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Easiest wifi login
The easiest way I found to share our wifi with visitors to my office or our home is with a large QR code printed on heavy paper, and posted wherever. Visitors aim their phone at the glyph and are then logged in. Easy-peasy. You can generate the Wifi QR code at this free website: Pure JS Wifi Code Generator. SSID is the name of your wifi, and “key” is the password. — KK

Tiny bright flashlight
The inexpensive Streamlight LED flashlight is so tiny you have to see it to believe it. But it’s much brighter than my smartphone flashlight so I keep it with me in my pocket. It uses 4 button cell batteries (included). — MF

Dry clean your clothes at home
Handheld steamers are pretty inexpensive now, and I’ve had mine for almost two years. I never use our old iron. Steaming kills bacteria and removes odors so I’m washing my clothes a lot less. Here is a great how-to article on dry-cleaning your clothes at home. “It’s a lot less complicated than it sounds—you only need homemade spray, a clothing brush or a steamer, and you’re ready to DIY dry clean.” — CD

Disaster planning for less crazy folk
“Most of us don’t plan ahead for losing a job, for dealing with a week-long water outage, or for surviving the night if our home goes up in smoke,” writes the author of this 30,000 word guide for surviving life-altering events. Unlike doomsday prepper manuals, this one offers common sense advice for dealing with uncommon circumstances. — MF

Workbench paper cover
I’ve become a convert to the well-worn workshop practice of covering your worktop with a wide sheet of heavy kraft paper torn from a roll. Especially useful if you are using a multi-use table. Paper on top, I am less concerned with spills, paint, markers. I can jot notes, dimensions, diagrams right onto the sheet. Tiny things don’t disappear into cracks. When done, the paper is ripped up, recycled. There is no feeling like starting a new project with a pristine new cover sheet. 200-foot rolls of kraft paper come in widths of 30 or 36 inches for $20. (I made a short video describing how I made a kraft paper roll dispenser for my studio.) — KK

Multi-purpose kitchen mat
It’s soup season and I got tired of having to wait for my bowl to cool down in the microwave, or worse, the inevitable disaster that happens when I try to take it out with a kitchen towel or too quickly without one. These Safe Grabs are a successfully pitched Shark Tank product and they work as a trivet or a splatter guard. They are heat resistant, so you can just store them in the microwave and use it when you need to pull out a hot bowl or plate. — CD

-- Kevin Kelly, Mark Frauenfelder, Claudia Dawson 11/1/20