We write about hundreds of products each week. Here, in our version of the Sunday circular, we’ve plucked some of our recent favorites: expert-recommended essentials, life-changing stuff you didn’t know you needed, newly launched gizmos, and very good deals we uncovered while trawling through the vast online-shopping universe — including a natural cleaner with a soothing scent, a deodorant that works to unclog pores, and the best shoes for climbing newbies.
Ingrown-fighting deodorant
Strategist beauty writer Rio Viera-Newton became “obsessed” with Megababe’s natural deodorant after it helped decrease “irritation and redness under [her] arms” and made her smell “lovely and rosy, like a little garden, all day and into the evening hours.” The brand recently released a new two-in-one cream deodorant and ingrown-hair treatment. Its star ingredients are mandelic and lactic acids, which work to block odor-causing bacteria and clear clogged pores that might cause ingrowns; the formula also contains niacinamide, squalane, and vitamin E to help improve skin tone and encourage softer, smoother skin.
Cable ties with a cornucopia of uses
While searching for a solution to organize the tangle of cords and cables on her floor, Strategist junior writer Kitty Guo stumbled across these Nite Ize gear ties. They “tickled her fancy” due to their “eye-catching colors, from cobalt blue to lime green to traffic-cone orange, as well as the wide assortment of sizes ranging from 3 inches to 18 inches long.” She soon discovered a plethora of functions for them beyond cable management; the “smooth, fluid motion of the wire” and the “feel of the textured rubber” made them the ultimate fidget toy. In a pinch, they could also act as makeshift hooks, zipper pulls, and chip clips. “They can tackle any and all problems you’re facing — including ones you didn’t even know you had,” she says.
Lightweight sneakers for everyday hikes …
When we asked Euphoria actress Chloe Cherry about what she can’t live without, she told us these Nike Revolutions are her favorite shoes for getting in her 10,000 steps per day. “They’re really lightweight and have a nice bounce to them,” Cherry says. “I used to do track in school — I’ve been running my whole life — and I’ve noticed shoes are best when they’re lightweight.” She owns the sneakers in both black and white; she likes the black ones in particular because they don’t show as much dirt and grime, since when you hike in L.A. “your shoes get covered in dust and they get disgusting.”
… and specialty shoes for scaling mountainsides
Strategist writer Jeremy Rellosa has been “climbing for a decade and [has] tested [his] fair share of beginner gear, both outdoors and in climbing gyms.” For those interested in getting into the sport, he recommends buying these Tarantulace climbing shoes from La Sportiva, which were his first pair of climbing shoes. “They held up for about a year of continuous climbing outside and in gyms before I formed a hole through the rubber and had to retire them,” Rellosa writes. Since it has “a flat, supportive, accommodating shape” that’s not too soft, it’s perfect for easing “your feet into the demands of flexing and curling your foot muscles.”
An all-natural spray cleaner that really works
Strategist contributor Caroline Mullen has “tested plenty of popular natural-cleaning sprays, and some just do not work” — they end up “smear[ing] grime around and leav[ing] a hazy film.” But she swears that this multipurpose cleaner from Humble Suds “is just as adept at cutting grease and removing crust as any other leading multipurpose spray with harsher ingredients.” It’s made without vinegar, so it’s safe for use on porous surfaces, and it has a pleasant, calming tea-tree-and-lavender scent that “takes the edge off a frantic cleaning spree or a particularly splatter-y after-dinner cleanup,” Mullen promises. Though it is admittedly more of a splurge than Mrs. Meyer’s or Method, it does come “in a reusable glass bottle, is made from highly pronounceable ingredients, smells like a Muji store, and works exceedingly well.”
An orange aficionado’s favorite spice
We spoke to Alison Carroll, co-founder of lifestyle brand Wonder Valley, about her all-consuming orange obsession. “I have so many friends who will send me any orange stuff,” she says. “Like, ‘I saw these orange gardening clogs and thought of you,’ or ‘I found this vintage orange mushroom lamp, and I had to get it for you.’” Some of the orange items that can be found in her Maine home include a tangerine-tinted Smeg refrigerator, a flame-colored Dutch oven, and a honey-hued stand mixer. She’s also a huge fan of using turmeric in her cooking; when she lived in the desert, she was “making a lot of golden milk or mixing it in milky teas and smoothies.” Nowadays, she puts it in dishes like “sautéed greens with garlic and plantains” or a batch of rice “with a heavy pinch of turmeric and butter, and maybe I’ll poke a bay leaf in the mix.”
The key to Tomás Matos’s mindfulness routine
Actor Tomás Matos can’t live without this joyful journal, which he uses to meditate and reflect in the morning. “I like having blank pages, because I tend to freeform-write to get all my thoughts out,” he says. “I manifest the life and career and energy I want to receive in the world.” He also uses journaling as an outlet to release “the stressors and thoughts that run amok in my everyday life. It’s one of my favorite and most beneficial forms of self-care.” He’s kept all the journals he’s written in over the years, with some dating all the way back to his high-school days.
A chair that makes a starring appearance
While watching Westworld, Strategist’s resident chair expert, Erin Schwartz, couldn’t help but notice all the high-design seating being used as set dressing. They identified ten different chairs by “scrubbing through episodes for a better shot of a leg or seat, then cross-referencing those images against product pages and endless Archiproducts tabs.” These affordable injection-molded plastic chairs from Blu Dot, which the brand describes as “simple, straightforward, and also timeless,” got a lot of screen time in the show’s most recent episode — seen in “a holding facility for hundreds of robot facsimiles that keep trying in vain to escape,” Schwartz writes. The black version also makes an appearance earlier in the season “around the dining table in Evan Rachel Wood’s generically tasteful apartment.”
Skewers for throwing a yakitori party
Los Angeles–based photographer Dylan James Ho went from eating yakitori in Japan to grilling it himself at home to starting a professional pop-up centered on the technique. For our latest installment of Steal My Party, he recounted everything he bought to host a yakitori party at home. You’ll need a shichirin — a small charcoal grill — as well as a variety of meat and produce; Ho always does “a mix of chicken parts,” including thighs, wings, and tenders, as well as veggies such as “shiitake mushrooms, zucchini and eggplant, okra, snap peas, corn, and little yellow or purple potatoes.” Then the ingredients are prepped and speared onto wooden bamboo skewers for grilling: “You can technically use any wooden skewer, but I like the flatter, wider ones because there’s no chance they’ll roll or rotate on their own on the grill,” Ho told us.
The secret to a stress-free beach day
Strategist contributor Margaret Eby has always found the process of packing and prepping for a beach trip overwhelming: “When you think about the process of schlepping towels, sunscreen, a change of clothes, snacks, an umbrella, and a cooler full of drinks there … It’s enough of an ordeal to prevent me from going more than a couple times a year,” she writes. But early last summer, she discovered this combination utility cart and beach chair, and since then she’s “never gone to the beach without it.” Because it has “oversize wheels on one end,” it lets you “navigate the long stretch of sand you need to trek across to get to [your] favorite spot”; then once you’ve arrived, you simply “detach the mesh walls, flip the bottom down to make a footrest, and adjust the trolley into a chaise.”
The Strategist is designed to surface the most useful, expert recommendations for things to buy across the vast e-commerce landscape. Some of our latest conquests include the best acne treatments, rolling luggage, pillows for side sleepers, natural anxiety remedies, and bath towels. We update links when possible, but note that deals can expire and all prices are subject to change.
