Would you like to live your life in a four star luxury hotel, with room service and a maid to pick up your clothes, clean the bathroom and make the bed? Well, theoretically you can, but it would cost you hundreds of dollars a night, money which might be better spent on other, more affordable luxuries. A much better idea is to have a comfortable home, as luxurious as possible, and save the hotel money for when you actually have to stay away from home. However, some of those amenities might work in the home environment.
Years ago, many hotels had Dremel electric shoe polishers (buffers, actually) so you could rub the dust off your shoes and shine them up before that all-important meeting with the client. I’ve had one for over twenty years that I bought for $10 from the grand old Bellevue-Stratford Hotel in Philadelphia when it changed over to be the Fairmont (it has since changed back). Add it to your Corby of Windsor Pants Press and you will have the full hotel effect, not to mention shiny shoes and neatly creased pants.
There are two kinds: the kind with the long extension handle with the switch button on top, for standing use and the kind without. The handle is a key feature. Just walk up to the machine, reach down and push the button and the electric motor spins right up to do the work – so you don’t have to. You can use the handle to move it around a little while you move your feet (it’s a relative of the Dremel Moto-Tool, after all). The red and black buffing pads are supposed to be for black or brown polish, but they’re really just for show. It’s not really designed for polishing with shoe polish, anyway. That would be too messy. It works best for removing dust or for bringing up that final high-gloss shine after a fine spray of water. You can get one in perfect condition on eBay for under $40.
Affordability: 9 Luxury:9
Want more luxury? You can get a brand-new, Made in America Beck Diplomat (with the extension handle) or Deluxe (without) in your choice of chrome, brass or black for about $230, if you prefer that to mid-century vintage.
Here’s the problem for me: how to keep the kitchen floor and the bathroom floor clean every day. The kitchen floor collects crumbs and the stuff that just ends up as a result of the time we spend there (which is a lot), and the bathroom floor collects hair, dust, powder and general bathroom dirt. As soon as they are clean, they start to get dirty again. The answer for me is the iRobot Roomba. Roombas have been around for a while. The early adopters (like Stewart Brand of Whole Earth fame) already have one and are used to the fascinating way it does its job in a way that seems to be both focused and random, along with the beep language it uses to communicate. The rest of us might have been thinking that they are too expensive, or too gimmicky, or that they get too tangled up in electrical cords, too this or too that. Or that they don’t clean as deeply as big vacuums with powerful suction motors. That part’s true, they don’t.
What Roombas do well is the frequent cleaning you know you should do, and would do, if you only had the time. They are the autonomous, targeted predator drones of floor care. You can send it around the kitchen as often as you like. Keep it confined in there with the IR virtual wall and the kitchen will be thoroughly swept. Same deal with the bathroom, as often as you need it. It’s also good to sweep around the edges of hallways, where the dust seems to build up. One of its best tricks is its ability to clean under furniture and beds and come back out again; no need to move them even when you bring in the big vacuum for a thorough cleaning.
Like any good gadget, you can customize and accessorize them to your heart’s content. Since Roombas have been on sale since 2002, you can get one in any price range. The 400 series are available for well under $200 and basically do everything the new ones do, but the latest and greatest models can back off of fringes and electrical cords and easily find their way back to the charging dock. All you have to is dump out the dirt.
I don’t think bad breath is as prevalent as the big consumer products corporations would have us believe, but Daisy does. In fact, Daisy doesn’t think enough people remember those “morning breath: the worst breath of the day” commercials from 30-odd years ago (though her olfactory senses are much sharper than mine, I concede). Still, whichever one of us is correct, doesn’t everyone like to feel minty-fresh? The least minty-fresh part of the day is the morning, when it has been hours since you last brushed or flossed or rinsed (not 12 hours, but certainly the whole time you’ve slept) — and sometimes the least minty-fresh part of the day is the snuggliest, which can be kind of a problem. Trouble is, ordinary mouthwash is only good for an hour or so, meaning your minty freshness at 11 PM will be long gone the next morning. Obviously, not long enough to do the job.
SmartMouth will keep working past the morning breath time; the 12-hour time frame will mean that the recommended twice-daily rinse will keep you in good shape around the clock.
How it works is a bit complicated. The company Web site has a lot of technical documentation, if you are into that sort of thing, but basically mixing the 2 solutions immediately before use releases “free zinc ions,” which prevent the bad germs from metabolizing protein to make the bad stuff. Does it work? I can say it makes me feel minty-fresh, and the studies have shown that the advertising is truthful. It contains no alcohol, and doesn’t sting at all. The instructions recommended an extra rinse after consuming, for example, garlic or onions, but even without that prophylactic step, SmartMouth keeps your mouth feeling fresh and clean, and ensures that you do not offend your companions.
Wait, did somebody say something about mixing the 2 solutions? Isn’t that a pain? Is that like using the 2 tubes of epoxy where you have to squeeze out the epoxy and hardener and mix them together? No, it’s really very easy. Just pump out an equal number of squirts (they recommend 4) from each bottle into the little cup, and you’re ready to use it. How does it taste? Not bad at all. It doesn’t have the overpowering mint flavor of a traditional mouthwash, but its less strident mintiness lasts so much longer, you won’t even miss that spearmint burst. At $12.99 for the two-bottle set, it’s pricier than traditional mouthwash, but unlike traditional mouthwash, it actually keeps your breath fresh all day and night, so the next time someone takes you to task for your smart mouth, you can thank them.
You go to buy toothpaste, and you see vast aisles of toothpaste in the supermarket, Target or giant drugstore, but you don’t really want any of them. Crest, Colgate, Tom’s and Rembrandt with every mathematical combination of features – why would you just not want them all? Whitening, enamel-strengthening, breath-freshening, tartar-removing, germ-killing minty Crest (or Colgate). Sounds great, but … yawn. Is there a luxurious toothpaste that you would want to buy just because you liked it?
I think there is: Go Smile, the same Go Smile distributed by Sephora. Here’s why: the toothpaste is the daily maintenance product of the premiere whitening company. Also, they understand that there is a fundamental difference in your state of mind between brushing your teeth in the morning, getting ready to start the day, and at night, getting ready to go to sleep. They offer two recipes of aromatherapy ingredients. Two kinds of toothpaste, one for each purpose.
Start with the morning formula. It’s called “Energy.” It has a mix of lemon, lime, orange and peppermint added to give a subtle hint of aroma and flavor.
A little bit of citrus and mint helps give a stimulating boost to your morning routine. Like any good toothpaste, it has a large dose of whiteners and fluoride to prevent cavities. After all, preventing cavities has always been the #1 thing brushing was supposed to do. The evening relaxing half, “Tranquillity,” has chamomile, lavender, vanilla, valerian root and spearmint to set the mood for getting ready to relax.
Both varieties contain hydrated silica. That is the key ingredient that polishes away surface stains to maintain the whiteness. Unfortunately, a set of both will set you back $30, so you have to decide if a small tube of toothpaste is worth 15 bucks. If not, maybe it’s the perfect gift: something your giftee could not afford for themselves.
If you have a Christmas tree, then yes, I think you do. Please let me explain. The base of the Christmas tree is a space for toys, and electric trains are not merely toys, but toys that are animated with motion, light and sound. There’s a certain connection between Christmas and trains that’s part of the holiday culture. Here’s where it gets complicated, though: what electric trains do you use for this purpose, exactly? Here are some of your options:
1. The American Flyer or Lionel Trains Already Up In the Attic – First question is, are they up there? Well, if someone in your household was a parent or child in the 1950s, they almost certainly had toy trains. They were enormously popular at the time (until the launch of Sputnik in 1957 and the stampede to “space toys”). If you have them, bring them down. They are durable and have a great vintage look. However, remember they are 60 years old and might need some work.
2. HO Trains – “Half O” gauge trains have continued to be popular over the intervening years, and families are more likely to have a set of them around. They are reliable and accurate scale models, but since they are only “half O” (gauge), they are too small to be the right scale for a Christmas tree. If you have a small tree or a tabletop tree, HO would be the way to go.
3. On30 Trains – The prevalence of HO track combined with its small size spurred the development of On30, bigger O size trains on the narrow HO track. They are usually steam era stock and have an appealing antique look, although they are not precisely to scale. Check out the Bachmann starter sets. They’re pricey, but beautiful and the perfect size.
4. New O Gauge Trains – You can still buy brand-new Lionel trains (from Amazon or other places; even Wegman’s is selling a version of them in their grocery stores in the Northeastern United States). For $200 or so, you get a high-quality toy that has stood the test of time, not to mention the perfect working ornament for the tree base. The technology might be too retro for the modern child, however. The transformer still controls the speed, forward and reverse. Needless to say, there’s very little steering involved …
5. LEGO Trains – LEGO has had trains since 1966, but they have changed their specifications a number of times, most recently from 9V to RC. Some of their train models were also lacking in realism. Since 2007, they seem to have settled on the new Power Functions as the way to go. The Emerald Night steam locomotive looks like a real steam engine, and it is scaled to all the other parts of the LEGO universe (similar to O gauge in model train world). They also make the Hogwarts Express for the diehard Harry Potter fans.
6. Battery Powered G Scale Trains – Is all of this too much for you? Do you perhaps not feel the need to spend $200 for a train that you will only use for one month a year? Do you not want to think about HO, S, O, On30 or G? That’s perfectly understandable, so feel free to take the easy way out. Battery powered G scale trains are available in many local toy stores, or get the Hershey from Walmart or the Polar Express from Amazon. They are big, the same scale as the G scale trains used in expensive garden railroads, so they are easy for children to handle and look impressive around the tree. They are slightly lacking in model train snob appeal, so hopefully you don’t know too many model train snobs.
Here are three things to consider. A figure-8 layout is much more interesting than an oval. You get to watch the locomotive pull the cars through a gradual left turn, than around a gradual right turn. Also, I think steam engines are more fun to watch than diesels, with the smoke coming out and the busy rods on the wheels. Finally, avoid the “Christmas train” paint schemes on the trains themselves. You’ll find that the train itself is “Christmas-y” enough.
And one more thing: you don’t need to have a child living in the house to appreciate the holiday spirit of an electric train circling your Christmas tree. Daisy loves ours — once I explained the nuances of track size, manufacturer, steam vs. diesel, and accessories. She, too, is now happily mesmerized by our chugging Christmas train.
I live in the Northeastern United States for a reason: I love the seasons (and I’m holding onto them as long as climate change will let me). I especially love autumn, though — the colorful leaves, the comfort food, the football, the holidays. All the best holidays occur in the fall; the winter Monday holidays are mostly for quick getaways or shopping bargains, and Memorial Day is a great excuse for a cookout . . . as is July 4th . . . and Labor Day . . . so you see my point? Easter and Passover have their solemn traditions, but for three quarters of the year, nearly all of the holidays we celebrate are both redundant and fairly insignificant. But Thanksgiving . . . Thanksgiving is the middle and best of three holidays that celebrate this part of the year:
1. You’ll Never See So Much Food (until next year) – Of course I started with the food! What greater luxury could exist than a holiday dedicated to EATING? Whether you roast your turkey or smoke it, serve mac-and-cheese or mashed potatoes, garnish with cranberry sauce or gravy, prefer Russets or yams, cornbread or Parker House rolls . . . see? That’s eight options and I haven’t even reached actual vegetables, salad, soup or dessert. The beauty of Thanksgiving is that it’s all about the meal. You don’t even have to make these choices. You can eat some of everything on the table, make Aunt Edythe happy that you like her cooking, and still have the weekend to work it all off, because Thanksgiving also offers . . .
2. You Have An Extra-Long Weekend – Stay up late watching holiday movies. Go to Best Buy at 4 a.m. (why? I don’t know . . .). Spend your days and nights doing whatever you want. You have three full days — literally 72 hours — to catch up on your sleep, make lots of cookies, overdose on college football, find endless ways to serve turkey and stuffing. And that’s not including the actual holiday, which is, as I said, all about those things anyway.
3. No Presents – Can’t figure out what to get Cousin Martha to match her gingham wardrobe? Don’t know Grandpa’s shirt size? Save all that worry for . . . well, Friday, maybe, but you can put it off for the weekend if you want. Thanksgiving requires no gifts. Just show up with your appetite, good manners (please), and maybe a pie as a contribution to the National Day of Pot Luck. No trees, no ribbons, no packages required.
4. There’s Football – If you’re a football fan, Thanksgiving is your weekend. With two pro games on Thursday (and this year the Detroit Lions are actually winning), at least two college games on Friday, and the usual line-up of both on Saturday and Sunday, you’ll barely need to leave the couch except to refresh the snack bowl. Even a sad Penn State fan might find something to cheer about.
5. It’s the Beginning of Extended Holiday Shopping Hours – I have never figured out why, but some people — including some I love dearly — like to line up at midnight to catch super-early holiday sales. Really, I don’t understand this desire on a weekend that is built around so much lazy luxuriating, but if dawn at Target is your thing, start napping to prepare. The stores try to make this activity even more appealing by offering deals like plasma TVs for $1; if you go, try not to mow anyone down with your shopping cart. People have been trampled at these sales. Be careful, and enjoy!
6. Black Friday – The original post-Thanksgiving shopping tradition, Black Friday is the shopping day on which retailers plan to return their ledgers to the black, hence the name, “Black Friday.” In this endless recession (that allegedly ended in February of 2010), the stores need us more than ever, and who are we not to help them out? After all, consumer confidence is a leading indicator of economic recovery. So come on; it’s Christmas/Hanukkah/Kwanzaa/Festivus! Go out and get more stuff for those nice friends of yours who already have too much stuff. They’ll thank you for it with some new stuff for you!
7. Santa is at the Mall – Okay, okay, he’s already been at some malls for two weeks. But respect Thanksgiving, and treat the day AFTER as the start of the Christmas season. Use the weekend to get those holiday photos of the kids — or you and your best friends — on Santa’s lap.
8. Holiday Movies and Animated Specials – As I said above, you can spend all weekend watching them, because they start now. Cable television has an endless supply of channels with nothing to broadcast, and many of them start their holiday programming on Thanksgiving Day. Check your local listings, and I bet you’ll find at least one showing of “The Christmas Story,” with Peter Billingsley. I don’t know how or when it became a classic, but it did, and it really is funny. There’ll be more. Take a look.
9. It Has Parades – Macy’s is, of course, the Thanksgiving Day Parade to end all Thanksgiving Day Parades, but if you live in a major city, chances are yours has its own turkey trotting down the center of town, with bands, dancers and floats leading and trailing behind. Your local high school glee club, cheerleading squad or marching band may even be participating.
10. It’s Ecumenical – Thanksgiving — thank goodness! — is the one holiday celebrated by all of us. Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Atheist; any racial or ethnic group; in America we all have something for which to be grateful to a higher power than our own. You can wish everyone “Happy Thanksgiving” with no fear of the PC police. Whether it’s for the opportunity to gather, the people with whom to gather, the food we’re overeating, or just the day off, Thanksgiving is the day when all of us, whoever we are, can take a breath and acknowledge that whatever else may be wrong, we at least have THIS. And that’s enough.
The Gill Tube-Wringer #401 is designed for heavy-duty use; it’s not necessarily supposed to be for toothpaste. When I saw it, I immediately wanted one for its serious industrial look and its Made in America status. Squeezing out the toothpaste is a task, which although mundane, needs to be done, once or twice a day. Toothpaste can get messy after a while, and that mess is wasted toothpaste – one way or another, that toothpaste has to be all forced out through the cap end. You can’t easily hold the Gill #401 and squeeze out the toothpaste with one hand and hold your toothbrush with the other, and the knob is too big to clear the counter and spin all the way around. You might need a second pair of hands, and at our house we tried it that way for a couple of weeks. At first, I thought those things mattered, and that they were design flaws. They don’t, and they’re not. The machine squeezes the bejesus out of things, and crimps at the same time. The empty end of the tube is not only completely empty, but bent into many small, tight parallel creases that prevent any toothpaste from even thinking about trying to go back that way. After a few normal uses, a partial turn of the huge handle will compress all that’s left into a smooth, neat mass in back of the cap, so that you can dispense the right amount onto your brush the old-fashioned way: with your fingers. Eventually, the paste will be squeezed against the cap to the limit of the rollers; then you take out an almost perfectly empty, crimped and flattened tube. There will be just a few brushings worth of toothpaste ready to go quietly out the end of the tube, on the way to complete emptiness. Finally, the tube has nothing left to give up and can be thrown on the trash. Put a fresh tube of Botot, Elgydium or Marvis on the counter with this and you’ll be sure to squeeze out every little overpriced bit. A great gift for the frugal person with good oral hygiene habits.
Almost exactly a year ago, I posted about the revival of Eberhard Faber’s classic Blackwing 602 pencil by California Cedar Products, who had started making the Palomino Blackwing. It was a quality pencil, with the timeless design and unique replaceable eraser, but it had a soft lead that required frequent sharpening. It also had a black barrel and white eraser, instead of the more silver-gray barrel and pink eraser of the original.
All in all, it was a good first try, but it turned out to be better for drawing than writing. Back in June of this year, however, they tried again by adding the Palomino Blackwing 602 to their lineup.
The new Blackwing is much closer to the color of the original Eberhard Faber Blackwing, although once again they chose a different eraser color, black this time.
But the handy replaceable eraser feature makes that an unimportant detail; California Cedar’s online store, pencils.com, also offers replacement erasers for $2.95 for a pack of ten that are available in your choice of either original EF pink, white or black. Go with the pink for the complete retro look.
The goal of the new 602 is to produce the same beautiful reproduction of the famous vintage pencil, only with a harder point, better for writing and requiring less frequent sharpenings, and they’ve succeeded with that. Sharpenings are a pain; they interrupt the creative process and shorten the lifespan of the pencil. If you had bought an original Blackwing off eBay for the thirty or so bucks they went for before the new ones came out, it would have killed you each time as your expensive pencil got shorter and shorter whenever you had to sharpen it. But the occasional sharpenings of the new 602 give you a brand-new point, release the fragrant cedar aroma and maybe remind you of how simple life was back in the third grade. Maybe you could also give a box as a gift to a real third-grader.
I admit it – I was in Europe in November back in the late ’80s and I got all caught up in the Beaujolais Nouveau hype. It seemed important and festive to be among the first to try the newest Beaujolais “vintage” on the third Thursday in November. Well, guess what? It’s not. It’s no accident that the French were perfectly content to drink the newly bottled Beaujolais – it was cheap, the year didn’t matter anyway and it was not going to get any better with age. It was really brilliant marketing that got people to eagerly anticipate the annual opportunity to buy the lowest grade wine produced in the Beaujolais region. Even at relatively low prices, it must have made a ton of money for Georges Duboeuf, whose vivid floral bottles and cases dramatically appeared amid much hoopla in liquor stores the Thursday before Thanksgiving. Ironically, French law prohibits adding any higher quality Beaujolais wine to the Nouveau, thus preserving the integrity of its crappy, fruity ordinariness.
Now for the good news – the very best quality Beaujolais wine comes from ten small areas in the region known as crus. We also know that the 2009 vintage is one of the Very Best Ever, certainly the best in this century. So it’s very easy to stop getting the worst Beaujolais money can buy and start getting the best, and it’s not even that much more expensive. The only small obstacle is that the Good Stuff is not called Beaujolais, unless you look closely at the bottle, so it’s a little hard to find in the liquor store. Just look for one of these ten names on the bottle:
– Brouilly
– Chénas
– Chiroubles
– Cote de Brouilly
– Fleurie
– Juliénas
– Morgon
– Moulin à Vent
– Régnié
– Saint Amour
and the year 2009 and you’ll get an outstanding bottle of red wine. You don’t have to wait until next Thursday; go today if you want. Get some for yourself and some more as gifts for the people you’ll visit over the real holidays.
It started to look like we had an awful lot of jewelry that needed cleaning, and glasses; real glasses, cheap reading glasses and cheap sunglasses. Ultrasonic jewelry cleaners seem to be so cheap online (and get such good buyer reviews) that it was worth the $25 or so just to find out if they really worked.
They do. The directions, which apparently are translated literally from the original Chinese, are useless, but unintentionally hilarious. That’s OK, though, because the machine only has an On and an Off button. All the directions need to say is put the item in the tub, cover with water, add a drop of dishwashing detergent and press the On button. After three minutes, it shuts itself off and your item of jewelry or smeary reading glasses are now incredibly clean. Just rinse them off and be amazed. Really. Your jewelry will look like it did when you first saw it in the jeweler’s case. You will know this for sure because your eyeglass lenses will be clearer than they’ve been in years. You might think it can’t be that simple, but it is. Water, dishwashing detergent, push the button, and three minutes later you’re done. Your small items will be so clean you’ll want to clean everything you can fit into it, so go ahead: try it. Clean your razor, your electric toothbrush heads (one at a time, please), pretty much anything the absurdly-translated Chinese directions suggest — drop it in there, and it will be cleaner than when you first acquired it. We’re nowhere near tired of it yet, so we’ve moved it onto the bathroom counter to be closer to the little things we will inevitably decide to drop into it, and as a bonus, the blue light of the machine makes a nifty nightlight for the bathroom counter, too. For $30 or less, it makes a great gift — these little cleaners have been out for years, so their novelty may have worn off, but their utility definitely has not. Like you, your friends are unlikely to have bought one for themselves until they’ve exhausted their mental gadget list, but we work hard to have beautiful things; $30 is a minor investment for a lifetime of maintenance. And the Ultrasonic Jewelry Cleaner is great companion for that sparkly bauble you’re hoping to receive (*ahem*) as a gift this year . . .
