While I like my thin microplane for super-fine zesting, I use this wider grater from Allwin a lot more. The key difference is its curved blade profile — it really bites into whatever you're grating. The wider surface area also means you can get through a block of parmesan or a big knob of ginger much faster than with a traditional narrow microplane. — MF

My husband is the gardener of the family, and this Repotting Mat is his favorite gardening tool. It’s quick to snap together and contains all the soil mess when potting plants. He has two in different sizes. I imagine it would work well for keeping track of small parts too, if you’re working on other projects. — CD

Three separate acquaintances of mine recently suffered significant, expensive flood damage in their homes as a result of water leaks while they were away. It’s not an uncommon disaster. After some research I settled on the best recommended solution: a set of wireless water sensors from GoveeLife ($100) that emit a loud alarm and send a text/email to my phone if they detect water leaking. I placed the 6 small wireless units below sinks, near toilets and water heaters, etc.—the most likely places to leak. They were very easy to pair with my home wifi and phone app. Downside is that in a few years their batteries will need to be changed. Upside is they really work and in my testing, just a small drip or a millimeter of water will elicit an immediate alarm and text/email message. — KK

After seeing a video of someone using a massage gun to force every last drop of mayonnaise out of a bottle, I decided to try in on a plastic jar of unmixed natural peanut butter. I pushed the business end of the gun against the side of the jar and marveled at how quickly the vibrations mixed the separated oil with the solids. A week later, the peanut butter remains perfectly blended. Note: I've only tested this on plastic jars; use caution with glass containers. — MF

Did you ever make a linoleum wood-block print in school? I did, and cutting linoleum was a pain. It took a lot of energy and effort to even make a small design. Recently I returned to making woodcut prints and hand-carved stamps because I discovered the secret: instead of cutting either wood or linoleum, I carve on a sheet of firm rubber, which cuts like butter. Speedball, the legendary company making carving tools, produces their own Speedy-Carve Blocks which have the consistency of a pencil eraser. Many other generic manufacturers in China offer this soft carving sheets, too. Now, making a block print is quick and enjoyable. — KK

I have a rotating door of newsletters in my inbox, and I’m often subscribing and unsubscribing as I outgrow them, but Wonder Tools is one that I continue to read weekly. Jeremy Kaplan generously offers in-depth research about the most useful tools on the Internet and shares his insights for free. I always learn something new and discover websites and apps that make my computer life easier. A good example is his recent issue: Deep Research with AI: 9 Ways to Get Started. — CD

The best mobile app for identifying living species is iNaturalist. It is free, fast, and can identify most plants, animals and many fungi. Load it onto your phone, use it to snap a picture, and then its AI will ID it. To date, it can identify 500,000 species. You can then share your observation with iNaturalist’s extensive community of enthusiasts who can confirm, refine, and expand upon what you found. Because you can opt to allow the location of your observation, the app is also contributing to science. (The current app is a newly rewritten version that replaces both iNaturalist Classic and kid-version Seek.) Twenty five years ago I co-founded a non-profit to catalog all the species on the planet and this is the technology that we dreamed about. — KK

Language enthusiast Yuji Beleza travels the world recording his encounters with strangers. He speaks five languages fluently — Japanese, English, Russian, German, and Turkish — and knows enough to hold basic conversations in dozens more. When people tell him where they're from, he immediately switches to their native language. Watch as their expressions transform from coolness and suspicion to warmth and trust. My friend Irwin Miller shared Beleza's Instagram channel with me, and it instantly lifted my spirits. — MF

Objects from the Future is a digital prompt generator that helps you imagine physical objects from potential future worlds. You are given five cards, each representing a different societal outcome, timeframe, object, industry, and human need to be satisfied. These prompts then become doorways to the imaginal. I spent some time envisioning what family rituals might exist 100 years from now, when a large-scale event has led society down an unpredicted path and what is needed most is “comfort” in uncertain times. I didn’t get a clear picture in my mind, but I sensed that even 100 years from now, the greatest source of comfort for me would be rooted in the natural world, not digital. — CD

With 140W of power, the Anker 737 PowerCore 24K power bank is beefy enough to juice up a laptop. It's hefty — 1.3 pounds and the size of a soda can — but that's the tradeoff for this much power. The color display shows you how long it will take to charge your device. If you need serious portable charging, this is worth the investment. It comes with a USB-C to USB-C cable designed to handle the high wattage. — MF

This article explores the perspectives necessary to cultivate calmness, but I think the key takeaway is that super calm people are not free from chaos. Instead, they have developed the ability to respond to chaos with acceptance, self-responsibility, flexible thinking, presence, and a natural alignment with the cycles of life. — CD

Oliva Dodd goes to public parks with a folding table and a manual typewriter. She invites strangers to open up and tell her something personal about their lives. After a moment’s reflection, Dodd types a poem on a card, which she reads out loud to the person. As you can see on her Instagram, the recipients are sometimes moved to tears by the poignancy of the poems. — MF

If you still use keys for your front door lock, this small $4 hard plastic holder is the most perfect one I’ve found to hide a spare key. It is disguised exactly as the black top of a sprinkler in your garden or lawn. — KK

This sound map of Brooklyn’s pirate radio stations is an audio archival project that lets you tune into the underground and countercultural broadcasts of past eras. When I was a child, my dad was a long-haul truck driver, so I would listen to Coast to Coast AM to feel close to him. I’ve always been fascinated by all things radio-CB radios, ham radios, pirate radios. The little girl in me still loves the lo-fi quality and fringeness of it all. — CD

The Grand Encyclopedia of Eponymous Laws is a collection of 200 playful observations about human nature. Many of them are new to me. A few samples:

• Time Cube Law: “As the length of a webpage grows linearly, the likelihood of the author being a lunatic increases exponentially.”

• Wadsworth Constant: “The first 30% of any video can be skipped because it contains no worthwhile or interesting information.”

• Akin’s 10th Law: “When in doubt, estimate. In an emergency, guess. But be sure to go back and clean up the mess when the real numbers come along.”

— MF

We wanted a portable fire pit for our patio, and my wife insisted that it be as smokeless as possible, so we settled on an East Oak Smokeless Fire Pit. I was pretty dubious about the smokeless part, but much to our delight, the East Oak burns all kinds of wood (from split firewood to 2x4 scraps) with almost no smoke once it gets going. We got the 21-inch version which is large enough. It is made of stainless steel so it has withstood standing outside for all seasons well. The retail price is listed as $270, however recently it has been selling for $160 or less. (Reminder you can use Camelcamelcamel to alert you to a target price on Amazon.) — KK

I thoroughly enjoyed When The Heavens Went on Sale, a new book by Ashlee Vance that recounts in entertaining detail the creation of the new space frontier: scrappy startups inventing small, fast, cheap rockets and satellites, and against all odds, succeeding where NASA could not. The cast of misfits, bigger-than-life visionaries, genius jerks, and admirable old-school engineers is vast, and way beyond Elon Musk (who only appears in Ashlee Vance’s other book, a Musk biography). Vance spent many years hanging out on this frontier, attending endless test failures, hearing the intimate dreams of the makers, and via this deep immersion, he explains in thrilling detail the innovations and technology that has created this new industry. An excellent documentary was filmed in parallel with the book, Wild, Wild Space (HBO Max) and it gives you a great sense of the key characters in this new wild, wild west. — KK

This simple map tool will tell you the human population from any point in the world, for whatever radius you select. I’ll be visiting the Scottish Highlands soon, and it’s interesting to know that the village near where I’ll be staying has a population of less than 800 within a 20 km radius. — CD

This hand-crank grater keeps your knuckles away from the blades while shredding cheese blocks and vegetables like carrots and zucchini. It sticks to the counter with suction cups and comes with three swappable grating drums. You’ll need to pre-cut larger items to fit the chute. Cleanup is simple since everything pops apart and goes in the dishwasher. Worth the counter space. — MF

In the Simple Living subreddit, someone asked, “What’s a simple, underrated ritual that genuinely changed your life—and you wish you’d started earlier?” The top-voted comments included advice like reading books instead of screens before bed, washing dishes at night to feel “on top of things” in the morning, and taking regular 20-minute afternoon naps to reset internally. But the most surprising advice that seems useful to try was: if you work from home, turn on a desk lamp when you start work and turn it off when you finish—a simple light cue to mark the start and end of your day and help you switch modes. Another interesting tip is to incorporate a minute of silence in the car before heading out on the road to help shed the flurry of prep and loading, and to let your subconscious catch up before you drive off. — CD