Setting up a charger in your garage to charge an electric car is currently more complicated than it should be. This primer in Forbes by Brad Templeton is a good rundown on what to expect and how to do it the cheapest. — KK

My husband bought these Rubbermaid FreshWorks Containers ($27, set of 3), which prevents produce from spoiling by keeping excess moisture away, and for the first time ever, I was able to finish a bag of spinach without it going bad. Usually I have to throw out my spinach after a week or less, but this container kept it fresh for more than two weeks. It’s amazing! — CD

A while back I recommended some troubleshooting tips for forcing a public Wi-Fi login page to open. A Recomendo reader (“J.C.”) sent me a superior tip: just enter “http://neverssl.com” and the access point’s login page will load. On my last trip I used it at the airport and on the plane and it worked like a charm. — MF

I work from home four days a week and what helps me be most productive is having a separate work space (not in a bedroom) with lots of natural light, getting dressed as if I’m going to the office, sticking to a 9-5 schedule, and giving myself short breaks every hour to walk around or cuddle with my dog. This article on How to Work From Home and Actually Get Stuff Done has a lot more suggestions for productivity. Eating lunch away from my desk is something I have to get better at, and one thing I hadn’t considered is to do some work before breakfast: “The usual recommendation is to start with a healthy breakfast, to fuel you for your busy day ahead. However, when you’re home all day, breakfast can be a drawn-out luxury, with reading, checking social media, and other distractions preventing you from getting started. Try diving into a quick work task, checking it off the list, and then sitting down to breakfast.” — CD

Remember libraries, where content is free? Library Extension is a browser extension that will tell you whether a book you are looking at on an Amazon page is available in your local library. If it is you can click on the button to put a hold on the book, or find which branch has it. Very nicely done. Like libraries it’s free. Works on Chrome and Firefox. — KK

My 22-year-old daughter used this Ralthy inflatable travel pillow ($17) to snag 9 hours of uninterrupted sleep on a recent flight to Singapore. You set the pillow on your meal tray or your lap and lean forward into it, placing your head in the hole, like you would on a massage chair. I just bought another so I can use it on an upcoming flight to Japan. — MF

Here is a helpful minimal website with short and sweet canned emails for things like needing advice, asking to be paid back, rescheduling appointments, unsubscribing aggressively and more. — CD

I upgraded my audio capture for video. For the past year when I make videos I have been using a Rode Wireless Go microphone and receiver. The system is two small squares each about the size of an Apple watch. One slips onto the hotshoe of a camera, and plugs into the Mic jack, the other rides in the pocket of the subject speaking (or clips onto their clothing) and connects to a small lapel mic. From up to 100 meters away, your camera will record sound/voice in excellent fidelity, even if the subject is moving. No wires, no sound boom. It’s tiny and featherlight, and works instantly with plug and play. Best of all its cheap audio, $200 for the set. I highly recommend. — KK

If you do soldering work, I recommend getting a pair of these Hakko micro cutters. They’ll cut copper wires flush with the blob of solder, making your work look tidy. And they cost just $7.60 on Amazon. — MF

One of the most effective visualization techniques to quickly destress is to imagine I am a mountain and every annoying, stressful thing is just floating past me like clouds or momentary bad weather. I remind myself that I am a mountain and my purpose is to just sit and be myself and nothing can sway me. You can find a lot of these “mountain meditations” on Youtube. Here is a short example I like and found on Aura. — CD

In China, Li Ziqi is a huge online star. She is sort of a hippy young Martha Stewart — a DIYer and maker, as well as ancient lifestyle guru. Dressed in traditional garb, Li Ziqi posts hundreds of videos about making traditional Chinese rural things from scratch with traditional tools — in an extreme way. She’ll make a silk comforter by first raising silk worms. She’ll make her own soy sauce by first growing soy beans. She’ll make some bamboo furniture in a day, starting with harvesting the bamboo. Plus she plays guitar and sings! To her 50 million followers in China, her idyllic and blemish-free videos are soothing and an antidote to their overworked urban lives. She delivers nostalgia for the country life they left — without the drudgery and starvation. To her 8 million foreign followers, like me, watching her on YouTube, her impossibly romantic videos are cinematic glimpses of vanishing arts and crafts, of amazing and ingenious ways millions of people thrived in the past. I could watch them for hours. — KK

One reason I like traveling to Japan is that no one there has ever tried to pull a scam on me. Not so in Europe, Mexico, and the United States, where I’ve experienced at least a few of the 40 scams presented in this infographic. A few are obvious, but there are always some surprising scams worth knowing about. Read this list to prepare yourself the next time you travel. — MF

I produce one or two books per year. I use a print-on-demand (POD) service so the books are printed one at a time when needed. The best/easiest print-on-demand is KDP (formerly CreateSpace), owned by Amazon. Their quality is indistinguishable from a bookstore book (in fact many books from NY publishers are printed POD), and they have the added virtue that you can sell the books on Amazon, and it integrates with making digital books for the Kindle at the same time. I can have a standard softcover book printed in B&W at KDP for around $4. Small run books make ideal gifts. — KK

The Sakura Pigma Manga Basic Set comes with 5 pens: 4 Pigma Microns (sizes 005, 01, 05, 08) a black brush pen, and a white ink gel pen. The ink is waterproof and very dark. At $8, it’s a good deal. — MF

Anyone 62 or older can get a senior lifetime pass to the US National Parks for $80. That’s the cost of a regular one-year pass, so it’s a great bargain, and a great gift for a relative or friend if you are not 62. — KK

Tiny Spells is a daily self-care email that feels like it’s sent from your best friend. Every day Joan Westenberg sends out three simple things you can do for yourself to make your day and self better, like reminders to take a stretch break, make the doctors appointment you’ve been avoiding, buying yourself fresh flowers, or finding something that makes you laugh. It has a magical effect and I look forward to it every day. — CD

Tom Whitewell put together a list called “52 things I learned in 2019,” and I was interested in all of them. Examples: “Each year humanity produces 1,000 times more transistors than grains of rice and wheat combined” and “Worldwide, growth in the fragrance industry is lagging behind cosmetics and skincare products. Why? ‘You can’t smell a selfie.’” — MF

I’ve just started taking my 1-year-old puppy on hikes and I wanted the easiest/fastest way to feed him water on the trail. This lesotc Pet Water Bottle for Dogs ($15) has a lid that is also a foldable bowl, so when I open it I can squeeze the water into the bowl and my puppy can lap up as much as he needs and the rest of it will flow back into the the bottle. No more wasted water. — CD

Here are a few quotes that are helping me look at life differently. — CD

• “The most courageous decision that you can make each day is to be in a good mood.” — Voltaire

• “Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final.” — Rainer Maria Rilke

• “A good marriage is one in which each spouse secretly thinks he or she got the better deal, and this is true also of our friendships.” — Anne Lamott

• “Things usually happen around us, not to us.” — Unknown, found on Reddit

• “We suffer more in imagination than in reality.” — Seneca

This LPT was a housekeeping game changer: Use a seam ripper to easily clean out hair tangled in a vacuum brush. My hair is long and everywhere and before I use to struggle with scissors to cut it out of the vacuum, but it turns out a seam ripper is the perfect tool for the job. — CD