Blog Posts by Good Housekeeping

Tips for Buying a MattressFinding the right mattress can be exhausting! By the time you find a new one, you'll be more than ready for a good night's sleep. There are so many retailers carrying different brands and models that it's tough to figure out exactly which one is right for you. While your personal comfort and budget should be at the top of your list of things to look for, here are a few other important things to consider.

Related: How to Make Your Bed More Comfortable

1. Coil count In the past coil count was equated with quality and a big driver of price -- the higher the coil count, the better and more expensive the mattress. These days the number of coils isn't as closely related to quality as it once was. Some manufacturers are now making coils in a way that allows them to use fewer without sacrificing comfort and durability. Look for features that are important to you, maybe you want a hybrid bed made up of coils and memory foam or maybe you prefer a bed made with fabric that wicks

Anti-Aging Makeup TipsI love the fact that I never stop learning on this job. Recently, Birnur Aral, Director of the Heath, Beauty and Environmental Sciences Lab here at GHRI, gave you a behind-the-scenes look at how we picked the winners of our 2012 Anti-Aging Awards. In addition to finding the best products to help you look younger, we picked up some valuable tips on how applying your makeup can help turn back the clock.

Related: Makeup Mistakes That Age You

Use an eye primer to correct imperfections. Most of us assume the first and only job of a primer is to help makeup stay in place. While that's a great reason to use one, I've learned how important an eye primer is for evening out your eyelid's skin tone. In the lab, we had women put on their assigned eye primer before applying eye shadow, and so many testers, many of whom had never used an eye shadow primer, remarked at how much better their eye area looked, even before applying eye shadow. Several women mentioned that they enjoyed using

Tips for Patching Holes in WallsWhether you're moving a picture or repairing a serious mishap like a door knob punching a hole in your wall, filling a wall hole is a project you can tackle yourself. Here are techniques to patch any size hole in your wall without hiring a pro.

Tools You'll Need

• Spackle or Joint Compound This white paste is what you'll use to fill in the hole itself. Buy only as much as you need from your local hardware store as it can dry out and harden over time.
• Putty Knife Sold in sizes ranging from 1-inch to 12-inches. Opt for a size that's just wider than the hole you need to fill.
• Sandpaper Larger patches in your wall will need to be sanded down. Look for "200-grit" sandpaper, which is very fine, helping provide a smooth finish.

Filling the Hole

• Nail Holes: Small holes made by common nails (such as those you'd use to hang a photo or piece of art) can easily be filled and don't require sanding. Place

Having fun with your fella doesn't require spending much, if any, money. Try one of these 9 cheap thrills for a guaranteed good time.

Attend a Live Comedy ShowLaugh Attack: $15
These days, movie tickets can cost you an arm and a leg before you even reach for a bucket of popcorn. But did you know you could enjoy a live performance for the same price? National Comedy Theater (NCT), located in NYC, L.A., Phoenix, Austin, and San Diego, is an improv company that performs 3-hour comedy shows and encourages audience participation. Instead of sitting in silence at the cinema next weekend, sign up for an evening of laughter.

Related: Build a Better Date Night

Eat Your Heart Out: $10
Explore the local farmer's market and find seasonal produce at affordable prices. Put your own spin on the Food Network's popular cooking show Chopped and give yourselves 5 minutes each to select two fresh picks. Then combine those ingredients with what you already have in your fridge to make dinner.

Find

Suggestions for Steamy ReadsSexy romance is hot - and it has been for more than two centuries. Here, four books to enjoy, from the first English-language erotic novel to this season's toe-curlers.

For a Romantic Historical Yarn

A Duke of Her Own by Eloisa James

An academic by day and a romance writer by night, James is expert at weaving historical fiction with delicious bedroom tales. Pick this if you enjoy more plot, less porn-worthy scenes.

Related: 4 Sex-Enhancing Products

For a Carnal Classic

Fanny Hill by John Cleland

First published in 1748, but banned in the U.S. and England until the 1960s, this sexually explicit tale about a prostitute's rise through society is considered the novel that started the genre in English.

For Fans of Fifty Shades of Gray

Bared to You by Sylvia Day

Like Shades, Day's novel was self-published. A few weeks later, word of mouth catapulted the tale of two troubled souls in glitzy New York City to a publisher and best seller-dom.

AIDS Orphan in Rural ChinaI first entered East Lake in early 2001 as I would enter several other rural Chinese villages that year: smuggled in deep at night, under a tarpaulin in the back of a bicycle cart normally used to carry chickens. As a New York Times reporter based in Beijing, I had come to central China to interview poor farmers who were suffering and dying in a devastating epidemic that few people there had a name for or understood.

But I knew this disease well. Before becoming a journalist, I had trained as a physician at the height of New York City's AIDS epidemic, between 1986 and 1989, when effective drugs were not available yet and patients died, painfully, often within weeks of their diagnoses. In the United States, AIDS was - still is - primarily an urban disease. The mantra of my medical training was the list of groups at highest risk of catching the virus: gay men, hemophiliacs, IV-drug users, sex workers. So when Gao Yaojie, M.D., a retired gynecologist, first told me that HIV/AIDS

Addison and Cassidy HempelPerched at the kitchen island in her home, 10 miles from the pulsing neon strip of Reno, NV, Chris Hempel pulls out a pink Shutterfly photo album and flips through its pages. She smiles, as every mother does when reminiscing about her children as babies, but her eyes also mist over while she revisits the early life of her twin daughters. She runs a finger down the milestones she documented: Addison's first words were "outside" and "open"; Cassidy's were "doggie" and "duckie." They walked early, at 10 months. The photos are adorable - naked babies blowing bubbles and smearing vanilla frosting all over their faces, bright-eyed toddlers hell-bent on climbing over furniture, mischievous little girls unleashing flash floods at the water cooler. "They just got into stuff," Chris says, laughing. "They were super-happy, smiling all the time."

Related: The 2-Minute Lifesaver

Her gaze moves to her daughters, 7 at the time of this visit, slumped at a toddler table, their eyes unfocused

Tips to Protect Against Bed BugsCollege dorms can be dining halls for bed bugs. When you're helping your student get settled in for the school year, thoroughly inspect his or her dorm room, any furniture that was stored over the summer, and any used furniture that you may purchase for bed bugs and prior bug infestation. Since these critters are extremely resilient, adult bed bugs can live for a year or more without eating.

Related: How to Debug Your Home

What to Look for

• Bed bugs: Adult bed bugs have flat, reddish-brown colored oval bodies about the size of an apple seed.
• Blood spots and dark fecal stains: After feedings, the bugs will leave fecal spots of digested blood along seams and fabrics.
  

Where to Inspect

• Inspect her mattress seams as well as her roommates'. Run your finger along the entire seam, checking for dark brown spots.
• Check along the bed frame and, if possible, behind the headboard.
• Look inside the dresser and desk drawers and don't forget the side facing the