I bought a piece of 1.5 inch stiff foam to try to fix a sag in a bed. It didn’t work but having that thick piece of solid foam around has been a life saver.
Need something flat to put a laptop on? Throw it on the foam. Going to be doing something that requires you to be on your knees for a while? Get the foam!
It went from stupid purchase to something I’d gladly replace if it broke.
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.
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.
Does it have a timer safety thing? I know my cat would turn the faucet on and let it flood the house lol.
It does! It runs for minutes without retapping, but not like ten minutes. Never really timed it, and only noticed when I was filling the sink up (it’s a big sink).
I have a Delta branded one. Yea it goes off after a few minutes.
I bought a house with these and didn’t realize it had this feature for like a year (batteries had died). Now I love it. I find myself taping every faucet it use and am annoyed when others don’t turn on.
I actually bought a handfree soap dispenser to go next to it, which is a great combo. Preparing meat or something, I can clean my hands and tap sink with elbow and not worry about cross contamination of everything.
My wife and I always laugh when we catch ourselves tapping other faucets. The soap dispenser sounds like a good idea.
They make wall plug adapters for them, no more batteries.
Not many people put electric outlets under their bathroom sinks
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
You need to get a matching wizard hat
I bet its fantastic orb pondering wear.
How do you know you’re not a wizard when you wear it? Have you tried magic?
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.
I love the concept, tried some and would be willing to pay good money for a kick scooter that folds small enough to fit inside or hang off a big backpack, made of some super light material like carbon fibre
I’ve lost hours searching for such a thing online and the closest one is the Valor scooter. but unfortunately it’s ugly and they only make it for kids and I’m a big guy :/
Unfortunately I think we’re not there yet. My one folds into a meter-long bundle of a metal plank with wheels and a metal pipe and while it;s still light and handy it won’t fit in any backpack.
I feel it’s a lack of appetite. very few adults actually want non-electric. I’ve seen a much wider range of electrics, including small form, experimental ones and more :/
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.
Same here with the ebike. I live near Seattle and everything I need is within a few minutes of ebike driving
If I can’t ebike, then I uber and it saves me a ton
Feel free to check out !micromobility@lemmy.world
Thank you for the recommendation!
It’s great that Lemmy is already growing with niche communities
can we get some more deets on what you use it for in terms of terrain/altitude/distance/weather?
Seriously considering an ebike to replace a 20 minute car commute (12 miles). There are some 750w used bikes on my local craigslist for ~1-2k USD, but there’s also a super cool dual-motor bike with rear suspension for $3k. Any advice?
You don’t need much, 500w is enough.
I have an ebike I use as my daily commuter for a distance of 11 km each way (6.8 miles) over decently hilly terrain in a windy city as a large man. It still only takes 25 minutes and I charge my battery once a week? Maybe twice if I’m tired and using more boost.
Are you mechanically inclined at all? I purchased a motor conversion kit and a battery to convert my regular bike to ebike. It wasn’t really a difficult process, the hardest part was removing the bottom bracket as it was quite stuck. Took some thinking to get enough leverage without having the tool head chew out the bracket teeth. The rest was relatively plug and play. I was able to get the 500 W motor and 48 V 18 A hour battery for ~$1200 CAD together. I use it to commute to work so I wanted a longer range, if you don’t need as much power or as much range you could do it for cheaper.
I went for a mid drive motor which are more efficient but more expensive than hub drive, if you’re budget conscious you could do a hub drive. From my understanding the hub drive can be more difficult for maintenance (the wheel is a special version, so you need to buy another wheel that works with the hub drive if any issues occur) but I’m no expert.
All of that is a moot point if you don’t already have a bike to use, but you could find a local bike recycle store to get one cheap? Or you could get a new bike and convert that. I had a marin fairfax 2 that I converted over and it works great, haven’t had any issues and I’ve put on a couple thousand kms on it since converting (the display tracks total distance which is handy). I believe the marin was $700ish new from my local store.
https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B083J95GJP?geniuslink=true&psc=1
https://www.amazon.ca/10AH-Electric-Bicycle-Lithinum-Battery/dp/B09C1RP9KV
You could search for other options if you don’t want to support amazon, there are different sites to source the parts from, those were just the first two that I saw.
Here’s a battery from a Canadian company.
https://lunacycle.com/no-drill-battery-mount-kit/
Here’s a mounting bracket for the battery if the bracket seems unsteady or the holes don’t line up like with mine.
This is what I ended up going with. Let me know if you have any questions, I’d be happy to chat about the process more.
All of this is canadian specific because I reposted the meat of it from an older comment, bug I’m sure you could find local alternatives easily enough.
Hell many people can get by with just a cheapo e-scooter.
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.
I got one to print parts for my drones thinking it would be no big deal and it turned in to a hobby in itself.
ventilate my dude. read up on breathing around your 3D printer while its printing. no bueno
Wait until you start printing more printers
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.
Similarly - i love my bug a salt
A toy accordion I bought at a truck stop 30 years ago. I blew all of my $30 in vacation spending money on it and everyone said I’d regret it. It ended up kind of joke\prop instrument in all my bands and I still have it and it’s still fun to play.
A PVC pipe cap.
I was making a lightsaber for my kid, and bought a length of clear PVC from Home Depot. (I know, they have bad politics, but Lowe’s didn’t carry clear PVC.) My local store didn’t have any clear PVC or clear accessories in stock, so I had to place an order for shipping, so I got a couple things “just in case” for the build. One of those was a pipe cap.
Didn’t end up using the pipe cap, because lightsabers don’t have that sort of end. It now sits at my desk as a teeny tiny trash can. Bits of thread from sewing, nail clippings, tags I clip off of shirts, a lot of things fit in the teeny tiny trash can. When it’s full, I empty it into the trash, but for a rather small pipe cap, it holds quite a bit of small trash.
What bad politics?
I got the glasses with 90 degree prisms in them so you can read while laying down. The person on the product page looked like an idiot and thought it would be funny, but I’m on my 3rd pair now
Need testimony from people using this with prescription
Mechanical keyboard. Almost had no money back then, but wanted to treat myself. It costed 100$, and I regretted it the next morning. Felt like shit, but it was so cool to type on.
After 5 years, this metal-frame keyboard managed to survive many outside gigs, long travels, literal war, and it’s still with me. And I still love typing on it. Sometimes I code just to type. You can guess why I don’t use code completion tools.
I got into mechs and bought a bunch of them over a few years, my last one being a ducky with silent reds.
3 years ago I bought a microsoft ergo keyboard and have never looked back. So comfortable.
Now, maybe what I should have bought was an ergodox, but I’m too happy to justify spending $150+ to try it out.
8 years ago, i got an EUC, aka Electric Unicycle, seamed difficult strange, i managed to learn how to ride it, everybody said i looked like an alien…
8 years later i ride a Veteran Sherman S (suspension model) and i freakngly still love to ride it!! Got a couple of friends hooked, now i’ve got a whole team in Greece! 😉
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.
I read that as “fap desk” was intrigued then disappointed.
Just cut a hole in the cutting board
That’s how you end up getting a cutting board stuck on your dick.
For fap desk you really want silicone
I got a really girly looking beanie (I’m a guy) at a white elephant gift exchange and it became my favorite beanie. It got stolen and I’m sad that I can’t find it again.
I bet it looked amazing on you! I hope you’ll find a worthy replacement.
Had a totally custom beanie made at Etsy. See if you can find something similar. They can usually customize it to get a close match to the old one.
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!
I have a set of these designed for musicians, theres an open channel through them, and you put a special “button” at te outward end, that lowers volume without affecting sound quality. I think the company is called “Etymotic Research”
