Life Improvers Under $50: 2025 Edition
Small things that had an outsized effect on my happiness last year.
Latest
On thieves of joy...and, yes, gifts you can still get in time for Christmas.
The biggest thing I've learned this year...plus, yeah, some surprisingly cost-effective overnight shipping options on Very Good Gifts.
Socks are *actually* a great gift.
You’re reading This Heaven Gives Me Migraine, a shopping newsletter about searching for lasting pleasures in a world of disposable garbage. This month, we’re rounding up gift ideas five at a time, each centered around a theme. When you're a kid, getting socks for Christmas feels
"Mom, can you pick me up? She's talking about table linens again..."
The "Ralph Lauren Holiday" phenomenon, unhinged John Derian, and a brief history of ticking stripes. (And you thought entertaining was dull.)
"Use the good silver" is fine. But this is better.
Habits can be a prison, but habits can also be a gift. It depends how you use them.
We've reached Peak Personalization. (Sort of.)
Happy first day of fall, or autumnal equinox, or Mabon, depending on your degree of witchiness. (Doesn't it just make you want to buy school supplies?) Back-to-school in my youth was invariably characterized by the unveiling of a months-long art project: the customization of my school supplies. Color-coded
You haven't dropped the ball on Father's Day. (Yet.)
Yes, there are a fair amount of Amazon links. But *I'M* not the one who left it to the last minute, am I?
A bathrobe-free Mother's Day gift guide.
Also notably absent from these pages: slippers.
Everything's on sale at the same time and I can't deal.
It's a sale emergency and I just had to tell someone.
Let's set the goddamn table.
Making a nice table and not getting in our heads about the stigma of domesticity.
The Printemps Report
Wherein, I visit the French department-store-that-says-it's-not-a-department-store, so you don't have to.
The stuff that improved my life for under $50 this year:
Five things that I would've happily paid double for.
beauty
Last-Minute Gifts: Buy This, Not That.
An already-judgey newsletter evolves, Pokemon-style, into its final form.
fashion
Gifts for fashion girlies.
(This is probably the list you've been waiting for.)
dining
Gifts for "kitchen people."
(A category that may, as it turns out, include some men.)
beauty
The best gift is a gift that disappears.
(Hear me out.)