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If you’ve been meaning to grab an e-reader for the first time, this Kindle Paperwhite deal on Woot might be worth a closer look, especially if you don’t mind a gently used product. It’s the 11th Gen model from 2021, refurbished to Grade-A condition, starting at $89.99 for 16GB and $109.99 for 32GB versions. You can knock another $5 off with code FIREFIVE at checkout, but only through April 29—or until they sell out.

11th Gen Kindle Paperwhite (grade A condition)

$89.99
at Woot

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$89.99
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These are refurbished units, so there may be light signs of wear. But Woot says they’ve all been tested and cleared to work like new, and each one comes with a 90-day limited warranty. If you’re after the newest model, however, the 2024 Amazon Kindle Paperwhite is available for $159.99. Read its in-depth review to compare it with the 2021 model and see which one fits your needs better.

PCMag awarded this model the Best eBook Reader of the Year 2021, along with their Editor’s Choice award. What you’re getting here is a reader with a 6.8-inch glare-free screen (330ppi) that uses e-ink tech, so it feels like reading on paper. It is also easier on the eyes thanks to its warm light setting that adjusts to your environment. Compared to older models, this one reportedly gives you more text per page, a flatter front that keeps dirt out, and a brighter display for daylight reading. It’s also IPX8 waterproof, meaning you can read in the bath, by the pool, or at the beach.

These versions, like most Kindles, show ads on the lock screen unless you pay extra to remove them later. The build itself is light and comfy to hold, weighing just over seven ounces. It uses USB-C for charging, though Amazon only includes a cable, not the power brick. Storage-wise, the 16GB model should be enough for thousands of ebooks, while the 32GB version adds headroom for audiobooks and PDFs. It supports both 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz wifi but can’t connect to peer-to-peer networks.

One of the things a Dutch oven does best is sear and cook “low and slow.” Sauces reduce, sugars caramelize, and meats brown with great success in these pots, but your food won’t be the only thing left with a brown crust. The creamy white interior of enameled Dutch ovens can get pretty gunky. Here are some ways to clean stubborn crud, and prevent more from building up. 

1. Boiling is your best friend 

If you try to clean burnt sauce and stuck meat residue right off of the stove, you’ll likely ruin your sponge on the first pass. Don’t attempt to scratch it off with steel wool or your fingernails (you want to keep those). Your first line of attack is loosening any burnt-on crud with a good old fashioned boiling. To do this, fill your Dutch oven about three-quarters full or with enough warm water to submerge the burnt food. Throw your pot back on the burner and bring it to a boil. Putting the lid on will help the water boil faster and loosen anything that might be stuck to the inside of the lid too. 

Let the water simmer and soften the food residue for about 15 minutes. You’ll likely see the water lifting material already. Using a sturdy utensil, like a wooden spoon or spatula, scrape around the bottom and sides of the pot. Remove the pot from the heat and dump out the hot water. Scrape at any missed spots with the wooden spoon and then clean the pot again, but this time with warm, soapy water and a sponge. Dry it off thoroughly.

2. Add baking soda to the mix

After a couple weeks of serious usage, you may start to see some discoloration, or stubborn streaks and brown staining around the inside of the Dutch oven. If your regular boiling with water method isn’t cutting through, add a tablespoon of baking soda to the soaking water per every four cups of water. Let the alkaline solution simmer for about 15 minutes with the lid on (again, so the steam can soften any stains on the lid’s interior). 

I throw a sponge straight into the pot and scrub around the stained areas with a wooden spoon. This might take a bit of elbow grease but the baking soda will help lift those stains if you keep at it. You can see a faint line in the picture of where the boiling baking soda water ended and I didn’t scrub with the sponge.

Credit: Allie Chanthorn Reinmann

Spot treat with more baking soda. If you have some stuck stains, you can make a paste with baking soda and a few drops of water. Rub the baking soda paste into these stubborn areas. The gentle abrasive nature of the paste is often enough to lift the stain.

3. Bleach out remaining stains

I have not attempted to use a bleach solution yet, but America’s Test Kitchen recommends it for brightening up the interior of your enamel-finished Dutch oven. To do so, make a solution of one part bleach to three parts water and pour it into the pot. Let it sit overnight and the next day, after rinsing and washing it out thoroughly, you’ll reveal a perfectly spotless interior. As always when working with bleach, make sure the room is well-ventilated.

Tools that aren’t so helpful

I’ve seen a great deal on Reddit about Barkeeper’s Friend—both good and bad. There are as many folks recommending it on enameled Dutch ovens as there are folks prohibiting it. My advice is, like trying new skincare or protecting suede boots—always test a new product on a small, out of sight area to see how it goes. Those who hate Barkeeper’s on enamel say it can dull the finish and wear down the enamel. So if you do try it, do so in a small area, wash it off and see how it looks on your cookware.

Another recommendation from the good folks of the internet was trying out a melamine sponge (Magic Eraser). These can also be abrasive and dull finishes, like paint, but I tried it on a small stain with no dulling effect—but also no success with the stain, so i quickly ditched that idea.

Prevent staining

The best way to get rid of stains is to keep the tough ones from forming. Like most cookware, you shouldn’t cook using more than medium-low to medium heat. I know our stoves can go up to a high flame, but most pot and pan manufacturers recommend against this. Instead, let the Dutch oven preheat thoroughly with some oil inside. The heavy duty cast iron will hold onto that heat and it’ll be plenty for searing meats and veggies. 

If you’ve been cooking on the stove top and plan to finish the food in the oven, always wipe down the outside of the Dutch oven before making the move. Sometimes little dribbles of fat will be chilling on the exterior and those fats can polymerize in the oven, appearing like blackened tears running down the face of your perfect Dutch oven. Carefully wipe down the outside with a paper towel or slightly soapy, damp sponge now, so the pot doesn’t cry later. 

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If you’ve ever painted a room in your house or apartment, you know the pain of storing leftover paint. You pour the excess from the rolling pan into the paint can, you tap the lid back into place with a hammer, and you stick the old can somewhere out of the way, where you promptly forget about it. Then the day comes when you need to touch up the room or repaint it entirely, and you haul that old can out from its hiding place, only to discover that time has not been kind to your paint.

If your old paint hasn’t aged well—it’s skinned over, chunky, or otherwise dubious—but you really don’t want to spend money on a fresh can just to do some touch up work, you can try to revive the paint. This happened to me recently: I had an old five-gallon bucket of gray paint with about a gallon of paint left in it, and when I opened it up, it looked like this:

My old, chunky gray paint
Credit: Jeff Somers

But I didn’t want to run out to buy a fresh gallon for a small job, so I decided to bring this paint back to life.

First, a few quick caveats: Not all paint can be brought back to life. It needs to be mostly liquid, even if it’s chunky and skinned over—if it’s totally hardened, just toss it in the trash. A few other things to check for:

• Mold. If you open the can and it smells like mildew (or worse) or has a growth on it, it’s not usable—even if you mix it up and get it into usable shape, you will be painting mold spores onto your walls. While modern paints typically contain biocides to inhibit mold growth for years, various climate conditions or storage variables can impact their effectiveness.

• Thinned. If you have already thinned the paint with water (for water-based paints) or paint thinner (for oil-based paints), you probably won’t be able to bring it back.

• Frozen. If the paint froze at any point, it’s probably done for. Paint that froze up will have a “cottage cheese” texture to it.

If you see these signs, toss the paint and resign yourself to buying a fresh can. Otherwise, come with me on a paint-resurrection adventure.

How to revive old paint

My paint had never been thinned, and while it was chunky, it was still liquid. It didn’t smell bad, so I thought I had a pretty good shot at bringing it back. Here’s what you need on hand to try this:

Everything you need to revive your old paint.
Credit: Jeff Somers

1. Bucket. This is where you’ll collect the revived paint.

2. Screen. You can buy disposable paint filters or paint filter bags, but you can also use an old aluminum window screen, or a piece of fiberglass screen. I happened to have a bunch of fiberglass screen left over from another project, so I cut a piece of that.

3. Drill with paddle bit. You can stir the paint manually, but it’s a lot easier to get a paddle attachment for your drill.

4. Paint thinner. If your paint is water-based, you can thin it with some warm water. Mine is oil-based, so I need paint thinner—I had mineral spirits on hand, so I used that.

5. Painter’s tape. Any tape at all, really, but painter’s tape is easiest to work with here.

Once you have all your materials, your first step is to thin the paint a little. Add a small amount of water or paint thinner, then stir the paint, starting off at a low setting and increasing the power gradually.

Thinning my paint with some mineral spirits.
Credit: Jeff Somers

Stirring out some of the chunks in the paint.
Credit: Jeff Somers

This should eliminate the worst of the chunks in there. How much to thin the paint is more art than science—you don’t want to over-thin it and make it watery. I didn’t try to eliminate every single chunk of hardened paint and was very conservative with the thinner. You can always add a little more and repeat the stirring, but you can’t remove excess thinner after you’ve poured it in.

Next, you screen the paint. Attach your screen to your bucket—in my case, I just wrapped the fiberglass screen around the lid and taped it into place:

My high-tech paint screening device.
Credit: Jeff Somers

Then, I poured the partially thinned paint into the bucket through the filter:

Screening my paint.
Credit: Jeff Somers

I let the paint drip through the filter for a few minutes. This screened out the remaining chunks, leaving me with a supply of usable paint in my bucket:

My thinned, screened, and stirred paint, ready to use.
Credit: Jeff Somers

I didn’t need much; honestly, if you’re going to repaint the whole room, you probably shouldn’t rely on old paint you’ve thinned and screened. But for a small touch-up job, this spared me from having to run out and buy a fresh can of paint. It worked well, the paint adhered without problems and matched up reasonably well with the old coat. I plan to prime and paint the room again next year, so it doesn’t have to last forever, either. Once I was done, I disposed of the remnants at my city’s recycling center so it’s no longer haunting my closet.

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Meta has made virtual reality (VR) accessible to many more people, offering good VR headsets for much cheaper than the competition. Right now, the 128GB Meta Quest 3S Batman: Arkham Shadow Bundle is on sale for $269 (originally $299.99), the lowest price it has been, according to price-tracking tools. You can double the storage for $369 (originally $399.99); that version has dropped to $350 in the past. The bundle includes the Batman game (with a list price of $49.99) and a three-month trial subscription to the Meta Quest+ service that’s normally $7.99 a month. There are also other bundles available with other Meta accessories.

Get Batman: Arkham Shadow and a 3-Month Trial of Meta Quest+ Included — All-in-One Headset

Meta Quest 3S 128GB

$269.00
at Amazon

$299.99
Save $30.99

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Get Batman: Arkham Shadow and a 3-Month Trial of Meta Quest+ Included — All-in-One Headset

Meta Quest 3S 256GB

$369.00
at Amazon

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It’s true, the Meta Quest 3 has better graphics, but it costs substantially more (currently $499.99) than the 3S version. Lifehacker staff writer Stephen Johnson tested both VR headsets to decide which of the two is better, and the Meta Quest 3S was his winner—you can read a more in-depth review of the Quest 3S here. There just isn’t enough of a difference between the two models to justify the additional cost, with the Quest 3S’s graphics looking very close to the 3 and running the same games and apps.

The Meta Quest 3S has a Snapdragon XR2 Gen 2 processor, 8GB of RAM, a display resolution of 1,832 by 1,920 (per eye), and a refresh rate of 120Hz. Once you put them on, the horizontal field of view is 96 degrees, and the vertical view is 90 degrees. The audio is stereo, which is nice, and the speakers are compatible with 3D spatial audio. When it comes to battery life, expect up to two and a half hours of juice before having to recharge (expect it to take about two hours for a full charge).