Matcha (powdered green tea leaves) is usually pretty expensive. When I saw a one-pound container of Organic Matcha Green Tea Powder on Amazon selling for a low price, I was suspicious, but I decided to give it a try. It's delicious. Our favorite way to drink it is to blend a teaspoon with 8 oz of soy or almond milk. We've gone through four pounds of the stuff, one teaspoon at a time. We use this fantastic Nespresso Aeroccino Milk Frother to mix it up. Read the rest

This small frying pan from Carote has a natural stone non-stick coating that makes it excellent for cooking eggs or frying meat. It's very easy to clean. People on Amazon love this pan and it's cheap.. Read the rest

This 2.5x LED magnifier can be used as a handheld tool or on the desktop. It also has smaller, more powerful magnifying glass built-in. Perfect for peering at electronic components. I use it to inspect the spoons I whittle. Read the rest

If you do soldering work, I recommend getting a pair of these micro flush cutters. They'll cut copper wires flush with the blob of solder, making your work look tidy. Read the rest

Gum Soft-Picks do a better job than toothpicks or floss for cleaning food and plaque from between my teeth. For me, it's just much more convenient than using dental floss. The rubbery green brush pushes out all the gunk without hurting.  You can buy them in packs of 50, 100, 150, or 300.

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BetterBook is a notebook/sketchbook designed to match widescreen displays. The idea is you can take photos of it on your phone and it will do a better job of fitting on a screen. It comes in one of three types of paper -- dotted grid, standard grid, or blank. The notebook had a successful run on Indiegogo and is now available for pre-order. Read the rest

I bought a USB rechargeable lighter last year and will never go back to using matches or a butane lighter. I've used it to light many charcoal barbecues, candles, and stove burners. It works by making a small electric arc across two electrodes. It makes a barely perceptible hissing sound, but one of my cats can hear it from across the room and she runs away. It must sound like another cat hissing at her. Read the rest

I bought this wall-mounted magnetic strip in 2015 to have easy access to tools I need for simple household tasks: opening packages, hanging pictures, assembling furniture, tightening loose nuts, installing door locks, measuring things, simple plumbing repairs, etc. It's much better than keeping the tools in a kitchen drawer because I can instantly find the tool(s) I need. The magnet is very strong, so I don't have to worry about a tool falling off. The strips come in various lengths. The one I bought is 24 inches long. The shortest I've seen on Amazon is seven inches. Read the rest

I've been cutting my own hair for decades. And for the last couple of months, I've been trimming the hair of my family members. I finally replaced the all-purpose scissors with these stainless steel hair shears. I used an online code (ZHLVYBY6) to get a steep discount on Amazon. I have to say, I'm sorry I didn't get these a lot sooner. They work like a charm, especially for trimming bangs that require chipping into the hair. These things are very sharp and the finger holes are curved in a way that makes them very comfortable. Read the rest

I bought the Fire TV Stick 4K (very cheap using promo code 4KFIRETV) and it is so much better than the old model we'd been using. It has voice control so you don't have to use the remote to search. one character at a time. for shows and movies. The remote also has on-off and volume switches for the TV, so you can put the TV remote away. It is also much, much faster than the old Fire TV Stick we were using. App and shows load in a fraction of the time. If you have an older Fire TV Stick, this upgrade is well worth getting. Read the rest

I've been using a Kitchen IQ Edge Grip 2-Stage Knife Sharpener  for years and it's my favorite knife sharpener.  I like it because of the way you hold it with one hand along the edge of a kitchen counter and with the other hand you draw the knife through the slots. It's a safe way to sharpen a knife and I don't see how someone could make a mistake and hurt themselves. One slot is "coarse" and the other is "fine." I typically use the fine slot every week or so to restore the edge on a knife. I rarely use coarse because it removes quite a bit of steel from a knife, but sometimes that's just what's needed to sharpen a dull knife. Read the rest

I bought this Sun Joe SPX3200 pressure washer in April 2019 and I seem to find a use for it every weekend. This thing is fantastic. It cleans mold from bricks, stains from concrete, and most recently, I used it to clean 10-year-old outdoor furniture made from teak wood:

 

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my weekends have become “what else can I pressure wash”

A post shared by Mark Frauenfelder (@frauenfelder) on Jul 5, 2020 at 6:04pm PDT

It's powered by 120 volts AC, and has a long cord so I usually don't need an extension cord. It also has four different nozzles plus one attachment for soap. It has a soap tank, which I fill with liquid soap. Using the highest pressure nozzle, I have to be careful because it will actually chew a hole in concrete. I use the lowest pressure nozzle to wash windows and the exterior of the house when it gets dirty. It's also a great way to get rid of black widows and spider eggs from lawn furniture. I love this thing. Read the rest

Use code ADHNRSNZ to get these excellent noise-canceling Bluetooth over-ear headphones for a great price. Both my daughters have a pair and use them for hours a day. The batteries last a long time, and the noise canceling is comparable to my Bose wired noise-canceling headphones. Read the rest

I used to buy Gildan T-shirts, but after Carla bought me Calvin Klein t-shirts, I noticed a big difference in the quality of the fabric. The Calvin Klein cotton feels a lot better! And occasionally Amazon has the shirts on sale. Right now you can get a 5-pack for a really good price. I just bought a combo pack that includes three white shirts and two gray ones. Read the rest

Under 1.5-inches long, the Streamlight Nano flashlight has a quick-release clip so you can easily keep it on a zipper pull or flashlight. It's powered by four button cells.

Here's a photo of it next to a tube of Chapstick:

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Try this code: 4KFIRETV to see if you can get the Fire TV Stick 4K for a large discount. It worked for me, so I bought it to replace my four- or five-year-old Fire TV stick, which does not have voice remote and was slower because it has less storage. Read the rest

What is Arduino? It's a credit card size electronics prototyping platform that lets artists, designers, and others add interactivity to their projects. (My book Maker Dad, has a useful Arduino tutorial.)

This Arduino UNO clone starter kit is very inexpensive and has the following components:

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