11 Things That Delighted Us Last Week: From Zendaya’s Clogs to Alaskan Kings

This week, Zendaya was spotted in matte-black Dansko Professional clogs — the same pair that Strategist staffers have been wearing and recommending for more than a decade. In fact, when our senior writer Lauren Ro was eight months pregnant, they were the only shoes she wanted to wear. “The Zendaya pregnancy rumors do not start here — we only bring it up in order to emphasize that these are some seriously practical yet unexpectedly stylish shoes,” our writer Katherine Gillespie says.

In the six months since Strategist contributor Diksha Basu convinced us all to start spraying magnesium oil on our feet, she’s added a new sleep aid to her setup: these eye masks that heat up automatically once you take them out of the packet. They’re so effective that she says, “I actually don’t let myself use one until I’m fully ready to commit to bed for the night.”

“I became fixated on blocking light in my bedroom in 2022, when studies began linking blue-light exposure during sleep to a range of health concerns, from diabetes to cardiovascular issues,” writes Strategist contributor Mackenzie Wagoner. In the years since, she’s eliminated every point of blue light in her bedroom — from the air conditioner in her window to the surge protector in her outlet — with these little light-blocking stickers. “Now, when a new appliance enters the household, it gets a sticker before it gets plugged in,” she says.

It’s no secret that the Strategist team lives in Blundstones. Over the years, we’ve walked thousands of steps in the brand’s boots and clogs, so when Blundstone announced it would be launching its first-ever sandal, we took note — especially Strategist senior writer Liza Corsillo who put together this week’s installment of “Don’t Dillydally.” “While the three-strap, one-buckle design has a slight orthopedic lilt, I am nevertheless excited to try it out,” she says.

After wearing makeup all day, Morgan Stewart uses a cleansing balm and then double cleanses with this gel. “It’s a little drying, but it really cleans your skin,” she says, adding, “It has the best distribution of salicylic, and it really cleans out any sort of makeup you have.”

It turns out that every couple that our deals writer Sam Daly knows is getting married this year, which means she’s on a hunt for wedding-guest dresses. Ideally, she says, the dress would be “not too fancy, not too form-fitting, and rewearable in more casual settings.” She’ll likely end up buying a couple of options at Goodwill, but this fossil-adorned dress by Tyler McGillivary caught her eye while she window-shopped to get the creative-dressing juices flowing.

Board-certified behavioral sleep-medicine psychologist Dr. Jade Wu is a night owl forced to function as an early bird. She’s made this bearable by shifting the timing of her circadian rhythm with a light box that was originally designed to combat seasonal affective disorder. “That dose of bright light first thing in the morning is an extra-strong message to my brain: You’re supposed to be fully awake by now,” she says.

The next generation of Hilton kids are sleeping in Posh Peanut pajamas. “They are the softest pajamas ever. My kids never want to take them off,” Nicky Hilton told us. Best of all, she says, “They have the most playful prints,” like this train-themed set her kids can’t live without.

When one reader asked senior writer and resident picky guy Michael Zhao for advice for her husband who is determined to only have one bottle in the shower, he made a confession: “I, too, am a one-bottle-in-the-shower guy.” (Though, he says, this is only because “doctor turned journalist James Hamblin convinced me I didn’t need anything else in his 2020 book, Clean: The New Science of Skin.”) Zhao’s bottle of choice is Hairstory’s New Wash, which both cleans his hair and soothes his itchy scalp.

The first few months that podcaster Kate Spencer was using a CPAP machine, she hated how the mask that covered both her nose and mouth made her mouth dry. Since switching to a CPAP with just a nose piece and adding this chinstrip to the mix, though, everything clicked — and she hasn’t snored since. “The strap is almost like training wheels: I can still open my mouth if I need to, but it’s a reminder to keep my mouth closed,” she says.

Believe it or not, there are a handful of mattresses that are larger than a California king. Our sleep writer Amelia Jerden spoke to three people who have actually purchased the biggest one: the Alaskan king, which measures four feet wider and roughly two feet longer than a standard queen. This may seem excessive, but for Nicolet Bougard, who works in sports and entertainment marketing, and her six-foot-five husband, it’s been a game changer. “I cannot tell you the last time my husband has told me to scoot over in bed, which prior to having an Alaskan-king mattress was probably every single night,” she says.

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