The NFL draft starts tonight but the National Football League has already made its No. 1 pick—Tide laundry detergent. Tide is now the "Official Laundry Detergent of the NFL" and all 32 of its teams after the signing of a multi-year deal by the league and Procter & Gamble. It couldn't be a better match-up—Tide is also a top pick in Consumer Reports' tests of laundry detergents.

With its promise of spill, stomp and "say goodbye to stains" the so-called "stain-lifting pads" Stomp 'N Go from Bissell seemed like the perfect cleaning shortcut. So we bought five pads for $5 and set about staining the carpet in our labs with red wine, tomato sauce, coffee and French dressing. Then we put our foot down.

As the warmest winter in over a decade, and the fourth warmest on record, comes to a close, allergy sufferers are bracing for an early release of tree pollen, which could lead to a longer, harder allergy season than normal. While you can't control the conditions outside, you can make your home as hypoallergenic as possible. That includes deploying a dehumidifier to keep the relative humidity below 50 percent, which starves the allergy-inducing dust mites and mold of the moisture they need to thrive.

We’ve been hearing a lot lately about smart appliances—refrigerators that alert you when your food’s no longer fresh, small appliances that shut themselves off when you forget. But now there's the promise of smart laundry that tells the washing machine what cycle to use and lets the consumer know when to separate lights from darks. Sounds good, but can this new technology help you find a lost sock?

The final 11 states and territories have closed their cash for appliance rebate programs, officially ending the program across the country. As of December 31, the two-year-old program had paid 1.7 million consumers rebates valued at $258 million and has been hailed as a “huge success” by the Department of Energy.

Usually it’s the Super Bowl where marketers unveil edgy ads for everything from cars to websites. But this Sunday during the Academy Awards, Procter & Gamble is introducing commercials for Tide Pods, its one-step laundry solution. Using the tagline, “Pop in. Stand out,” Tide is promising a “whole new kind of clean.” But that clean is going to cost you—four more cents a load.

Consumption of tissue paper, namely toilet paper, has surpassed the use of newsprint in the U.S., according to an analysis by the Wall Street Journal. In 2011, Americans went through nearly 8 million tons of tissue, compared with less than 4 million tons of newsprint. In 2000, newsprint still had a decided edge, 10 million to 7 million.

When you’re shopping for a vacuum you can pay as little as $50 or as much as $1,500 or more. But even a capable vacuum can bring some sacrifices at the low end of the price spectrum. A model may be light on features or unwieldy to use. So no matter where you end up buying one, you should go to the store first to push, pull, turn and lift the vacuums that you’re considering. Check out the controls and features and how easy or difficult it is to attach cleaning tools. Here are some drawbacks Consumer Reports found on a few lower-priced models in its recent vacuum cleaner tests.

As the jugs of laundry detergent in the supermarket get smaller and lighter, the liquid detergent within is becoming more concentrated. The containers are easier to lug home, but the variety of confusing caps is no help on laundry day. Some of the caps’ fill lines are hard to decipher, and the line for the largest load may be only halfway up the cap. Here are five we found particularly vexing in our laundry detergent tests. To avoid overdosing, use a permanent marker to highlight the fill lines.

The genius behind the genius bar at Apple is now reimagining JCPenney’s 1,100 stores. Penney CEO Ron Johnson, who made it more attractive to go to Apple stores than shop elsewhere, wants to do the same for the 110-year-old retailer. To do so he is creating stores-within-a-store and a “town square” where shoppers can hang out—just like they do at Apple. He’s also enlisting the help of such A-listers as Martha Stewart, Ellen DeGeneres and designer Nanette Lepore. Johnson described his plan as the six P's: Price, Personality, Product, Promotion, Place and Presentation. While there are no iProducts on the list, some of JCPenney's branded goods have topped Consumer Reports' Ratings.

Indoor air can be 10 times more polluted than what you breathe outdoors so getting an air purifier may seem like a natural solution. But some of the models in Consumer Reports recent tests do little to rid a space of dust and smoke. And one air purifier we tested did practically nothing.

Thirty-two percent of American grill owners fire up their grills for the Super Bowl making it one of the most popular grilling days of the year, according to the latest Weber GrillWatch Survey. But with two great playoff games this weekend, why wait? And if you need a grill for Super Sunday, Consumer Reports has some recommendations. We checked the availability of some of our top-rated grills using the Price & Shop feature on our website, and retailers appear to have plenty in stock.

Consumer Reports tested a bunch of can openers to find the very best model on the market. Alas, we found there's no absolute number one, given the vagaries of personal preference and safety requirements. But the following pro-and-con-based reviews from our panel of testers should lead you to the right opener for you.

High on the list of complaints about pantyhose is that they just don't last long enough. But from an environmental point of view they last too long once a discarded pair moves from your household trash to the landfill. Efforts at recycling can include using old pantyhose to stake tomato plants and make sachets, but there’s a small snag considering that sheer hosiery sales alone exceeded $1 billion over a recent 12-month period, according to the NPD Group, a market research company.

There’s nothing like a multiple day power outage to move plans to get a generator up the to-do list. That’s what happened this past Halloween, when a freak nor’easter dropped more than a foot of snow and downed trees in the New York metropolitan area. Many people were without power for a week or more—and that followed power failures left in the wake of Hurricane Irene at the end of August. Clearly, having a backup generator can help weather the next storm.