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Thingamabobs and whatchamacallits
Life would be so much easier if only you had one of these doohickeys
BY JULIE SURATT

What do a muddler, a crumber, and a pie bird have in common? Absolutely nothing except the fact that they’re handy kitchen gadgets — for crushing orange slices and maraschino cherries to put in old-fashioneds, wiping crumbs off a table, and preventing pie filling from bubbling over crust, respectively. But you’d have no idea you needed them unless you stumbled upon them in a kitchen store. How many other doohickeys are out there that could enrich our lives — if only we knew about them?

At Restoration Hardware, you’ll find a telescoping fork ($4.50) that lengthens to a foot and a half — just long enough to spear a French fry delicately off your fellow diner’s plate without his being aware of it. At Gadgets, in Jamaica Plain, we discovered a wine-bottle foil cutter ($5.95). Just slip the lip-shaped device over the top of the bottle and squeeze. The foil pulls off easily, preventing nasty cuts and broken nails. If you’re hosting a wine tasting, Gadgets has Extra Hand glass holders ($7) that clip on to your hors d’oeuvres plates, solving the dilemma of how to hold your wine glass and eat at the same time. A more sobering discovery, Boil Alert ($2.50) is a plastic disk resembling a hockey puck that you drop into your tea kettle. When the water gets hot enough, it’ll rattle — a convenient reminder that you’ve left the stove on. You can be sure to get the most from your tea bag with a tea-bag squeezer ($2). It sure beats scalded fingertips and tea splattered on your shirt.

Speaking of tea stains, no household should be without Motsenbocker’s Lift Off ($6.99) from Economy Hardware. The package includes samples of three cleansers, each of which deals with a different type of stain: Formula One for coffee, tea, blood, and wine; Formula Two for lipstick, wax, and salad dressing; and Formula Three for ink and nail polish. We’re not sure how we ever survived without it.

Moving out of the kitchen and on to your bookshelf, we found the Personal Library Kit ($24) at Anthropologie. "There’s no greater pleasure than sharing beloved books," reads the kit, "but there’s no crueler pain than losing them for good." Slap a self-adhesive pocket onto the inside cover of your weathered copy of Valley of the Dolls and stamp an insert card with the date before lending it to a friend. (Just ignore her insulted look.)

Outside the home, you should never be without an illuminating windproof umbrella ($25) from Restoration Hardware. The handle has an LED flashlight built in. Why didn’t anyone think of this before? And last but not least, toss Urban OutfittersSurvival Kit in a Can ($12) into the trunk of your car. The size of a sardine tin, it contains 38 items "that can provide warmth, shelter, and energy in life-threatening situations from desert to arctic." Among those items: one pencil, two fishhooks, a signal mirror, one piece of chewing gum, and two nails. Now where’s MacGyver when you need him?

Where to find it:

• Anthropologie, 799 Boylston Street, Boston, (617) 262-0545; 300 Boylston Street, Chestnut Hill, (617) 559-9995; www.anthropologie.com

• Economy Hardware, 219 Mass Ave, Boston, (617) 536-4280.

• Gadgets, 763 Centre Street, Jamaica Plain, (617) 524-6800.

• Restoration Hardware, 711 Boylston Street, Boston (617) 578-0088; 300 Boylston Street, Chestnut Hill, (617) 641-6770; www.restorationhardware.com

• Urban Outfitters, 361 Newbury Street, Boston (617) 236-0088; 11 JFK Street, Cambridge, (617) 864-0070; www.urbanoutfitters.com


Issue Date: April 23 - 29, 2004
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