Just went down the aliexpress rabbit hole again. Theres really everythinf for some of really niche things that i wouldnt ever buy, but some things really do look appealing. I wonder what do you guys use daily thats worth lets say under $20
A decent headlamp. Flashlights are well and good, and sometimes necessary too. But if you’ve ever had to do something intricate with both hands in the complete dark, a good headlamp can be so much better in those situations
100%. I found one with grooves, so you can tilt and lock on whatever angle you like. Going to use as secondary light soirce on my bike rides and camping trips
I worked with a guy who wore a headlamp nearly all the time. When people would ask about it he would always tell them “There are only two reasons NOT to wear a headlamp. Either you don’t have a head, or you don’t have a headlamp.”
I will never forget this.
Oh phew, one of those reasons applies to me. Guess I don’t need one.
What are you doing in the dark that’s so intricate? Genuine question.
I’ve done fibre optic splicing entirely under the light of a headtorch. I don’t think you could get much more intricate than that.
I got a Lightbar brand “lightbar pro”, so good. The only downside to it is that there is a design flaw where there is no strain relief on the main power cable so twisting it will lead to failure. I don’t know if they fixed it since I bought mine, but some glue on the power wire should sort it out.
You get a nice wide diffuse light so you can see all around you and what you are working on. It isn’t the best for distance, but most of the time I am working I need to see my surroundings and what I am working on.
And you can get such small ones now! My spouse has one she keeps in her purse where the strap is just a thin wire that retracts into the unit. It’s not even uncomfortable! Needless to say I’m jealous!
Completely agree on this. For some reason I’ve gone through like four at this point. They seem to break for some reason. Even tried the REI route with the black diamond brand and they don’t seem to last. I need to find a better brand.
Petzl. Had mine for 14 years
Was just using mine earlier!
Great for walking the dog at night, in suburban or rural settings. A phone flashlight is annoying to juggle while also controlling a leash and impossible when I need to scoop poop.
rice cooker. i have one that i use like a fancy crockpot so i can leave the house and come home to hot food. mandolin or a food processor is a close second, makes chopping veggies a breeze
Bidet
Seriously-- I kinda wanted one for a long time, but I just assumed they were expensive. They are not. You can install it yourself. If you do so, you will never go back, and it will change your life for the better.
Bidet.
Why did I read this in Ryan Reynolds’ voice? Even had that moment at the end where he looks directly into the camera.
Love my Luxe!
I just bought one… you’re personally responsible for my absolute joy…or will receive all of my hate. I’ll update
Fair warning: this will (further) ruin public restrooms
I think many people assume it’s those seats. Like in Japan… at least I did. But this is not correct, not all of them are. In my country we use these ‘wands’ which work when you turn on the sink faucet. Has a little finger trigger. It’s very convenient, clean. I’ll never go back!!
Bum gun?
Haven’t tried it… 🤣… but if it squirts, it works? 🤔
And great for doing dishes and washing vegetables!
Plz no… 😝
In a lot of places, a bidet refers to the whole integrated rig, the $30 under the seat things are washlets and the hand sprayer is advertised as a cloth diaper sprayer.
I hate when hotels don’t have bidets, I really wish it was as common as toilets
Back in time, a long time ago, when I was 19 and spent about a year traveling abroad, I learned that a bidet in the bathroom isn’t a standard everywhere. Couldn’t understand why.
Magnetic soap holder.
You shove a little metal bit into your soap bar, and the bar dangles from a magnet on a stand that holds it over the sink.
Soap dries quickly, no scum in the soap dish, any drippage falls right into the sink.
Only downside is the magnet falls out when the bar gets smaller, so you have to mash the old bar into the bottom of the new one to keep from wasting it.
I’ve never heard of this witchcraft. This is exactly what I need.
Edit: heard not beard
Yes beard, not not beard.
A decent reusable steel water bottle. Doesn’t need to cost a lot, and really cuts down on dishes at home
How does it reduce dishes? Water bottles are one of the more annoying things to wash, in my experience, because my hands aren’t small enough to fit anymore.
Edit: Yes, I have a bottle brush. It’s just that it’s a bit of a hassle to soap it from dry and then have to dry it somewhere before storing it again. I wash everything else with a rough sponge normally.
Get a metal one and put it in the dishwasher. Or get a bottle brush.
Also, occasionally filling it with white vinegar and letting it sit overnight can help clean deposits.
ETA: In general putting plastic in the dishwasher is not advised.
I see you’ve never had a partner with ADHD! Going around collecting all the half-drank water glasses in our household used to be a full-time job.
I have not! In fact, I’m usually the one carrying around water glasses because they’re less hassle to drink from and far easier to (visibly) clean than any other vessel is. I try to limit myself to two or three in the house though…
Unfortunately we’re both the problem, so there would just be glasses EVERYWHERE. Carrying one bottle around just made more sense
Use a bottle brush. 🤦🏼♂️
It’s a pain to take a tool out (and wait for it to dry) just for one or two bottles.
You’re not serious. 😬
It’s a brush. Shake it vigorously for 10-20 seconds and it’s dry enough. FFS. I hope you’re not serious.
It’s not necessary to wash water bottles.
Reusable steel water bottles should absolutely be washed.
I mean it’s just storing water. You do have to wash it if you store other liquid beverages like coffee or juice. But if you use it just for water, I don’t see why it would contain any bacteria or scum or whatever.
It does (eventually) because it’s a dark wet environment you’re constantly polluting with your mouth germs.
That’s nasty.
i use almost nothing but stainless steel drinking cups now
For cups (for cool liquids), I use aluminum since it cools my drink down quickly with just a small amount of ice.
Hit up the Goodwill or similar, you can find stainless bottles for dollars.
Local DI (deseret industries-a Mormon goodwill equivalent) has them for $1.50. Pick your lid, thermo flask, size, straw or naw. Get 6 for $9. Or buy 1-2 a bunch of times. My only transportation is cycling (other than busses/trains). Hydration is essential for proper functioning on all of these.
Water is life homie.
Man I hate these. They make water warm up instantly (unless vacuum insulated) and I could just one a single glass the whole day, or multiple days.
Chopsticks. Use chopsticks to turn over bacon.
Not to mention they are the superior salad utensil.
Agreed. Chopsticks make it so much easier to fold up my salad greens and minimize the amount of salad dressing I get in my beard and mustache.
Use less dressing? I mean, if your salad is dripping, you might wanna look at your ratios there. 😅
Never said it was dripping. It just rubs against facial hair while eating. Ice cream, sandwiches, beverages, lots of foods have an interaction with facial hair. It’s something I live with because it’s not that big of a deal and using chopsticks makes it even less so.
You could try grooming? Tame that wilderness, tiger.
Why does this matter to you? You keep making assumptions and then trying to solve them as though it’s an issue. I’m just agreeing with OP that’s it’s easier to eat salad with chopsticks and especially for someone who has a beard. If you don’t have a beard and don’t fully understand why it would be easier, then it’s not really relevant to you, and that’s okay.
And by that same logic: if I do have a beard and know what it’s like, then it is relevant and that’s okay, too. Especially when it might be solid advice, either way. Who knows. Up to you, really. 🤗
Also the best way to eat Cheetos and keep your fingers clean
Daiso sells large kitchen ones. They’re great.
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What are you using a barometer for so frequently?
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How would a barometer help ?
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I second a headlamp. Almost mandatory if you’re camping I think. I got some cheap ones and use them around the house / garage too. More useful than they seem at first glance.
Long USB cables can be problematic, and to avoid problems may need to be inconveniently thick and stiff. I’ve taken to using an AC extension chord for most of the length when I need to charge far from an outlet.
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Speaking as an American - an electric kettle. Just a thing that plugs into the wall and boils water.
I use it for tea, of course, but I also use it any time I need boiling water for something, because it’s faster than a kettle sitting on the stove and it doesn’t use gas.
As a Canadian I now have 2 Electric kettles. Replaced my traditional electric kettle with a Gooseneck kettle for my pour over coffee. Still works great for tea. Also have a stove top gooseneck kettle for the camper when camping.
Depends on your lifestyle ofc but a cheap 6’ tape measurer keychain has come in clutch more times than I can count. Within the past week I’ve used it to
measure the hatch of my car to see if a box could fit
compared a 14" pizza to a 17" to my friend group to figure what size pizza to buy
measured an entire house worth of soffit
The thing was like $5 and honestly gets more use out of anything in my EDC except maybe my earbuds and even then I barely touch them since graduating from uni
Make sure you test it against one you’re sure is accurate. My wife bought one that looks right at first blush, but it’s off by at least 5%.
That’s a funny cautionary tale.
Roughly 0.5 inches would you say?
Dude, you’ve gotta factor in way more than diameter if you’re trying to make wise pizza choices. They have calculators for that: https://www.omnicalculator.com/food/pizza-comparison
Your link is the other way around, you should put the text between [ ] and the link between ( ), i.e. text, the way you did it the text that appears is the url but when you click it it tries to go to literally the address
url.
I use the one on my leather man micra all the time. Also fans of Adam Savage know about his measuring device tattooed on his arm which is cool too.
Funny, I was just watching some lockdown-era Tested videos and was wondering what that tattoo was on Adam’s arm. Reminds me of my mechanic friends with a 10mm socket tattooed so that “they’ll never lose it”
I keep several full size 30’ tape measures in different places like my truck, kitchen junk drawer and (of course) toolboxes. You might find that more useful than a 6’. Cheap ones are fine, I think, as long as you don’t drop them.
The appeal is to have it fit on your keychain/ in your pocket so that you’ve always got it rather than having to run back to the car or wherever one might be
Thank you, now I know what tattoo to get if I pass by a walk in place. I’m always tempted but the things I want aren’t exactly walk in tattoos. Only question now is to go halfway up my forearm or to my elbow. Guess I could go all the way down my index finger, too, but I’m not sure how long a tattoo on the side of the finger would last, plus all the possible bends when including the hand could reduce measurement accuracy by quite a bit.
Luftkin makes a high contrast 8’ the size of most 6’ and it is glorious. I have one as a daily driver for work, cold dead hands.
The rest of their tape measures in that same line are great.
Floss picks. Flossing is actually more important than brushing and it’s really nice to have a pack of floss picks at your desk so you can floss absent mindedly while watching a video or even in bed.
It’s so much wasted plastic though. I 3D printed a handle and with a little sandpaper to smooth the handle out, it’s super easy to floss. Using this one currently: https://www.printables.com/model/267704-dental-floss-holder-with-tensioner/comments
Would be better with the 90 degree bend.
But also PLA will grow bacteria after putting it in your mouth even if you wash it.
I actually modified it in solidworks to have a nice curve, and open at the tips vs trying to thread the floss everytime.
Bacteria? You’re brushing your teeth with a reused toothbrush. Besides, that’s what immune systems are for.
Different plastics have different properties, like how much moisture they hold. You can clean polypropylene but you’ll never clean off PLA
I used petg, better for the engineering stuff that I do.
Feel free to google whether you should be putting petg in your mouth and then giving it time to grow bacteria and then putting it back in your mouth again.
(you may be shocked by the answer)
I understand your point, and still disagree.
If I could injection mold it out of polycarbonate, I would. I’d still rather use this than mindlessly buy 150 plastic prongs, only 5% of each disposed piece being actual floss.
I don’t think anyone is shocked. PETG is probably the best solution here since it can be food grade and transparent to help with disinfection via UV. Would probably be a good idea to limit each one to a month of use or something but it’s still better than the wasteful alternative.
There are also wooden floss picks out there, for those who don’t have a printer but want to use less plastic.
Awesome! Thank you so much, I have floss picks that I hate as they’re crappy and break or stretch out before I can do my whole mouth so I end up using two. Definitely printing this when I get home!
Glad you like it. Maybe snap the ends off as threading the floss through the holes is a pita haha.
I also thought that too and I’ve been looking for a reusable one now. I bought one but it’s too much of a hassle and frankly takes more time to change floss than actually flossing (have to unwind, remove from track unwind again, pull floss, rewind, align with track, rewind again and trim)
There’s always a tradeoff: security or convenience, environmental destruction or convenience, healthy life or convenience…
I don’t mind at least trying to do something right. But I don’t know other people’s lives so most I’ll do is ask them to consider or try something new.
I started doing this a few years ago, and it made a world of difference. I dislike the whole process of using regular floss; having to wrap it around my fingers and then try to maneuver it around inside my mouth, all while staring at myself in the bathroom mirror is a mental burden. Now I just keep a bag of floss picks in easily reachable places where I tend to spend the most time, and I’ve ended up with really good flossing habits.
I’m in the same boat. I didn’t floss until I started using those little picks. I’ve looked into reusable floss holders, but none of them seem like something I want to regularly stick in my mouth.
A year’s worth of floss picks is the same amount of plastic as just a couple of bottles/containers. If you feel bad about the plastic waste but can’t find an alternative, you can always focus on getting fewer single-use plastic containers.
There are also wooden ones; still making trash but at that point it’s equivalent to a bad toothpick habit lol
Hmmm. Wooden toothpicks would make me look like some 1950s gumshoe…
Dentist hate this one little trick… because it is not actually as good as flossing. Floss picks tend to have a very tight piece of floss. It is good for cleaning the surfaces directly between your teeth, but not the curved parts of the teeth.
I hate regular floss (or rather sticking my fat fingers deep into my mouth), so flossing sticks are better than nothing.
What I do to mediate that is sticking in the floss pick, turning it and pulling it out while under tension and whatever it doesn’t get will be removed by brushing. My dentist told me I have very healthy teeth (I actually don’t even brush very consistently (please don’t do this even though it happened to work out for me (I was depressed, just listen to your dentist))). I also floss the gap between each tooth twice, once applying pressure to one side and vice versa.
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Pretty niche, but a citrus squeezer. I cook a lot of Asian food and it’s much better to put half a lime in the squeezer at a time than try and hand squeeze the juice out.
But… Isn’t that standard equipment in every household?
I don’t think I’ve ever seen one.
I assume they mean one with some sort of lever to make applying pressure easier?
Maybe. We had one of that too, but didn’t use it too much either
Strongly disagree, any cheap squeezer is way harder to use than a fork and my hand.
That’s what she said.
Boneconduction earphones. They are cheaper than you think and I use mine to listen to music while swimming. Also great for music when you need to be able to hear to things around you (it doesn’t block any external sound, so don’t use in noisy environments)
it doesn’t block any external sound, so don’t use in noisy environments
It’s actually because I work in a high noise environment that I got into bone-conduction headphones. They still work when you’re wearing earplugs.
Nvr thought of that but wouldnt good earbuds with active noise canceling be better for you?
No, it wouldn’t. When I say I work in a high noise environment I mean that I’m surrounded by enough machine noise that I wear ear plugs to protect my hearing. Active noise cancellation isn’t a substitute for actual PPE. It’d be cool if it worked that way, but sadly not.
Bone conduction works great with earplugs though. The only minor downside is that earplugs make the bass frequencies stronger, so I need to open up the EQ settings and tweak things a bit if I’m listening to music, but that’s not really a big deal. I’m usually listing to podcasts or audio books at work anyway.
ANC plays the inverse of the soundwaves. So a loud noise isn’t made safe, it is just made inaudible and just as loud and harmful.
They are not safety products, only sound deadening earplugs or muffs do that.
Don’t the soundwaves cancel each other out?
Anyway my bigger fear would be a short hiccup or outright malfunction and suddenly you stand unprotected within loud machines.
They do, but not in the intuitive way one would think. They work because there’s a passive seal around the hearing, thus the headphones only have to cancel the smaller amount of noise that gets into your ear, not the full loud noise outside in the environment. This is why ANC need to have mics inside your ears.
The problem is actually that the louder the noise, the louder the noise canceling would have to be. And at a certain point the passive seal cannot stop much of the outside noise, and if poorly designed, if the speaker tries to cancel that noise, it would be blasting massive soundwaves into your ears. But most consumer speakers can’t achieve that and don’t even try. So after a certain threshold, they won’t work and can’t help you with the noise. And the passive noise block is not even remotely good enough as a straight up earplug. So they are not considered protective gear, at least not the consumer devices, only aviation grade ANC is considered protective gear. But you’ll see that they have massive ear cover,s with huge speakers and drivers, and elastic tensors on the headband to absolutely seal your ears and some truly state of the art audio processing that would make the most snob audiophile blush in envy.
They do make some of those for ground crews, construction sites and heavy machinery, but they insists that they are only effective if paired with a sound baffle earplug.
Noise cancelling earbuds or similar do not protect your hearing.
They do not make a loud noise quiet. It does not matter if they are working or not. All they do is make noise seem quiet, you are still being exposed to the same level of noise.
Do you have sources backing your claim?
Here is one backing mine: https://hillhearbetter.com/do-noise-cancelling-headphones-protect-hearing/
From your source:
While noise-canceling technology can effectively reduce the perception of external sounds, it does not necessarily eliminate the potential for hearing damage.
In noise-canceling headphones, a microphone captures external sounds, and the internal speaker generates a counteracting sound wave that is 180 degrees out of phase. This process effectively nullifies the external sound at ear level. However, it is important to note that the sound pressure from external noise sources still exists even with active noise cancellation in place.
that’s … not how science works
:(
Any particular brand you recommend?
When I looked into them, a lot of people seem to speak highly of Shokz/aftershokz. I haven’t used them so can’t make a personal recommendation.
One thing to note is that if you want them for swimming you need to get ones with built in storage bc Bluetooth can’t really penetrate water
Thanks for the excellent tip, never would have occurred to me that water would cause a problem for the Bluetooth signal!
No idea, I bought a generic one on aliexpress that is ‘good enough’, wouldnt recommend
Driving gloves. Some halfway decent calfskin gloves make it nicer to drive, whether the steering wheel is hot in the summer, cold in the winter, or if you’re going to be driving long distance. Not sure if real leather will be less than $20, but seen some cheap fingerless work gloves make driving more comfortable.
Clip on sunglasses that fit on my eyeglasses. Super easy to clip on, cost about ten bucks. So nice to not have to squint as much.
Dim light bulbs. Nearly every bulb in my house is as dim as I can manage. Some are salt lamps and some are those flicker fire bulbs. Either way, it makes the light at night a little warmer and a little dimmer, and all around a lot more cozy, which really is what one wants. Keep a couple of the overhead bulbs at the brighter end in case you need them, but dimmer bulbs make me a lot happier at night.
I got a new house with LEDs and at night it’s lit like a 7-Eleven. I feel it’s part of the reason I never get to sleep before midnight.
Dimmable smart bulbs, a mix of white and RGB.
Smart lights to wake you up in the morning. Vastly prefer it to a normal alarm clock.
On a similar note, I have an alarm clock that has a thing I can put under my pillow that vibrates to wake me up. (The box said it’s made for Deaf people, which makes sense lol). As someone who doesn’t wake up to ANYTHING, this works for me almost every time.
This doesn’t work for everyone obviously, but I leave my blinds open at night so that the sun will wake me up. Works for me when I don’t have to be anywhere before noon.
A sunrise alarm clock will do the trick, too
I had one before but the light was so weak and if you were sleeping on the side with the back of your head towards it, it did nothing. Though to be fair I do have a smart light in my nightstand lamp to do the same, but it is more like extra.
There’s better and worse ones, obviously. Mine is so bright it lights up the entire room by itself.
The $8 Munchkin 10oz Sippy Cup. It’s technically made for toddlers but it excels over any other travel mug unless you want insulation. I don’t care about insulation because I don’t want to wait an hour until it’s a good drinking temp. Instead of some stupid spout mechanism that gets dingy and can’t be washed in the dishwasher, there’s a simple silicone lid you can drink from on all sides, and it’s all dishwasher safe and super easy to clean. It also contains a perforated screen perfect for steeping tea leaves or cardamom tea. Of course there’s the brilliantly simple spillproof aspect as well. I’ve had mine for 4 years and there’s zero wear on it.
You can hook the tiny handles on things too, which is nice when going hands-free.
Jokes aside, that’s a pretty good idea.
I got the one without handles so it’s just a round cup, fits in the car cupholders that way. There’s a whole bunch of customizations like that though, you got handles, different sizes, colors, materials, even an insulated one, and all interchangeable parts from what I’ve seen. There’s a stainless steel one that looks like any other travel mug.
They are interchangeable, my one year old uses a bunch. Thanks for tuning me onto the steel one, I’ll have to check it out!!!
The handle thing was a bit of a joke, though the handles do hook on to stuff pretty well. I can hook it onto my belt when carrying the little one.
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