Allison is a writer and mother of two living in Ohio. Her writing is focused around self-improvement, mental health, life lessons, and parenting all with one purpose: to live a fulfilled life. When she’s not writing she’s likely throwing a baseball in the front yard with her son or planning family trips to national parks in their Airstream Basecamp. You can read more from her on medium.com/@allisonditmer.
We independently select these products—if you buy from one of our links, we may earn a commission. All prices were accurate at the time of publishing.
We’ve all been there — you buy fresh seafood or produce and get all excited to cook a fancy at-home dinner with it later in the week. As the days go by, however, you get busy, forget about your purchase, and order takeout instead. What greets you the next time you open your fridge is the stench of spoiled fish or slimy spears of asparagus that you now have to throw out. That’s $30 in the trash! Instead of giving up on your desire to cook homemade meals, there are steps you can take to prevent such problems from happening over and over again. For one, proper food storage is imperative. Whether you’re putting away fresh-bought groceries or plating leftovers, the containers you use and the temps you store them in will make all the difference. When it comes to the more finicky ingredients in your fridge, however, there’s one tool we strongly suggest investing in: the Dash SuperSeal vacuum sealer, which is available at Macy’s.
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Ideal for uncooked meat and veggies, this compact machine comes with its own suction tube, as well as five 1-liter reusable plastic bags and a roll of 28-by-300 centimeter single-use plastic bags. Simply select your sealing setting, and watch as this ingenious gadget removes all the air from the bag, helping your food stay fresher longer. The sealer also separates the individual plastic bags from the larger roll, so you don’t have to worry about finding scissors and cutting them free. And if you happen to run out of bags, there are plenty of replacement packs available on sites like Amazon.
Another major benefit of using the Dash vacuum sealer is that keeping potentially leaky foods in airtight bags will help prevent messes inside the fridge. When certain items spoil, they release foul-smelling juices that run and stick onto the shelves, but that’ll no longer be the case thanks to this tool. Once you’re done using it, you can leave the sealer on the kitchen counter or easily find storage space in one of your drawers; its slim design means it won’t take up a ton of precious space in tiny kitchens. With skyrocketing food prices caused by inflation and other economic factors, you don’t want to play around with food storage. The SuperSeal prevents waste and saves you money in the long run, so grab your own today.
We independently select these products—if you buy from one of our links, we may earn a commission. All prices were accurate at the time of publishing.
I drank a lot of tea as a kid, mostly during the cold, North Jersey winters. However, it was always just the low-quality English breakfast tea that we’d buy in the 100-count tea bag batches from Costco or another bulk store. I thought it was OK — I definitely hadn’t had anything better at the time — and for years, that was pretty much the extent of my foray into the world of tea. Years later, I went off to college in downtown New York City, where I worked a short, two-week gig at a specialty store in Manhattan during a summer, and got to try my first cup of delicious, loose-leaf chai made by one of the women who worked the counter. After my first sip, I was hooked, but my stint at the shop ended, and I went back to slamming burnt coffee, pre-packaged cold brew, and energy drinks, as a college kid is wont to do. Thankfully, though, I recently picked up some loose leaf tea at a nearby Christmas market, and I’m back on the good stuff. Unfortunately, I didn’t have any way to brew the tea, and was rigging a piece of cheesecloth as a makeshift bag to avoid drinking leaves and stems. (Pro Tip: Don’t do that.) After a few unsuccessful tries with that method, I picked up a super-popular tool from one of my favorite cookware companies that’s proved invaluable in my entrance into the tea game: the OXO Brew Tea Infuser Basket.
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The OXO Brew Tea Infuser Basket is designed to be an easy way to optimize your loose-leaf tea’s flavor, and the holes on the sides of the stainless-steel basket keep fine particles in your cup, and not in your mouth. It fits perfectly in every mug I’ve used it with, thanks to its extra-wide wings, which also serve as handles that never get too hot, thanks to their length. My favorite part, though, is that the heat-retaining lid also serves as a drip tray, meaning you don’t end up with drips all over your coffee table when you remove the basket. It also has a silicone ring on the bottom, so you won’t burn whatever you’re setting it on. Plus, since you can get several extractions from one serving of loose-leaf tea, the basket is right there if you want another cup.
With a 4.8-star average rating from over 5,400 reviews on Amazon, it’s clear this is a universally loved tool for tea drinkers around the globe. “The holes in the basket are smaller than other infusers I’ve looked at, which is great because it prevents too many particles from coming through,” one reviewer writes. “It’s [also] easy to clean. I typically let my leaves dry and then dump them out, but I have also just tapped the infuser along the trash bin and had no problems.”
So, if you’ve been wanting to get into loose-leaf tea, but don’t want to shell out for an expensive tea pot, there’s no better choice than the easy-to-use, affordable Brew Tea Infuser Basket from OXO.
Megan is a writer and editor who specializes in home upgrades, DIY projects, hacks, and design. Before Apartment Therapy, she was an editor at HGTV Magazine and This Old House Magazine. Megan has a degree in Magazine Journalism from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism. She is a self-taught weighted blanket connoisseur.
We independently select these products—if you buy from one of our links, we may earn a commission. All prices were accurate at the time of publishing.
You could technically stick to owning just one or two pairs of sunglasses, but what’s the fun in that? Depending on your outfit, mood, and the weather outside, you never know whether today is going to be a day for wearing aviators, oversized frames, or perhaps a rimless style. Unfortunately, figuring out how to organize all your glasses isn’t nearly as fun as rocking them. Even if you deposit some in the glovebox of your car and by the front entryway, chances are, your vanity surface will still be lacking in storage space. The same might even be said about the drawers and shelves in your bedroom. Vertical sunglasses holders that rotate might seem like a great solution at first, but even those can take up precious space that your desk just doesn’t have. It’s a happy coincidence, then, that we found this wall-mounted sunglasses holder on Etsy. And what’s even better: Each one of these little organizers only costs $8!
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In purchasing your own sunglasses holder, you get to choose the color of its wooden base — white, gray, brown, or blue — and how long you want it to be. The $8 model holds just one pair of glasses, while the 15″ version has nine of the leather slots and costs $20. Thanks to its high quality materials, your holder will look chic and not at all cheap like some plastic alternatives. Once your purchase arrives, all you have to do is peel the paper off the back and stick your holder on whichever wall you want. We suggest placing it next to your closet or full-length mirror, so you can get a good glimpse of your entire fit before running out the door. But regardless of where you choose to stick this product, the important thing is that you don’t have to drill any holes in the wall in order to use it — it’s entirely renter-friendly!
Additionally, this particular Etsy store has more than 3,300 reviews, the vast majority of them positive, so you can trust that you’re getting a good product. “This was a great solution for my at-home office!” one customer noted. “My glasses were piling up, and I wanted something simple to install and visually clean/plain. This was perfect!” Shoppers also say the holder can fit glasses of many different sizes, and it keeps pairs from mysteriously disappearing around the house. No matter what color and length you go with, your holder will get the job done and look incredibly chic doing it!