In honor of Labor Day, and all the hard work you do, we offer a few items that will save your energy for important tasks.

Enough with all this pesky touching of things: The touchless trash can ($105) allows you to waggle a finger and it opens, while a $70 touchless dispenser will produce paper towels with a wave of the hand.

That exhausting faucet and soap dispenser (pictured), too, can be made effortless ($60 each.)

Sit down to dinner with automatic salt and pepper mills: no more grinding! Brush your teeth with the amazing Oral B Triumph with Smart Guide: a wireless screen that will tell you when you brush poorly, for $140.

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The problem with lipstick is that it doesn’t really stick. All it takes is a cup of coffee and that beautiful burgundy you carefully applied is erased.

 Lip stains have been around for a while, but they’re enjoying a resurgance in some of the most popular make-up lines, primarily because lips (and cheeks) really do absorb the stain, and the tint lasts longer. It eventually wears away, but not as quickly as lipstick.

One of the early popular stains is Benetint by Benefit ($28). The rose-colored liquid in a bottle is a sheer tint for lips and cheeks. Benefit also has a lip balm stain ($20) that’s thicker, and a convenient Benetint Pocket Pal ($20, pictured) that has a double-wand approach with lip stain on one end and a thick clear gloss on the other.

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Perhaps you’re a little too shy to don the season’s big chunky necklaces and oversized arm bangles. Are those giant hoops still a bit more than you can handle? If your fashion statements are small but still significant (or just plain silly) we’ve found nine pairs of earrings for you:

 1. Are you a foodie? Then you’ll love the tiny fork and spoon earrings made by artist Victoria Mason at the Australian Web site Oyemodern. They’re $45 (yes, that’s in U.S. dollars).

2. If you’re a slow mover until you have your Starbucks double ex? Then the little bitty coffee cups by the same artist are yours for $45.

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The football games are coming, and it’s time to start thinking about beer. Not just the beer you’re going to drink, but what you’re going to serve it in. Toss the plastic cups. It’s time to upgrade. You could go with some basic but classy glasses, like the assortment at PubGlasses.com, where you can pick from a variety that can be personalized for $15 a glass (or get the special football game glass for $10 each). CocktailVibe has the Oslo beer glass ($32 for a set of 4); Pottery Barn has a solid-looking set of six British pint glasses for $28; and at Williams-Sonoma you can find a set of four glasses and have them monogrammed with your initials for $59. If you want to have a bit more fun, consider a pilsner glass with a color-changing LED base or a set with a witty saying (”Half Empty? Half Full?”) in Italian from Sur la Table for $39.50 (pictured, set of four). Uncommon Goods always has amusing and interesting items, like their artful set of glasses that make the beer look suspended in mid-air, or the set of four glasses with your “house rules” for football game parties. Or go all-out for your team with a crystal freezer mug complete with team logo (3 for $12.99). Want to really get fancy? A pair of Lalique Louvre beer glasses will cost you $142, or a handsome set of four Waterford crystal beer glasses will run $250. But aren’t your friends worth it? Now that we’ve got you thinking about beer glasses, why don’t you just go all the way and buy real German beer steins? At BeerSodaSports.com, there are all kinds of steins such as a Bavarian beer ceramic stein with a metal lid, for $38. Or go straight to BeerGlasshopper, where the selection is as wide as your new HDTV: from a real ox-horn with a pewter lid and base ($285), a 3/4-yard glass (with stand) that holds 68 oz. for $80, a 40-oz. Hofbrauhaus Octoberfest dimpled glass mug (pictured), a Swiss hand-carved colorful stein complete with fancy lid for $130 or - and yes, they really do drink from these glasses - an 80-oz. Hofbrauhaus glass drinking boot for $70. And, when your friends have had a boot or two, and shatter your precious purchase on the floor, just remember: That’s what friends are for.

Hillary Clinton gave a stirring speech at the Democratic National Convention last night in one of her signature pantsuits, this one a very bright orange. Much has been made of Clinton’s pantsuits during the campaign, the sameness of their cut, their bright colors, their shapelessness.

Designers have decried them. 

Try as we might we could not find a name of the designer of Clinton’s pantsuits, but in searching we did come across some pretty pantsuits to share.

Sutton Studio has a basic suit with Hillary-esque longer jacket on sale for $190 at Bloomingdales (pictured, above right).

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It’s like Craigslist, except there’s a panel of judges waiting to disqualify the bad impersonation of a Mies van der Rohe chair you once found cool enough to buy and are now hoping desperately to sell.

We’re talking about Feel More Human’s Modern Flea Market, the classified advertising section of a site devoted to modern design goods.

Here you can buy and sell (with no fee to list items) previously owned gems such as this Hot House modern coffee table ($150, $65 to ship).

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Is there anything more fun than trying to wake up a teenager at the beginning of the school year? A teenager who has spent the last three months sleeping until noon? The only thing that is likely more fun is watching what happens when Clocky the alarm clock goes off. Clocky is cute and has big wheels (pictured), and after your teen hits the snooze button once, Clocky rolls off the bedside table and rolls around the room, continuing to buzz loudly: under the bed, against the door, in the bathroom, until said teen has to get out of bed to find him. Beautiful! He’s $50 at Bed, Bath and Beyond. Another fun one is the flying alarm clock. It has a cute little propeller on its top, and when it goes off, the propeller spins and flies away, carrying the key that makes the alarm clock stop its incredibly loud screeching. Fabulous, and $11.48 at Amazon. It would probably be entertaining to watch (more…)

When is a book a head scarf? When is a dish towel a souvenir? Not often, granted — but these cute textiles fit all the descriptions above and more. They’re humble but lovely cloths made in Japan, where you might find them worn in street festivals or hanging on the wall. In case their multi-functionality confuses Western shoppers, importers have folded them up and stitched them so the make a kind of book of fabric, each “page” highlighting a different part of the larger illustration. (To use them as originally intended, just snip the two threads that keep the sheet folded up.) While the fabric’s maker, Hamamonyo, offers a huge selection of patterns in Japan (see them at this foreign-language site), the American company Compact Impact is testing the market with only three styles, which it sells in this bundle for $15.50. More varieties featuring illustrations of pets are on their way in October, the retailer says.