5 Products That Made My Everyday Life Easier This Year

Not to mention tastier, healthier and more comfortable, too

You can’t buy happiness, but you can buy stuff to make your life better — even during a pandemic. Here are five products that did just that for me this year.

Important note: there are no affiliate links in this article, and I have no relationship to any of these companies.

1. Hand Chemistry Hand Moisturizer ($7-$39)

The Chemistry Brand is part of The Abnormal Beauty Company, known for its low prices, no-nonsense packaging and effective products. My hands can normally get pretty dry, especially in the winter. And because of all the hand-washing during the pandemic, they’ve become not only dry, but rough and chapped, too.

Most moisturizers are greasy, ineffective or obscenely expensive. At $7 for a small bottle ($39 for the largest bottle), Hand Chemistry is not only reasonably-priced, it is super effective, too. The pictures on the website sold me (there’s a before and after shot of a hand that has clearly become smoother, softer and firmer with the product). I can attest to similar results.

I love this stuff. A little goes a long way, and I use it on my feet to smooth my cracked heels. It has become my holy grail moisturizer.

2. Spangvola Gourmet Hot Chocolate ($26)

I know what you’re thinking: Another overpriced hot chocolate? How good can it be?

This is the Bobby Fisher of hot chocolate. The Mariah Carey of hot chocolate. The Cy Young of hot chocolate. It’s simply the best of its kind.

Owned by husband and wife team, Eric and Crisoire Reid (Crisoire is a Master Chocolatier), Spangvola was named one of the 10 best chocolate shops in the world by National Geographic.

That’s probably because the Reids own and manage every step of the chocolate-making process, from growing the cacao beans on the couple’s farm in the Dominican Republic to roasting them and making the chocolate in the Spangvola factory in Maryland.

You can taste their attention to detail in every sip of the hot chocolate. Let me be clear: This is truly hot chocolate. Not hot cocoa. Not shaved chocolate. And not a heavy drinking chocolate. It’s just pure, homemade hot chocolate made with nothing but chocolate, sugar and spices.

There is a wonderful deep chocolate flavor, to be sure. But it is the way the spices play off the chocolate that makes this drink so interesting and complex. You’ll taste just a whisper of cinnamon — not overly sweet or intrusive, just in the background — that really elevates this drink.

No marshmallows or peppermint sticks needed.

3. Sleep on Green Pure Green Mattress ($595-$1,395)

I wrote about my struggle with back pain and how Egoscue (exercises that help alignment) solved the problem for me. But before I discovered Egoscue, I experimented with a wide variety of remedies that promised to help, including an expensive office chair and a new mattress.

The jury is still out on whether the chair was worth it (it’s fine, but I’m not sure it’s worth the $800 price tag). But the Sleep on Latex mattress changed my life forever.

It cannot be emphasized enough: I was in enormous pain when I bought this mattress. I wanted a solution that would take away the pain. Put simply, it had to work.

I chose this mattress because it is made of organic latex, cotton and wool, which means it’s not only comfortable (temperature-wise as well as support-wise), it’s eco-friendly. The Pure Green mattress was also recommended by Consumer Reports, and it has free returns for 100 days (you don’t have to pay to ship it back), as well as a 10-year warranty.

There are two versions of this mattress; I chose the medium firmness, which, apparently, is the most popular.

Also, you will need a platform bed. This mattress doesn’t work on a box spring.

One word of caution: This is NOT an easy mattress to move. It’s like dead weight. You really need someone (better yet, two strong people) to move this thing.

4. Zip-it Drain Cleaning Tool ($9.95)

Cleaning hair out of your bathroom drain isn’t fun or sexy. But it is necessary. I had a nasty clog in my bathroom sink. It was nearly completely stopped up, and no amount of liquid drain cleaner worked. But I didn’t want to spend $50 an hour for a plumber to fix it. A quick search yielded a video, which showed the genius of this $10 plastic tool.

That’s right — it costs about $10 for a pack of two long, plastic comb-like Zip-it tools. The teeth on the Zip-it are sharp, and the body is flexible, so you can shove the tool all the way down your drain and pull up the hair that’s clogging it.

A few words of warning: You might want to use rubber gloves and have a trash bag handy when you use the Zip-it. I pulled up gobs of hair in seconds. Most of the hair was wet and clung to the tool, and it was mixed with some kind of nastiness that I couldn’t name (molded soap?), which gave off a terrible odor. Fortunately, this is a disposable tool. I just tossed it in the trash when I was finished.

My sink went from fully clogged to fully functional in five minutes.

5. Aurora AU820MA Paper Shredder ($54)

I know, I know. Can a paper shredder really make your life better? Yes, my friend, it can.

Now I’m no Marie Kondo, but I do find a decluttered house has a calming effect on me. There’s something about being able to walk a clear path from room to room without seeing piles of clothes or paper that makes me feel serene.

So I got on a decluttering kick for a few months. I tackled the pantry, the freezer and all the closets. Then once I finished bagging up the last of the clothes that didn’t spark joy, I decided to confront my office.

Piles of paper littered the desk, and my folders were not only bulging, but many of them contained statements and receipts from companies I no longer worked with. I couldn’t just toss it all in the trash, though. So I invested in a shredder.

This one works great. It’ll take eight sheets at once, shut off automatically if it gets clogged, and it even shreds credit cards. Honestly, I figured I’d only use it the one time I first cleaned my office, but it turns out I use it all the time — to shred bills, receipts, insurance company statements, bank documents, really anything with personal information on it.

Every time I hear the sound of shredding, I feel a little cleaner and calmer.

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