The YogaToes that really are incredible

There is something truly bizarre, a little unsettling even, about an item ending up on this list because my grandma once had two toes amputated. But sometimes life is just like that. You never really know what’s coming — or what exactly you might need to deal with it — until it’s right in front of you.

That’s how it was with my YogaToes, the squishy, ladderlike toe separators that I’d put on at the end of most days in an effort to avoid bunions (a lifelong fear), hammertoes (the ailment behind those amputations), and really any and all podiatric-related issues. I learned about them from my mom, who, the story goes, had one vice — buying shoes — until she gave it all up for comfort and surgery-free feet. The trait was inherited.

I guess I felt comfortable talking about this in my place of work because the Strategist has always respected — revered, really — the unquantifiable doodad. The little unexpected things that come out of nowhere and change your life. Everyone here realized that a lot of other people are probably suffering through your highly particular neuroses, too. (I’ve since learned Kelly Rowland and Simon Rex also can’t live without toe separators). But it’s not just that. There’s a twofold appeal to reading about a doodad: Half of it is about how you learned of the thing (an opera singer’s neck stretcher, Ike Barinholtz’s instant coffee), and the other half is that it ever existed in the first place (AirPod condoms). It’s the TubShroom, the bendy piece of foam that’s actually the best phone stand, a foot sling for planes, a neck hammock for headaches, a doohickey to get rid of chin hairs, and a different doohickey to get rid of mosquito bites. The site has become a compendium of the most useless useful stuff. The not-too-expensive little things that really are incredible. I mean, how else would you ever know they existed?

It wasn’t about how many hours I tested this little jellyish, aqua-blue toe-stretcher or how many scientific studies proved its worth. It was about how it made me feel — both my toes and my mind. The funny thing is that ten years later, my mom now works at a podiatrist’s office, I left and then returned to the Strategist, and we’ve all still got YogaToes in our nightstand drawers. —Lauren Levy, lead editor