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Essential Tools To Stay Organized While Caring for Aging Parents

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Listen and follow The Wirecutter Show Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music | YouTube | iHeartRadio Caregiving can be one of the most meaningful roles you’ll ever take on—but it can also be overwhelming. Between managing appointments, medications, paperwork, and communication with family members or professional aides, there’s a lot to keep track of. In this episode, senior tech writer Rachel Cericola joins us to talk about the tools and systems that can help caregivers stay organized. From shared calendars to smart pill dispensers and even digital fax services, these gadgets and apps can lighten the mental load—whether you’re caring for an aging parent, a spouse in person or coordinating from afar. While this conversation focuses on supporting older adults aging in place, many of these tools can be helpful for anyone managing a busy household. This episode covers Why organization is critical for caregivers: Managing medications, appointments, meals, hydration, and commu...
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The Best Meat Thermometers

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A pallid gray porterhouse. A flabby pink turkey. Pulled pork with a jerky-like texture. These are just a few things we don’t want emerging from our grills, ovens, or smokers. Why, then, do so many of us play guessing games when it comes to meat doneness? I’ve been there, fretting at the thought of accidentally serving my friends and family under- or overcooked meat. Yet it turns out the solution is easy: Get a great thermometer. This is one of the few tools that can instantly increase a cook’s confidence in the kitchen. After testing 50 digital meat thermometers, we singled out the best models for various cooking scenarios. If you want a speedy, full-featured, reasonably priced instant-read thermometer, we recommend the Lavatools Javelin Pro Duo and the ThermoWorks Sizzle as solid, all-purpose picks. If you need something compact, waterproof, and super-portable, for camping or a beach-house barbecue, consider the ThermoWorks ThermoPop 2 . And if you want to invest a little more ...
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The Best Extension Cords for Your Home and Garage

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If you’ve always just bought whichever extension cord happens to be sitting on the shelf at your local hardware store, you’re missing out on cords that are safer, more durable, and more flexible in cold weather. After spending more than 45 hours researching over 65 different extension cords, talking with two safety experts, and testing 12 of the most promising for flexibility—some even in zero-degree temps—we recommend the U.S. Wire & Cable 50 FT. Extreme All-Weather Extension Cord . Top pick The best extension cord U.S. Wire & Cable 50 FT. Extreme All-Weather Extension Cord With a solid power rating and durable construction, this cord can safely handle any job around a home or garage. Plus, it’s the most flexible cord we’ve tested, even in freezing temps. $75 from Amazon $78 from Walmart $65 from The Home Depot The U.S. Wire & Cable 50 FT. Extreme All-Weather Extension Cord offers an excellent combination of functionality and usability. The...
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My Doctor Recommended Crocs. So I Tested and Ranked Them.

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Late in my 21st year of running, I began to feel a pain in my right foot. This wasn’t the normal, low, rumbling ache I’d trained myself to push through over the last two decades, but the kind of deep, agonizing pressure that all runners dread, foreshadowing catastrophe. Something in my body was seriously wrong. I hoped it was a simple case of plantar fasciitis — a fairly common strain in the band of tissue running the length of the foot. But an MRI revealed that I had a long list of tendinopathies, partial tendon tears, poorly healed torn ligaments, a bone marrow edema, bursitis, and, finally, plantar fasciitis. Trust me, you never want to see the word “delamination” in a medical report. Along with an intensive course of PT, orthoses, lifestyle changes, and pain management, my podiatrist added another, perhaps more unusual item to my injury-recovery checklist: Crocs. Yes, Crocs. According to my doctor, rather than plodding around barefoot across the hardwood floors of my apartment...
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How We Chose the Winners of Our 2026 Best New Picks Awards

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At Wirecutter, our goal is simple: to recommend what really matters. You can find the results of our rigorous research and testing in each one of our 1,300 (and counting) guides covering everything from action cameras to yoga mats, each of which we regularly review and update for accuracy and helpfulness. Publishing and updating a Wirecutter guide is a thorough and monthslong — sometimes yearslong — process. At the core of this process is rigorous and completely independent testing by our journalists and other testers, who evaluate products according to carefully considered criteria. Only after our testing and reporting is complete, and sometimes hard decisions are made, does a product show up on our site. Our inaugural Best New Picks Awards are the culmination of this journey. To arrive at the 71 winners of our 2026 Best New Picks Awards, our newsroom of more than 170 journalists first evaluated more than 10,000 products over the past year across all of Wirecutter’s review cate...
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The Best iPhone Case for iPhone 17, 17 Plus, 17 Pro, 17 Pro Max, and iPhone Air

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If you’re spending a lot of money on a new iPhone 17 or iPhone Air, you need to protect it if you want to use it as long as you can. The iPhone 17 lineup is made with Apple’s next-generation Ceramic Shield 2, the latest version of its proprietary glass, which the company claims has three times better scratch resistance than the previous version. The iPhone 17 Pro, the iPhone 17 Pro Max, and the iPhone Air are slightly more durable than the base model, with an additional Ceramic Shield coating on the back to help protect against cracks. But while newer iPhones are more crack-resistant, a drop can still do some damage, so we still recommend covering your phone with a case to help keep it in pristine condition. We tested more than 65 options to find the best ones, whether you want a simple case that balances protection with cost, a clear case to show off your expensive phone, a bumper for protecting your iPhone Air, or a more rugged case to protect your device from dents, nicks, and di...
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The Best Retinol Products

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So many skin-care products promise miracles, but retinoids are among the few with the science to back them up. At prescription strengths, these vitamin A derivatives, like tretinoin, have been shown to speed up skin’s cellular turnover, boost collagen, and minimize the appearance of pores and the production of oils. Milder over-the-counter versions, such as retinol, retinaldehyde, and retinyl palmitate, deliver similar benefits. To find the best ones, 14 testers spent months treating their faces, necks, décolletages, and backs of hands with 35 different products. And all of the brand names were concealed, in order to prevent price bias. So panelists had no idea whether they were using a product that cost $10 or $100. In the end we arrived at seven standouts for a range of budgets and skin types, including a serum with adjustable potency , a moisturizing multitasker , an adapalene gel , and a bargain option . Whichever one is right for you, be sure to start slowly (applying the pro...
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