We imagine people visit our site from all over the world—our retail store’s visitors certainly are international—so we do our best to be inclusive, especially when discussing items that have seasonal uses. Yes, we know it's quirky. Anyway, seasons are always changing, and here are some items we’ve added recently that work well year-round, even if your season’s a tad different from our own.

Sigg™ Metro Mug
When the days start getting shorter and cooler, when hot tea is preferred to lemonade, it’s time for the Metro Mug’s winter tour of duty. Its vacuum-insulation is perfect for keeping a hot beverage of choice precisely that, hot, for up to six hours. Available in two sizes—250ml (8.5 fl. oz.) and 380ml (13 fl. oz.), one is compact enough for any bag, the other is large enough for both the commute and lunch. It is made from stainless steel, and has a leak-proof lid. Also, there’s a not-so-secret secret you should know: the Metro Mug is just as adept at keeping liquids cold, so feel free to use it year-round, and not just when leaves change color and the wind re-acquires its foreboding chill.

Silicone Brush
Another item that plays just as well during the winter as summer is the silicone brush. In the summer, you can find it at the grill, brushing barbecue sauces and marinades onto veggies, burgers, and other fare. In the winter, it’s comfortable in the kitchen, basting turkeys and brushing pastries to its hearts content. The red silicone bristles don’t absorb flavor between uses and are heat-safe to over 500° (as hot as an oven can get).

50-year Calendar
With all this talk of the seasons, we would be remiss to not note our 50-year Calendar. Whether planning for a birthday, anniversary, or Cinco de Mayo, this calendar has all the answers to your calendrical questions. Really, it does. New Year’s, 2014? Spin the wheel…a Wednesday. The Ides of March in 2046…a Thursday. Easy, no?

We’ll readily admit that few plan quite that far in advance, but it’s good to look the part of a well-prepared planner, or gift one to the planner in your life. Also, with its weighty heft and foam base, it’s the perfect paperweight for your well-ordered desk.

Thanks for your attention during this seasonal diversion; it means a lot to us.

We love all items in our collection equally. Really, we do.

They all get shelf space in our retail store, but, for one reason or another, not all of them are on our website. Some we’re not sure will become permanent fixtures in our shop. Others are too difficult to ship safely and efficiently. Others don't translate well to an electronic medium—they need to be touched and examined in-person to appreciate and understand.

Luckily, some items are simply waiting their turn for online exhibition. Four items that made the leap from shelf-space to web-space in the past week deserve a little extra attention for being so patient.

Thumb Thing
If you’ve ever felt strain from holding a book open with one hand, wanted to free a hand for taking notes, or felt that not being able to comfortably hold a Shirley Temple in one hand and a book in the other is downright uncivilized, then the Thumb Thing is probably what you’ve been missing. Slip your thumb in the ring and place it in the gutter of the book; the wings effortlessly hold the book open. Great for students, vacationers, and readers of all ages.

Espresso Cup
Espresso is equal parts art and science, and this cup is well-versed in both subjects. Its elegant form and construction are museum-worthy, and its double-walled stainless-steel body respects the thermodynamics that are crucial to excellent espresso. It’s lightweight and durable, too, making it an ideal and sophisticated companion to our stovetop espresso pot and stainless-steel bowl when camping.

Botts’ Dot
"What’s a Botts’ Dot?" is a question we often get in our Cambridge, Massachusetts, store. If you’re from less-snowy parts of the USA, you may already know the answer. In short, they’re ceramic tiles, used to demarcate lane divisions on highways. They were developed in the 1950’s by a California Department of Transportation engineering team, led by Dr. Elbert Botts, who now has the privilege of having over 25 million of namesakes dotting highways throughout California. Ours may be used as paperweights, conversation starters, or imposing order on an unruly driveway. Epoxy not included.

Manhole Covers
No, we don't stock and ship honest-to-goodness manhole covers; Botts’ Dots are as far as we will infringe on the Department of Transporation’s turf. This is a book full of beautiful photographs of all sorts of covers— unidentified, undated covers, vents, grates, and contemporary covers—from all over the USA. Photographs in the book are by Robert A. Melnick, who devoted the last decade of his life to documenting these least-noticed urban objets d’art.

A technical note to conclude: we now have syndicated (aka XML, RSS, and ATOM) feeds for our exhibits and products. You can follow them using Safari, Firefox, Google Reader, or your preferred RSS application.

That’s what we've been up to in the online division of the Museum of Useful Things. We do hope you are well, and please come back soon.

Classic design and innovation have not left the world. Thank goodness.

It is sometimes difficult to find currently-manufactured objects analogous in quality and design to items in our vintage collection. Designers and manufacturers are apt to cut corners on the way from a product's inception to its arrival in shops, and who can blame them? Economics and scale dictate that cheaper is better. If using lower-quality materials or less-precise processes shaves a few pennies off the cost of production, it's difficult to argue against management's desire to maximize profit and the competitive edge of cheap.

Inexpensive need not be cheap, however, and well-designed need not be costly. We've recently added several products that fit our intersecting requirements of function and good design. Here are four of our favorites:

Book Darts
Compact, elegant, Book Darts mark the exact line on the page where you stopped reading. Post-It™ Notes leave a corrosive residue, and dog-earing creases the corner; these pagemarkers are made of non-staining phosphor bronze that securely grip but will not damage the page.

Camping Tool
This camping tool has 8 functions: can opener, bottle opener, knife, fork, spoon, holepunch, keychain, and corkscrew. If you open the can opener and the fork, the halves separate, and naturally, the knife and spoon are paired. Enjoying spaghetti or steak around the campfire was never this easy.

Ergonomic Ballpoint Pen
The Yoropen was designed by Mr. Bao-Shen Liu of Taiwan in response to problems caused by traditional straight-barrel pens. These include:

• strained hands, due to lack of barrel support
• poor posture, from leaning to see what is being written
• difficulty seeing, from a tendency to grip the pen too low
• left-handers smudge, and have a more difficult time seeing what they've written

Sigg™ Traveler
The 0.6L Sigg Traveler is often compared to World War II-era fuel canisters, but its design and use by the Swiss army as a water bottle dates from the 1940's, too. Functional and elegant, they're extruded from a single piece of aluminum, allowing for a seamless exterior. The interior of the bottle has a water-based coating that is taste-neutral and hygienic, keeping your water or other beverage pure. The traveler has a ring top, for use with carabiners and other hooks, allowing easy transportation and access during hiking trips and outings around town.

These, and several other items including a Stovetop Espresso Pot, Stainless Steel Sponge Caddy, Disposable Fountain Pen, and the Rub Away, have recently joined the many other items available in our store. We invite you to explore them all, taking reassurance from the fact that there are manufacturers and designers still making high-quality products that are both aesthetically-pleasing and practical.

Let's forget for the moment the unfortunate reputation cast upon wire hangers by Ms. Crawford, and examine some of the beautiful shapes and forms included in the over five hundred U.S. Patented hanger designs.

Steel wire has been used to shape our hanging garments, sometimes combined with wood, fabric, or sheet metal, for better or for worse, the functions changing with the requirements of the era's clothing styles.

Victorian women's skirts and bustles received great care by hanger inventors and manufacturers, with adjustable hangers often using spring systems to hold the waistbands and allow the skirts to retain pleats and folds. These hangers often took the shape of flying birds and are referred to as eagle wing hangers.

Moving further into the twentieth century, wire manufacturers were producing hundreds of styles of hangers meant to shape and contour. Spring coiled wire gave dimension to some, while extra hooks allowed belts and other accoutrements to hang from others. Travel hangers collapsed, folded, and telescoped with ease.

Not to be outdone, tailors and clothing merchants advertised their businesses on specialty hangers, while gasoline companies gave away coat and hat hooks meant to hang over your automobile window.

With so many wonderful designs and ideas, what happened to bring about the use of today's inexorable wire hangers? And the unavoidable mass-produced plastic version?

What have supermarkets long known that department stores are now accepting? Shopping carts and baskets can increase consumer purchasing. The big box stores know; they know the convenience of loading the unruly child in the cart will free up the parent to make more purchases, and having the ability to carry more, further, encourages customers to cross shop departments.

A more leisurely pace will keep the shopper in the store longer, which, studies show, will increase their spending.

Sylvan Goldman, owner of Standard Food Markets, in Oklahoma City watched his customers fill their hand baskets, then head for the cash register, so in 1937 he sought a way to make (more) groceries easier to carry. Inspired by a folding chair, he used it for his prototype, adding a basket and wheels. Although not an immediate success with his clientele, he persevered, eventually hiring models to push his "folding basket carrier" through the store to get the cart rolling. He later founded the Folding Carrier Company to market his invention.

His company is still in the cart business, now known as Unarco, manufacturer of industry standard shopping carts. We cannot imagine now a supermarket without this utilitarian steel wire cart bumping down the aisles, an urban landscape without the street person's home on wheels, or a mall parking lot with no car-denting wheeled obstacles.

Before the big mass merchants, in the heyday of Woolworth's, Ben Franklin, and Kresges we used the Fold-Away Shopping Basket (made in the U.S.A. of course, in Madison, Indiana).

The familiar colorful awning-like stripes on canvas will always be associated with the five and tens. The wood handle clutched, we opened them with a snap of the wrist, filled them with our sundries and later deposited them flat again to their wire stand.

Perhaps we used one of the colorful fabric-covered, wire-armature baskets manufactured by the Handy Folding Pail Company of New York.

These lightweight baskets with the fabric handles slung comfortably over the arm. They were manufactured in many types of vinyl and fabric, with particular patterns associated with each chain of stores.

During the 1940's and 1950's, the Kaspar Company of Texas manufactured a tiered steel cart, which held two wire hand baskets. A precursor to the modern cart, heavy items could be stowed below while smaller perishables went on top. The baskets were easily lifted to a counter or cash register, and the frames folded for storage.

This design makes so much sense that there is a newly manufactured cart that can similarly accommodate two of the ubiquitous plastic convenience store hand baskets.

As new designs are making their way into the marketplace, retailers are taking a fresh look at the shopping cart. Perhaps obsolescence has not caught up with Sylvan Goldman's invention. What is in store for the humble cart? Will we continue pushing the real thing, or just the virtual icon?

Before the time of vandalism, personal injury lawsuits, and cheap plastics, clean public washrooms supplied soap in many novel ways.

Soap dispensers in schools, trains, ships, or gasoline stations often consisted of glass, steel or aluminum. These were not hidden beneath the counter under lock and key; they were often fanciful yet functional glass globes, or enameled metal cylinders that spun or cranked soap out to your waiting palm.

Many advertised their popular soap brand: Boraxo or Ivory or White King. Simple instructions might be emblazoned on the dispenser, "wet hands first," or "rub thoroughly and rinse."

Glass globe dispensers were tipped toward the palm until the soap dripped out, when released, the weighted glass would then return to an upright position.

The Soapitor Company of New York found a novel way to dispense the shavings from a solid bar of soap, by turning a crank an internal blade would shave off bits of a soap bar.

These once commonplace inventions are seldom seen today in our "sanitized" and protected environments, but the patent records are full of wonderful styles, shapes, and varieties of these clean ideas.

Mousetraps: the cliches abound. What does make a mousetrap better? Efficiency, human safety, and the elimination of the problem? But is there a way to eliminate the problem without killing the mouse?

Those experiencing a vermin problem in their home can attest that it is a distasteful situation. Even the presence of a house cat does not always solve the problem, and can actually lead to a messier result.

Patent records show hundreds of plans and designs to solve this age old conflict, but the majority of these resolutions are traps designed to kill the mouse, whether on the spot, or later, elsewhere.

Our exhibit concentrates on a different approach, a more humane one, and often a better one.

These traps are designed to trap, then allow the mouse to be released elsewhere. All rely on a bit of bait; peanut butter is often recommended.

The Hold-Em wire trap has been around for decades, since before the last turn of the century. A large size was manufactured for rats and a smaller for mice. These traps are now often found at flea markets and swap meets. The smaller version for mice is less prevalent, but works on the same principle.

They are a work of beauty, sculptural (now rusted) wire formed in a circular manner with the recessed trap door entrance at one end, and a circular door at the other, allowing for release.

These traps enjoyed a long period of popularity, seen in houseware catalogs up through the 1960's. One is even pictured in the Walt Disney movie Cinderella from 1950. If you can locate one, they make a very effective trap for home use.

A completely different design was literally dreamed up by William Oviat. He envisioned a tubular trap that would tild with the weight of the mouse, entrapping it by use of a ping pong ball. It is an unusual and effective product, and since it can be used in a humane way, it is a better mouse trap.

What do to do with those inexpensive potentially finger snapping models? How about a mousetrap powered car? A bit of ingenuity and effort will result in a spring-powered car that both kids and adults love to race. See here for ideas.