For me, it’s an electric toothbrush. It doesn’t matter if you go with Sonicare or Oral-B, once you start using an electric toothbrush, regular toothbrushes don’t ever feel like they clean your teeth properly. The smooth plaque-free top layer of your teeth that you can feel after using an electric toothbrush can’t be replicated with a regular toothbrush.
There’s actually a pretty cool community sort of tangentially related to this! !buyitforlife@slrpnk.net
Anyway, my pick is definitely just a GOOD mp3 player. Whether that be an open hardware one you can crack open and repair, a proprietary one that can at least be Rockboxed, or bare minimum a proprietary one with a good iFixit rating.
a magic wand vibrator. truly next level stuff
Oh I am sure it gets you on the next level!
- Warm white christmas lights. Diffuse lighting is so much better.
- Induction cooktops. Because gas cooktops are toxic both inside and outside the home.
I found gas struggles to do low temps too, minimum power in the smallest ring is still too hot for rice unless you want to keep stirring it. Induction I just get it to a boil then leave it on low and it won’t burn without stirring and leave it for 15 mins.
Second the warm white Christmas lights.
They can quickly make a depressing apartment feel like a warm home.
I still suggest a plug-in induction burner, because they have temperature and autooff timer.
A bidet. Hands down the best $35 I’ve ever spent
Thermal printer. I play a lot of tabletop rpgs and wargames and it helps having the ability to print out handouts without worrying about how much ink I have left!
Electronic countertop scale for the kitchen. Start cooking by mass rather than trying to decide if that’s a half a cup packed or unpacked.
If you regularly store things in jars, a canning funnel. So much easier to pour sauces into jars without spillage.
Bone conduction headphones. Listen to music or talk on the phone hands-free while still leaving your ears open to what’s going on around you.
If you’ve got sore muscles, a percussive massage gun. It looks like a horse vibrator, but it does wonders on a sore back.
A warhammer. Don’t get a sword unless you are actually trained and know how to use and maintain it. A warhammer isn’t going to get bent, chipped, or rusty, and even if it does, it’s still a warhammer and will still smash things just fine. Don’t smash melons or coconuts unless you’re prepared for the biological mess that will get left behind; smash blocks of ice frozen inside of old yogurt tubs instead. Wear goggles.
Pressure Cooker. I have one from Fissler and it’s my go to for so many dishes that normally would take ages to cook.
It’s also so convenient to throw dried lentils in there and have them ready in half the time lol.
I just got a pressure cooker as a gift and have no idea when to use it! I did read it makes chicken tender?
It does! I will admit it sucks to find good recipes that use it but you can just cook anything you want in it as long as it normally takes a long period of time. Think sauces, beans, lentils, meats, etc. Things that normally take hours can take 30 minutes for example. Rice is also great and easy to make in it if you don’t have a rice cooker.
So basically if a recipe calls for you to cook something for a long time - throw it in a pressure cooker! Reddit is a great source for info and your pressure cooker should have come with a manual on how long every ingredient should take to make.
I very often make a quick meal with bulgur and some veggies for example. Also try Indian cooking, a lot of it uses pressure cookers!
If you’re in car land, a good solid jump pack.
I recommend Napa .
Mine is also a portable compressor, a flashlight, and it’ll charge your phone. And it’s way more powerful than jumping off of a small car battery using cables.
Those are great !!
I had a combo unit that was all of that, AND a car jack!! It was VERY slow and there’s no way I’d go near a car using it as a Jack, but as an absolute emergency it was useful
Cordless drill. I was a die hard corded guy but then I tried a friend’s one during a big move. Went out and bought one the next day.
I really don’t like the proprietary batteries each company use for their cordless tools though. I don’t want to be locked into 1 company and I don’t want to buy 8 different batteries.
I wanted to punch someone when i realized my Bosch drill and Bosch electric saw use different batteries. They’re identical in size, but the plug part on one is a mirror image of the other and so not interchangeable
While I agree that vendor lock in sucks, getting a universal standard open source tool battery is not likely to happen. I decided to go with the Milwaukee M18. They have a huge variety of tools available, and they all use the same interchangeable battery. I have a drill, an impact driver, a circular saw, and hedge trimmers.
Somewhat tempted to go with corded and a generator. Large battery could work but they cost a lot more if you want high watt output and realistically it’s not going to be used super frequently outside of cable reach.I
The money saved by not buying a battery with every tool would be huge too. Some won’t even let you buy without a battery…
They make some pretty low profile battery adapters now that will let the different systems interoperate.
To be fair, the early ones were pretty crappy compared to what they have now.
At the start, you really couldn’t use it for real work. The convenience came at a huge cost.
These days all but the most extreme tasks can be done with cordless.
I also recommend a cordless impact driver. The amount of torque you can generate with a drill is limited by your ability to hold the drill. The amount of torque you can generate with an impact driver is magnitudes more. Great for driving screws, tightening nuts, I’ve even used it for drilling through wood with a spade bit.
But not your only drill.
I also agree, but to take it further, I decided I’d had enough of cables on my circular saw. Got a small, lightweight one, and omg, it’s SO good.
Not cheap, but a robotic vacuum. It’s a life saver with a shedding dog.
I’ve been thinking about getting one lately, any suggestions?
This is our third one. I would look for one that can be serviced, is self emptying and has mapping technology.
Instant read digital thermometer.
Game changing.
No more over-cooked meats and ending up with tough chicken and rubbery fish. No guesswork if something has reached safe internal temperature. A must have in the kitchen.
A smartwatch or band. You’ll never have to hear notification or ring tones on your phone anymore. In addition, sleep, heart rate monitoring, sports tracking etc. are a big bonus. Cheapest bands are very affordable and obviously there’s no upper limit if you’re a wealthy pig.
Even though I love my old square G-Shock, the pros of wearing my Garmin Vivoactive over it just outweigh the cons.
My Garmin goes with me everywhere. I would recommend a Garmin to everyone. As someone with ADHD who forgets to charge their electronics, having a watch that only needs to be charged once in 8-10 days is absolutely amazing.
Jar opener
If you like pickles
Air fryer
For frying meat without using oil
Slowcooker / Multicooker with a basket.
Throw rice & pulses in it, throw water in it, throw vegetables and fish in the basket.
Turn it on. Do something else. Ding! Meal.
You don’t even have to be on time. This thing will keep it warm.
I’m extremely lazy.I needed a Bluetooth speaker for my work PC (I work from home). I got one with a radio tuner as well. I’m fortunate that I have several radio stations in my area that play music I like. I prefer having some music on in the background while I work, but I was getting tired of having to actually think about what I wanted to listen to next. So I’ve been listening to OTA radio quite a bit, and it’s a nice change of pace from streaming music. And it’s not like the radio bits added much to the cost of the speaker.
Edit: also eyeglasses (sure, I’ll count that as a “gadget”). I hadn’t been to the eye doctor in probably 20 years. Hadn’t really noticed any problems but wanted to get my eyes checked since I had just gotten insurance. Doc recommended a prescription and now it’s like seeing the world in HD instead of standard def. If you’re in your late 30s/early 40s and haven’t gotten your eyes checked, it’s possible your vision has slowly degraded over time and eyeglasses will help more than you realize.
Zojirushi rice cooker. 110% worth the hype. Makes perfect rice everytime.
I can’t convince my wife to buy one. She insists on cooking in a pot on the stove
