Traditions are what make the holiday season so special and memorable—and cultivating new traditions, or resurrecting old traditions that you and your loved ones enjoyed long ago, can be easier than you might think.
Below are six Wirecutter picks that we’ve turned to during the holiday season to carry out the seasonal traditions we hold dear, or to start new ones we can’t wait to revel in again next year.
I will almost always choose function over fashion, even if that means looking like a total dork in public. I’ve sported a fanny pack since before it was cool, I frequently don my unflattering but extremely protective sun hat on hikes, and I have no qualms using my funny-looking wearable reading light on public transportation.
But the Trtl Pillow, a goofy travel pillow that looks and acts more like a neck brace, was where I drew the line. A long-standing pick in our guide to the best travel pillows, the Trtl Pillow is essentially a fleece scarf with a plastic insert on one side that keeps your neck stable as you doze on flights.
If you turn in for the night by belly-flopping onto your bed, you should consider a firmer mattress to support and cushion your midsection while keeping your spine aligned.
We’ve tested dozens of mattresses, and we recommend six specifically for stomach-sleepers.
Firmness levels are subjective, so consider this guide a starting point. You can read about other mattresses in our foam,innerspring, and hybrid mattress guides.
By age 9, a lot of kids are ready to take on more-grown-up roles and responsibilities. Prior to this age, many kids pretend to cook meals in a toy kitchen, but at 9 they may have the coordination and cognitive ability to follow a recipe and prepare a real home-cooked meal.
Over the past five years I’ve used close to a dozen different hair dryers. There was the pricey canary-yellow model that felt as heavy as a barbell. The wimpy hotel-room dryers that sadly sighed out lukewarm air. The status-symbol blowers from vacuum companies Dyson and Shark, with their rocket-like finishes and arms race’s worth of add-ons.
None of them are better than the Rusk W8less Professional 2000 Watt Dryer, the longtime top pick in Wirecutter’s guide to the best hair dryers. No, it isn’t the most glamorous or full-featured of dryers, and some people definitely prefer a more luxurious-feeling tool like the Dyson dryer. But the Rusk W8less has what you need: It blows air fast. That air is hot. It’s not too heavy or too loud. It just works.
Ready to take on anything, teenagers are growing into their identities as young adults. They’re attuned to what’s happening around them and ripe for new experiences and challenges. And they value their friendships more than ever.
Teenagers are also exploring and wrestling with more-serious adult themes. “They’re starting to read more grown-up books, watch more grown-up movies, and play more grown-up games,” said Brian Mayer, a gaming, learning, and library specialist in New York City. But even as they’re engaging more with the world around them (think first jobs, community service, social activism), they’re still kids at heart, and they find joy in the silly and the absurd.
Many teens also feel the weight of the world on their shoulders, from the pressures of social media to academic stress. “We can find ways to help manage that at home,” said Catherine Pearlman, a parenting adviser, author, and the mother of two teens. Comforting gifts like a weighted blanket or a subscription to a mindfulness app may help.
We've done extensive research into the tools to help you prepare for the next wildfire, but if the air is full of smoke right now, and you're missing a few items on that list (such as an air purifier), this temporary fix may help mitigate the conditions in the meantime.
In 2018, I tested a popular claim: that sticking a furnace/HVAC filter on a standard box fan produces a useful DIY air purifier. I taped a 20-by-20-inch Honeywell FPR 9 filter to a Lasko 20-inch box fan and ran that combo through our standard 35-minute, five-match test in our 200-square-foot New York test space, with the fan on high. And you know what? It did okay, cutting the initial particulate load by 87% over 35 minutes on medium. That’s nothing like the 99% reductions our purifier picks achieved on their high settings, but the results were better than one might expect.
