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Cleaning

Mill Food Recycler

We’ve all had the “what’s that smell?” moment wafting from a kitchen trash can, followed by the pinched nose as you gingerly remove some viscerally upsetting, soggy garbage bag from your life. Well, guess what? You don’t have to do that anymore.

The Mill Food Recycler made my life better from day one. Essentially a trash-can-sized food-waste dehydrator and grinder, it turns almost any solid food into a loamy mix that looks like soil and smells faintly sweet and earthy. In an overnight cycle, it heats and grinds discarded organics to reduce their volume by about 80%, so it takes forever to fill. (Seven weeks in and I still haven’t emptied mine!) No more countertop composters hogging space, and no more frozen bags of scraps taking up precious ice cream real estate.

It’s not cheap, and it’s not small, but the Mill does something nothing else has: It makes dealing with food waste feel…kind of enjoyable. And once you’ve lived with it, it’s hard to imagine a busy cooking life without it. —O.T.

Naomi After-Cooking Hand Scrub

Naomi After-Cooking Hand Scrub

It’s pretty hard for something as basic as hand soap to catch my attention, but Naomi’s Bergamot and Black Pepper After-Cooking Hand Scrub isn’t just another hand soap. It’s a practical, functional product for cooks that also gives high-end-hotel vibes. If you like nice things, or if you’d rather not have garlic and onion lingering on your skin after meal prep, this blue-labeled bottle deserves a spot at your kitchen sink.

While most scented soaps do a mediocre job of masking food smells with harsh, cheap fragrances, Naomi’s scrub neutralizes offending odors with bread-yeast enzymes, then leaves behind subtle, but incredibly luxurious notes of bergamot, black pepper, sandalwood, and ginger. The aroma alone is reason enough to try it—especially if you’re already splurging on more expensive suds from brands like Aesop or Le Labo—but the way it makes your hands feel will have you hooked. Skincare benefits come from smooth, small beads of volcanic rock that gently exfoliate, as well as biodegradable jojoba seed wax that hydrates (draws water to the skin) and moisturizes (locks it in). Even better? It’s developed and made by cooks in Los Angeles. If fancy smells aren’t your thing, there’s also a fragrance-free version. —Emily Farris, senior commerce writer