Got a bidet as a joke gift for Christmas a few years ago, it has been an absolute game changer. Hate pooping anywhere but home now, I actually feel clean, and use much less toilet paper.

An oversized poncho cape from the local Goodwill. It was woven in different shades of blue and while I’d never wear it outside, I’ve used it as a wearable blanket at home for a few years now.

I found out it was actually hand made, and costs 300+ USD from the original shop. Bonus points, I feel like a wizard when I wear it

I needed a “lap desk” or something to put my laptop on, but I wanted it to be low-profile and I could only find a wooden cutting board. Now wooden cutting boards are the only thing I use as lap desks because most actual lap desks I find are super bulky.

Here’s an odd one my wife and I were just talking about. Some years ago, we were redoing our kitchen and the contractor told us to go buy the kitchen faucet we wanted. We went off, looked at several, and picked the one we thought looked the best with what we were doing.

When the contractor went to install it, he opened the box and a battery pack fell out. I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why a faucet would need batteries. It turned out that you can turn it on and off by touching it anywhere (handle, faucet itself, whatever), you just leave the physical handle open and set where you want it, then you can touch on and off. I thought it was the dumbest thing ever and we’d never use it.

Flash Forward to now and it’s one of the most used conveniences we’ve ever bought. All those times your hands are covered in raw meat or other cooking mess? Just touch the faucet with your elbow. Rinsing a bunch of veggies one at a time? Tap on, tap off. It works flawlessly, unlike those touchless ones at the airport: no delay and works every time. We will never have a kitchen sink without it - my wife wants them for the bathroom.

My wife bought me a Beard Bib as a joke gift after I found it online one day. It’s basically a smaller version of the bibs you wear when getting your hair cut, but with suction cups attached to the bathroom mirror to hold it horizontal and catch stray hairs when using an electric shaver. It looks ridiculous.

I now use it every time I trim my beard, even if my wife still laughs at me every time she sees me in it. Cleaning up all the stray hairs was always a pain in the ass, but this thing does a surprisingly good job at catching 99% of the hair, and I can just brush it all into the trash when I’m done.

Bug zapper flyswatter. Like you can buy at Harbor Freight for a few bucks. It might not be a terribly effective solution to the overall fly population, but in terms of grim-bloody-vengeance-per-dollar, it’s one of the best investments I’ve ever made.

A 3D-Printer, I thought I just play around with it and get bored, but you discover so many things that you can do!

The handle on the fridge broke? Print new ones. Need a Flowerpot? Just print one. The router needs a wallmount? I have one ready in a few Hours.

Also I can watch it print for hours, very fascinating and calming.

Bed sheet suspenders. Dumb problem, stupidly cheap, horribly made, and ABSOLUTELY fixed the friggin sheets being yanked off the corner of the bed twice a night by my tumble-dry-medium sleeper of a spouse.

When they finally broke after almost 2 years I sewed some that’ll last 10 years and I don’t regret them at all.

Maybe not stupid, but I purchased a pair of bone conducting headphones just because I thought they would be better for running, and harder for me to lose. I wasn’t expecting much, but damn, they have been so much better than I expected. Even though the sound quality isn’t quite as good, they work so much better with my sensory processing issues, and I can just leave them on all day without concern. Because I’ve got curly hair, people don’t even know I’m wearing them, and because they don’t go in my ear canal, they don’t impact my ability to hear/talk/interact with the world around me.

An ebike: I don’t even really drive anymore most of the time and it beats the hell out of being stuck in traffic. Getting around is fun again.

I always enjoyed cycling and still ride my MTB, but for getting around town quickly, ebikes are hard to beat.

Custom-made ear plugs. Even if you only wear ear plugs occasionally (I do when in a noisy hotel, or when a neighbor goes a bit too crazy), they are so worth having.

Basically you go to an audiologist and they put something kinda liquid in each of your ears to take a mold of your ear canals. A couple of weeks later, you have plastic earplugs that have the exact shape of your inner ears.

Upsides: • They work, always. I would typically use wax or silicon disposable ear plugs before that, and sometimes in the middle of the night they might move and let the sound in; those don’t. Also, foam disposable ear plugs don’t stay in my ear, don’t ask me why. • They never hurt. Since disposable ear plugs get shoved into your inner ear until they take the shape, they continuously push against the walls of your ear canals. I would often feel kinda bruised after using them for a long time. • They are crazy comfortable. Put your ear on a pillow, and you barely feel them at all. • But do they block too much sound? That’s up to you. Basically, you choose the level of noise you want to keep out, which I believe is achieved by using different kinds of plastic.

They’re not a trivial purchase (I think mine cost $150), but then you use them for decades, so it’s definitely worth it. It was a stupid purchase in my case, because I bought them on a whim out of anger against my neighbor’s party one night; but they’ve followed me everywhere since!

Shower mirror. It has a base that suctions to the wall and a reservoir that you fill with hot water so that it doesn’t fog. I had no idea how much better it was than shaving at the sink. If I’m in a hurry I’ll sink shave but I love shower shaving and I love that mirror.

Edit: Here’s the one I use. No major complaints, just remove the mirror between uses and re-suction every once in a while.

Scooter. Not an electric one. I had a thought once “hey I did ride one in childhood, maybe it can be a bit of nostalgic fun from time to time”. Got myself the cheapest Chinese thing I could find, “no point investing too much into a fad”.

Turned out a scooter is absolute peak urban mobility. Short distances become much shorter. Mid-long distances become short. Granted, for a longer trip somehow the time gains diminish, probably because it’s not as efficient as a bike. But a scooter isn’t a long-hauler. It’s there to zip through an empty mall. It’s there to be folded up in a second and brought into a bus or a shop without being a hassle. It’s like 3-4 kg, not too fast for sidewalks but fast enough for bike roads, extremely easy to stop, doubles as a cart when carrying bags of groceries home.

The chinese one broke after 1 season because I was riding it everywhere. Then I got myself one from a better company, I chose it for small weight and portability. It’s technically children’s thing but I’m well below weight tolerance and also smol so it’s easy to handle. It’s already like a 5th year and whenever it’s not raining or too cold I ride it for shopping, errands, leisure walks, to work… Almost daily.

A burr grinder for coffee beans. I thought coffee snobs were full of shit. I was wrong.

A Raspberry Pi. I bought it out of a whim and now I use it as a portable desktop computer, I can use Alpine Linux with my files and my setup on virtually any system that doesn’t whitelist MAC addresses.

Especially handy when your university has contracts with Microsoft so you aren’t supposed to use competitive software, I feel like I’m breaking the law.