, IMDB and Metacritic and gives you the average. What I find the most helpful is that I can filter my movie search by genre, and limit results to only those available on Amazon Prime and/or Netflix Watch Instantly. That way I don’t waste time flipping between services searching for a movie. — CD

I love getting to the theaters early enough to watch all the movie trailers. Trailernite.com is non-stop trailer watching. If you don’t like it, just hit next. — CD

This database of secret Netflix genres will help you out when you can’t find anything to watch. Otherwise how would I ever realize I was in the mood to watch a Mother-Daughter Relationship Thriller if I never knew it was an option? Some of the category codes currently have no movies that fit the description, but that’s understandable when they’re so specific. — CD

In the mood for a particular movie or show but don’t know which streaming service it’s playing on? That’s where JustWatch comes in. Just enter a title and this site will list all the services that offer it, along with prices. — MF

I’m a Netflix subscriber, but the built-in title browsing isn’t great. I use instantwatcher.com, which lets you browse and search shows and movies in many different ways. — MF