An air fryer. It was a bit of an impulse buy and I didn’t think I would use it very much but as it turns out it’s much more versatile than I initially thought. I’m actually considering getting rid of my regular oven since I’ve rarely used it since I got my airfryer.

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.

I have an off-brand swiffer handle that I’ve actually packed up and moved several times because it’s the perfect size to unclog my vacuum.

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 bought a milk frother recently. I don’t even drink coffee. But I saw that it was a great way to make a protein shake without clumps and easy to clean. It does do that. But it also been great for mixing my pre workout or soap for cleaning. I love it!

My tablet for school. I bought it because I was sick of shifting through stacks of handwritten notes while writing papers. Turns out it was the best purchase I made as a student. I haven’t bothered to write on paper since, and it’s saved me a ton of time and money (otherwise spent on printing supplies). I’ve started using it for work as well. I don’t know if I could function without one now.

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I wanted to buy a small silicone spatula for specific uses, but they were only sold in a set of 5. I was like what am I going to do with that many spatulas but they’re super useful and are amazing at scraping and I love having extras so I don’t have to constantly wash them.

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.

A reusable floss tool. I was trying to cut down on waste by ditching those single-use floss picks. It’s just a forked piece of plastic that you thread with standard floss. I bought it 5 years ago and it’s still going strong!

More of a gift I got for Christmas than something I bought, but a rechargeable wand vacuum. Thought it was really stupid, but the dang thing is useful. I’ve used it for anything ranging from sucking up hair in the bathroom to getting the baseboards around the house so I don’t have to get a duster to do it that way. Have even taken it out to the car to remove a lot of the dirt and debris that gets into the driver-side footwell.

Was so versatile, I persuaded my folks to get one as well. They now love it too.

Local made products. In my case it’s LED lamps. It was started when i read articles on LED and in the end i was searching if there are locally made LED lamps and i found out there are some and they are quiet huge since they are doing contract making road lamps for the government.

So i look for the brand on the popular ecommerce platform and i was surprised that the price is like a quarter of the popular imported brand such as Philips, although the Lumens per Watt is lower (110 Lumens per watt). I was skeptical and hesitated to buy it at first fearing it’ll become useless junk. But i took the chance and order it anyway.

I received the product the next day, four 3000K color Lamp. I’m testing it first before permanently installing it and what really surprised me the Lamp does not gets hot, only lukewarm, i guess its because of the board design where the individual LED are not tightly packed.

I gradually replaced all LED lamps at home with locally made ones, they even have 4500K color which i installed for my gf room since shes doing a lot of times doing make up and i think that requires neutral color lighting.

When I worked at a small startup, we were moving to a new office and I was asked to help with the buildout. I engaged with the flooring vendor, and he came by one day to drop off a carpet sample. He put it on my desk where my mouse was. It was a rectangle sample of tight knit office carpet, about 18”x22”. When I got back to my desk, I just put my mouse on top of it and started using it as a mouse pad. That was 15 years and 3 companies ago, and I still use it as my mousepad. It’s perfect for the mouse to glide on, soft enough for my wrist to rest on, absorbent of sweat or drink condensation, and large enough I never hit the edge. I will never not use it. It is my mouse carpet, and I love it.

ANTAGEN dishbrush. I was at IKEA and saw they had dish brushes for less than a dollar a piece, so I stocked up on a few.

They last forever as far as dish brushes are concerned. It did clean-up for 2 large meals every single day for over a year before it started getting worn out. We’d throw it in the dishwasher at night to clean and sterilize it.

Ember mug. I saw James Hoffmann’s review and went, “how good could it be?”

It’s the only mug I can drink from now.