After a September that seemed to miss the memo about changing seasons, October made up for it with serial storms and nights that drew in faster than you could say “fall back”. Time to hunker down and, whisper it, even put the heating on – or at least fire up an electric heater if you’re still holding out on the radiators. But while you were drawn to the indoor pleasures of heaters, hot casseroles and hotter coffee, you’ve also had your eye on party season, or at least been thinking about venturing into those corners of your wardrobe that haven’t seen daylight since March.
From a clothes steamer to breathe new life into your threads, a pencil skirt and sheer silk shirt to update your wardrobe, to a vitamin C serum to keep your skin glowing all winter, these were your favourite things in October. Five minutes later, on the highest setting, his “jumper was well and truly off”. Better yet, with a power rating of up to 2kW, you’d expect it to make a right racket – and it doesn’t.
At a maximum of 46dB, Pete said it’s “far quieter than any other fan heater I tested”. Sophie Wyburd painted an irresistible picture in her roundup of the best casserole dishes: “Tinkering over a pot in the kitchen, glass of wine in hand … while the scent of beef shin ragu wafts through the house.” Yep, that’s me sold. At about a fifth of the price of the winning Le Creuset, Habitat’s chic oven-safe pot provides “brilliant heat retention at an excellent price”.
It comes in autumnal orange, too (£47.50). Dreamfarm Garject garlic press with peel ejector Where there’s a casserole, there’s got to be garlic. Reader Stuart Hatcher recommended three things in Lucy Pavia’s rundown of 15 everyday items that make your life a teeny bit better, and all three made it into your top 20 products of October.
Your favourite was this garlic press that ended Stuart’s “time-consuming chopping”. (The other two, in case you’re wondering, are a pair of wrist wraps for weightlifting and a portable air pump that can blow up an air bed “effortlessly”.) “It makes espresso. It produces hot water on demand,” wrote Sasha Muller in his five-star De’Longhi Magnifica Start review. Free yourself from the iron with this lightweight handheld steamer from Philips – Zoë Phillimore’s top budget pick in our guide to the best clothes steamers.
It’s not powerful enough to blast through a whole pile of creased laundry, and Zoë found it “a bit spitty” to use on silk, but it made short work of her cotton items and linen trousers. Go to work on an egg, or half a dozen of them, with this brilliantly affordable egg cooker that can quickly boil up to six eggs or poach two at a time. Reader Amanda Nieurzyla-John chose hers as her everyday item that makes your life better, writing that it “takes the guesswork out of cooking while you concentrate on the rest of the meal.
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