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.
20 computers. I can’t stop getting more computers I need help there’s so many computers they’re in every room and they’re computing aaaaaaaa
You certainly won’t regret buying 20 computers.
I mean, they’re not 40 cakes or anything!
I had this same disorder. I cured it temporarily by giving them away to everyone I know. Christmas, birthdays, Thanksgiving, everyone’s getting a computer, doesn’t matter if you already have one.
They’re starting to pile up again though and now I don’t know what to do because all my friends and family won’t talk to me because I keep giving them computers.
Go to church parking lots in early summer and put them in people’s back seats, you will have to take some zucchini out to make room though.
Wait, when did I leave this comment?
Someone I know (who isn’t close to me geographically) said their laptop just broke and now they only have their phone… I wish I could get to them. I have like six computers waiting to be used for stuff, the rest of them I’m playing with/learning with!
Oh I have this problem too hahah
Does a bicycle count? Changed my life.
As a Dutch person I would assume everyone already owns at least one bicycle.
_At least _ one.
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.
What’s the advantage over a smartphone?
- Better quality DAC
- Don’t have to drain my phone’s battery
- My music collection is big enough to fill my phone’s storage, and they don’t come with SD card slots anymore
- Smaller and lighter than a phone
- Definitely will last way longer and is easier to
- My phone doesn’t have a 3.5mm jack 😭
That’s everything I can think of right now
well yeah. But most phones w/o a 3.5 mm jack don’t have an integrated DAC anyways, so the choice is up to you.
But the storage and the fact that it’s all in a light weight bundle, that’s indepedent of your phone is pretty convincing.
I remember having on, back in the day, that ran on a single AAA battery for a week an was marginally larger than one of these. Unfortunately I tinkered with trying to run it on an external power supply when I knew to little about electronics and ran a few too may Volts through it. Otherwise this thing would probably still work fine. I kinda never looked back since was content enough with my phone for listening to music. But I do have fond meories of those things, and I miss the 3.5 mm jack on my most recent phone, maybe I should reconsider…
Maybe so! If you do pick one up, you’ll have to tell us how it goes, I’m curious
I guess it’s not for everybody, but for my specific context it’s pretty great. I think if I did have a phone with expandable storage, a 3.5mm jack, and still had an unlockable bootloader I could run Graphene/Lineage/Postmarket/etc on, it could probably replace the music player easily enough. I’d probably still end up eating a lot more battery that way though
Durability I imagine. My 10+ year old MP3 players still work fine. My phones from 5 years ago don’t.
For me, the primary benefit is that it’s NOT my smartphone. Music is a separate, intentional thing, divorced from the pocket distraction machine. YMMV.
Also wondering this, VLC can run so many formats too
- 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 magic wand vibrator. truly next level stuff
Oh I am sure it gets you on the next level!
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.
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.
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.
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.
