1. Stasher reusable zip-top bags — $11.99 each
2. Squatty Potty — $25–$65
The exchanges I have with my younger sister are cyclical:
1. She tells me that she has been doing a thing — say, eating avocado toast for breakfast every morning, or using a Shark Tank-approved plastic-stool-looking thing to make pooping easier and more comfortable.
2. I scoff at the thing, because I am extremely old and impossibly wise and kind of an asshole.
3. I try the thing.
4. I love the thing.
And so it went with the Squatty Potty. I came home for a visit and in the bathroom I used to share with Moriah (the sister in question) was this purple...thing, nestled around the base of the toilet, clinical and vaguely sinister. It looked like it was meant for a toddler.
No, Moriah patiently explained, it’s for everyone who wants to improve their defecatory experience. (My words, not hers, because I am actually very squeamish w/r/t talking or writing about poop.) When you sit down, you place your feet on either side of the stool and, as the name suggests, squat. According to the product’s website, this motion “unkinks” your colon. Also according to the website, it “makes going #2, #1!” Haha.
View this video on YouTube
The first couple of times I went to the bathroom, I ignored the Squatty Potty, kicking it off to the side before settling in. I’d been reliably expelling waste from my body for 25 years, I figured. I knew what I was doing. I was set in my ways. But then I figured, hey, even though I think I know everything about everything, there is a slim chance that I do not. And so the next time, I propped my feet, and I squatted.
As always, Moriah was right. It removed the grunting and the guesswork. It cut my time spent in half. It made me wonder about what other ways I’ve been living my life just below par, what other minuscule adjustments I could make to add minutes and meaning. It gave me an excremental crisis, if you will. (You don’t have to.)
If you’re not into the plastic version, it also comes in bamboo and teak. They're more expensive, but also look much more discreet. Whatever the material, I missed it when I left my family’s house to return to my Squatty Potty-free apartment. My sister sent me the above selfie (squelfie?). It was a brag, and a rallying cry, and a moment of connection. —Alanna Okun
3. CitriStrip Paint and Varnish Remover — $8.97
Like most Goop-reading twenty-somethings, "natural" matters to me. Sure, I bleach bomb my hair every six weeks, but I would rather have my kitchen stink of white vinegar than bring "harsh" chemicals into my home.
So when I went about refinishing the secondhand Broyhill Saga cabinet I got for $25 (which the previous owners covered in trendy gray paint), I didn't want to use a traditional paint peeler. I tried warm water and a scraper. I scraped harder and nicked a corner. It took hours to peel just a few square feet. Defeated, my partner and I hit the hardware store and picked up a few cans of CitriStrip. Biodegradable, noncorrosive, and nontoxic, it was a peeling experience.
4. Shyp — $5
Going to the post office, for me, is about as fun as going to the dentist. While I love to write postcards and letters and assemble care packages, that final step of spending any number of miserable minutes in a post office/snail-mail-corporation-of-choice is almost enough to take the joy out of the whole experience. I never have the right packaging or the right tape or the right amount of money or patience or time. When I heard about Shyp, I was barely even skeptical — even a lost package with good intentions seemed better than spending my pre-work hours grunting into a FedEx.
But luckily, Shyp was both painless and effective. You pay them $5 to come pick up whatever you need mailed, and they do the rest. You don't even need a box or a bag or anything! I literally just handed a genial courier a couple of cords and a wooden speaker in the lobby of my NYC office and kind of shrugged, and a week later it appeared in my colleague's office in San Francisco in one piece. —Jess Probus
5. YouTube Red — $9.99/month
6. Sun Basket meal kit delivery — $70/week for a two-person meal plan
I love to cook, but because we get home pretty late, my boyfriend and I have struggled to make time for meal planning *and* grocery shopping *and* cooking during the week. It takes SO LONG.
To save time, I've been trying out meal-in-a-box kits (or what a colleague of mine calls "Lego recipes"). There are a ton of options (Blue Apron, Plated, Purple Carrot, and HelloFresh, to name a few), and most of them suffer the same pitfall: insane amounts of packaging, which makes my Earth-loving heart hurt.
My favorite box so far is Sun Basket because a) it comes with a return label for you to ship back the box, ice packs, and insulation for reuse; b) it's an SF-based company that sources produce from West Coast farms (the others are based in NY); and c) the veggie recipes are actually filling, healthy, and INSANELY good.
At about $10.29 per dish for a two-person, three-meal plan, it's definitely more expensive than just throwing together pasta and sauce — but I find that it's not limited to just six servings, since we always have leftovers. Plus, I'm making dishes I'd only ever dream of ordering at a restaurant (think beet borscht or an udon salad with citrus) *and* I get to control its salt and fat content.
TL;DR: Help I've turned into an insufferable yuppie. —Nicole Nguyen
7. Bleaching Your White Laundry (I know, I know)
8. Keeping Bread in the Freezer
9. Apple iPhone Battery Case — $97.99
10. Mars Speaker by Crazybaby — $328.98 (lol)
My ultimate goal in life is to be untethered by cords, so when I heard about a Bluetooth speaker that takes it to the next level by FLOATING IN THE AIR, I had to try it out. And guys, the Mars Speaker by Crazybaby actually works! Below is a video of me actually playing music on it and it moves, even taking flight at just the right moment in the song (#BuyDangerousWomanOniTunes).
