For me it has to be:
- Helix mattress ($1,217). Sleep is great.
- Home gym power cage & weights (~$1,000). Look good, feel good, get strong.
- Netgear Nighthawk AXE7800 ($339). No more random, annoying internet disconnects/slowness.
- Books ($0 @ library)
- “Ultralearning” - Scott Young (how to learn efficiently)
- “Enlightenment Now” - Steven Pinker (the world overall is improving)
- “The Bogleheads’ Guide to Investing” - Taylor Larimore (how to invest)
- PS5 ($500). So many great games like witcher 3, god of war, spiderman.
I’m searching for some more deep value purchases. Give me what you’ve got.
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Not to sound like one of those people, but a bidet. It hasn’t eliminated my use of toilet paper, but certainly has reduced it, while leaving a squeaky clean feeling. I miss using it while away from home nowadays.
Other things are eye masks (I have sleep quality issues) and ereaders (never moving with ten boxes of books again).
I can’t recommend a bidet enough. I’ve stopped using toilet paper all together and just use soap and a towel to dry off.
It’s especially amazing if you get the hot water hooked up to it.
Can you elaborate on this routine? I’ve heard of folks using clean rags that go into a bin. Or air-drying…
So when I first got the bidet I was using tp but it would get soaked from drying myself off. I figured if I’m going to get my hands wet may as well use soap and towel myself off, right?
So I have a towel warmer next to my toilet. It heats about 4 small towels at a time. Once I am done with my business, I clean myself with the soap and towel myself off with a warm towel (pure heaven). Afterwards, I hang the towels on the shower door so they can dry before going into the dirty clothes bin.
I tried having a bidet a couple times, but I ended up having issues with certain delicate skin becoming cracked and bleeding. Not sure what the cause was, but no bidet for me.
So what you’re saying is that you moisturize with your feces?
No. I was saying that the use of (clean) water to rinse my vulva after urinating was throwing off the ph balance of the vulval area (either because of the chemicals in the water or the water itself). This was causing my labia to become extremely irritated and overly delicate, which led to discomfort and bleeding.
Edited to add: and before you ask “how is it different from showering?” Showering is once a day (twice at most if necesarry), using a bidet is multiple times a day. It makes a difference.
I was making a joke.
I spent like $700 for a 13" boox max and it’s amazing. Smaller ones are functional enough for standard prose, but stuff like textbooks and programming books that have more structured formatting really take advantage of the larger pages. I can’t put a single page of any of that on my older kindle oasis, but I can comfortably do a landscape two page setup with the max.
Squeaky clean could be embarrassing though.
ee err
- my asshole
It’s very easy to add on a conventional toilet.
My bidet came with all sorts of funny testimonies on the box like:
- The best invention since sliced bread
- The no.1 for no.2
Electric toothbrush.
Invest in your teeth. Trust me.
Waterpik is also the bomb
YOU’RE NOT GIVING AWAY OUR WATERPIK!
…and it’s way cheaper than all of OPs suggestions other than the library
This is a good one. I agree.
My rice cooker. Doesn’t really matter which one. If you like rice, this will make your life better
It’s funny how every time someone asks this question there’s at least one guy in the comments praising their rice cooker, lol
I also choose that guys rice cooker
No joke. Every time someone comes in praising their $200+ Zojirushi rice cooker telling me how if I really liked rice I would see the light.
No fool. My in-laws are rice farmers. The $15 rice cookers are fine (ok. They’re probably $30 at this point).
Also, reheating rice is not going to poison you.
Fr. I have one of the cheapest, simplest rice cookers and it’s never failed me. Perfect rice every time, simple load, turn on and forget. My brother has gone through at least 3 of those stupid fancy “smart” ones. I don’t know why they need to overcomplicate something as simple as “cooking rice.”
That might have been me with another name on Reddit, lol. I stand by this appraisal, it’s solid.
I’ve been meaning to get one of those for a while now.
I held off on getting one for the longest time. Just bought one and my god is the rice so much better now.
Start branching out with the recipes! you can do so much more than you think with a rice cooker. I use mine to brown meat then make a pasta sauce in the same pot. Boiling potatoes or other veggies. A lot of models come with a steamer tray for more functionality. I made a kinda shepherds pie in it one time. it also makes rice! I don’t have an actual kitchen so my rice cooker gets a lot of mileage.
Electric kettle. Saves so much time and energy boiling water with electricity in a couple minutes vs 10min of burning natural gas. Hoping to get a new one during prime days this week since my wife put it on the gas range this weekend due to motor muscle memory taking over during multitasking. Luckily she didn’t burn the place down.
I feel like only us in the UK have one of these by default
Wait, wait I know this conversation. Somebody is going to bring up 240v vs 120v and then somebody else will say that’s not actually very relevant and will link to the Technology Connections YouTube video.
This was a very enlightening video for us European people, I was baffled to find out that Americans boil water on the cooker, like my grandmother used to in the 60s.
Germany too. Every household has its Wasserkocher
I’m in the U.S. and have an electric kettle. I love the thing. I’m also a tea drinker though, maybe my English ancestry is showing through.
Always laugh when I see these type of comments. An American friend told me they used a pot to boil water for like tea or pour over coffee. Sounds so bizzare, like where’s your electric kettle??
E-Reader, I’ve put hours and hours into that thing and it’s still going strong. Maybe I’ll upgrade it at some point, but it’s showing no signs of ageing yet. I love reading, but I don’t have space for a huge library of books (believe me I wish I did).
I just wish there was a color E reader. Not a full blown tablet, just E ink but color. I’d like to read graphic novels on it.
Those already exist! Pretty hefty price (compared to your usual ereader) but very much useable. Onyx Boox has a few models iirc
But do you really have the books? Or are you hooked up to some cloud service of some asshole company?
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House in 2017
Agree. Bought mine in 2018.
Air fryer
Although it’s slower than deep frying, you don’t need to babysit the food and can use the time to do something else. It also much easier to cleanup
I can finally make decent tofu now!!! Also great for re-heating leftover pizza.
On top of that, proper deep frying requires enough oil mass to maintain the desired heat. Nearly all residential units don’t have enough volume capacity to work as intended. Air-fryers though move heated air constantly replacing the need for oil mass.
10h a week of my life back. It cost me about 500€ a month, but it improved my mental health immensely.
Moved closer to work?
Close, I moved to a smaller and cheaper apartment and reduced some other costs, then I found a job where I work 30h a week.
Each month when I get my wage now I think “I bought this time and I best make use of it” and so it changed my mindset to one where I enjoy my free time a bit more, maybe cause I‘m aware of the price I pay for it.
Rescue dog $60-$200. Older is even better. Best investment in your mental health.
I went 6 days a couple weeks ago without power due to a massive storm. After a few days I purchased a small solar panel that has a USB port in it you can plug in anything that needs a charge. Works really good! It’s only 10 watt so charges pretty slowly but when you’re fully cut off from the grid, it’s a life safer. Definitely my most worthy purchase in quite some time.
Instant pot/air fryer combo - I like that I can make one-pot meals in it as I really don’t like cooking, and anything I make in there cooks fast. Pasta, rice, meats, there’s so many recipes.
Bissell Green Machine - it can wash furniture/carpet. Great for spills, if you have pets. Wash the upholstery in your vehicle. Small and compact. I use it a lot.
Large Honeywell air purifier - my husband smokes a fair amount of pot. I really don’t enjoy my space smelling like it all the time. This thing sucks up the smoke and I don’t have to deal with it. I buy the replacement air filters on Amazon.
Steam Deck - I love this thing. I love gaming but I’m tired of sitting at my desktop. It’s like a small handheld computer too, so you can do other things on it besides run Steam. Right now I’m using it to stream CraveTV to my TV since my Raspberry Pi streaming box isn’t working.
Agreed on the insta-pot, I purchased one not too long ago. Was a bit skeptical on if I’d ever use it (I’m not what I consider a “good cook”), but I ended up using it all the time. My oven below my range barely gets any use now. Only hard part for me is keeping it clean, there’s a lot of nooks that are hard to reach to get the grease off.
I have such an attachment to my Instant Pot, it served me so well in my ~350 sq ft NYC apartment with barely a walk-in kitchen.
Even having moved to larger, more capable kitchens since acquiring it, I find myself using the Instant Pot at least once or twice a week
Android phones because of their open ecosystem and customization. Very easy to get all forms of entertainment for free.
Lineage and F-Droid. A marriage made in heaven
For me, my Fairphone 3. I’ve upgraded the camera and changed the charging port after it got water damage, the phone is still going strong when any other one would have had to be replaced.
I have every intention to keep using it for many years more, before I struggled to keep a phone for more than a couple of years. :)
I’ve always wanted to go the fairphone route but have been worried about the whole ecosyatem discontinuing and I’d be left without good replacements.
I don’t think there’s much reason to worry!
The company appears to be doing quite well, so for now I have no doubt they will continue to offer spare parts for a good while after the release of a device. Perhaps more importantly, the modular design makes it easy to buy parts from the community: By the time the phone is old enough that official parts are not available, finding old parts from other Fairphone users shouldn’t be too challenging. The Fairphone forums still see quite a bit of trade of parts for the Fairphone 2, despite new parts having been out of production for a while. Newer models have also sold in much higher numbers, so it is reasonable to expect more parts to be on the market once they get old enough for users to start upgrading.
Batteries are a challenge as they will eventually get old, but the fact that batteries for the Fairphone 2 (launched 2015) were sold until April this year is uplifting. :)
Purple mattress. Don’t remember what I paid but it was discounted because it was open box. Best sleep I’ve ever had and no waking up to back pain. I even bought a Purple pillow and rarely have neck pain.
Raspberry Pi. I got one before prices shot up. If I didn’t have one already I’d go with one of the cheapest alternatives. I haven’t done anything super crazy like a doorbell cam or magic mirror but it’s been a ton of fun.
Similarity to the Pi my favorite laptop purchase has gotta be my Acer Aspire One netbook. It’s noticeably slower than any other device I have but I’ll still use it because I just love the form factor. Super light and easy to use anywhere and unlike a tablet it’s got a built-in keyboard, several ports, and runs Docker (seems like it’s possible on Android but very laborious).
Oooh I still have my AAO lying around in a drawer somewhere… What kind of stuff do you use it for? It was the device that introduced me to Linux, back then. Never used Windows again, ever since.
I use it just like a normal laptop. It’s slow but it’s not that noticable using a CLI. AntiX has done a great job revitalizing it (used Lubuntu before but it got way too slow). I would also recommend WattOS.
We have a traditional mattress with Purple pillows. First few nights were weird but they’re awesome once you get used to them.
What do you do with your pi? I bought one awhile ago to act as a streaming box for my non-smart TV, but for some reason I can’t get the Widevine for DRM to work anymore so I’m not doing anything with it now.
If you don’t have a cordless vacuum yet, it’s an awesome investment. Got one from Costco that has a smart setting for sucking up pet hair and other detritus that typically lives deep in the carpet. I have no problem vacuuming daily now because it’s so easy to just pick up and go. I’ve also heard people with wood floors say that roomba has made it so they never have to swiffer a day in their lives and that sounds pretty rad.
Adjustable bed platform has also changed my life. Don’t wait until you’re 50, get it whenever you can afford it. I swear to god it’s a game changer.
I would love an adjustable bed platform. Any recommendations? Also can you use any old mattress with them?
To be perfectly honest I don’t even know what brand I went with lol. I got the least expensive one to go with the most expensive mattress! What I was told (by the salesman, so this could have been just to sell me stuff) is almost all modern mattresses are fine to be used with adjustable bed frames, so if you ever need to replace your mattress you should still be able to use the same adjustable platform with it :)
Though it is definitely best to get same brand across mattress & frame – for example, a tempurpedic mattress with a tempurpedic frame. I know from experience that cheaping out on the frame will indeed affect the lifespan of the mattress!
Rowing machine. I use it Monday-Friday before work. Puts me in a good headspace and makes my workday feel less stressful. I’ve lost a bunch of weight also. I like that I can workout hard multiple days in a row without risking injury.
Is biking to work not an option where you live? You get the same good-headspace and exercise but you save on gas and car maintenance too.
I work from home.
Makes sense, would be a short bike ride then for you lol.
he rows to work
