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.
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.
How does it feel being superior to all the lame mousepad users?
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.
Bidet crew represent
There are dozens of us!
A significant portion of the world uses water to clean after doing their business! It’s just us westerners that are odd about it.
I’m curious what the history behind it is, because I never feel clean if I only wipe. Like if you handled faeces with your hands (for whatever reason) would you be OK with just wiping it off with a paper towel? I sure wouldn’t!
(FYI, “there are dozens of us” is an Arrested Development quote. Your questions are definitely valid, but I’m not sure the poster of the comment actually meant much by it, besides the joke.)
It is not a significant portion. Most countries still use TP
Some cursory googling for this turned up a value by researcher Alex Crumbie, though I didn’t find any papers about it. According to them however 30% of the world uses toilet paper, the majority consumer being China. The remaining 70% of the world finds other solutions.
I’m from Italy. It’s full of bidets here.
Va bene! That’s not so much the case here in Sweden.
It kind of boggles the mind though. Setting aside the fact that paper only can’t possibly clean enough, isn’t it also more environmentally friendly to use water? I mean obviously if you pour a bathtub over your butt every time you do your business, then probably not so much, but no one uses that much water.
I use only water from the bidet.
If it wasnt for China, Westerners would also still scratch their asses with shells and stones.
So middle east gave them bidet and China gave them paper. They are so lucky
Hahaha, I had no clue about the shells. You piqued my interest, so I went down the toilet paper history rabbit hole.
I knew that the Romans used communal sponges, I didn’t know they were called tersorium though. Shockingly they spread disease.
Apparently here in the north, the vikings used animal bones, rags, and oyster shells! I’m not surprised we didn’t use paper though, since we didn’t really get paper until the Christians came and brought paper with them, and even then it was only for the educated Christian elite for hundreds of years, up until around the 1200-1300 or so, a good 700 years after people in China wiped their butts with paper!
Toilet paper started being produced here in Sweden in 1882, and the first factory stayed producing until sometime in the early 2000s.
Until the 1900s common folk often used leaves, grass, or the bottom hem of their skirt to clean themselves.
That last bit sounds really gross by modern standards, but given that skirts came in layers, and were really long, they were already covered with the muck of the outside ground so in the grand scheme of things I don’t think it made a very big difference.
According to the manufacturer, the first toilet paper (in Sweden) without wood chips and splinters was released in 1935.
My bidet butt could never handle scraping with oysters or splinterful toilet paper; I’d just scrape my anus off. I can barely use regular toilet paper as it is. People of old were built different hahahaha.
Hahaha, I had no clue about the shells.
He doesn’t know how to use the three seashells!
Demolition Man is a cool movie
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
How do you know you’re not a wizard when you wear it? Have you tried magic?
I bet its fantastic orb pondering wear.
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
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
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).
A burr grinder for coffee beans. I thought coffee snobs were full of shit. I was wrong.
Which one did you get? I’m looking for a good one that won’t break the bank.
Not op but I have the baratza encore. Not exactly cheap but could be affordable if you save up. They’re 150 new on Amazon and go for around 80-100 on ebay here in USA. It’s really good too, especially if you stick with coffee only being a casual hobby or even just want your morning coffee to be good and don’t wanna futz with anything else.
Also an FYI, if you ever do get around to doing espresso, you’ll see a ton of PPL saying you can’t use it for espresso. They are honestly just more enthusiastic about coffee than I am, because I used an online deep cleaning video from Baratza to change the gap between the burrs and it does espresso just fine to my tastes. Like it does well enough that I can’t justify the expense of a better one yet and I’ve had it like 3 years already.
Obv there are better ones, and there are cheaper ones, but th Encore will just last you a long time in your coffee journey, and potentially forever if you only ever want it to do non-espresso grind sizes
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.
For fap desk you really want silicone
Just cut a hole in the cutting board
That’s how you end up getting a cutting board stuck on your dick.
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.
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.
my tumble-dry-medium sleeper of a spouse.
ROFL! Hahaha… I am gonna call my gf that from now on…
Monitor mounting arms that connect to the back of the desk. I have 3 times as much room on my desk now. It’s amazing how much room monitor stands really take up. It’s not just the actual stand but really the surrounding area because you can’t really set any large objects in the vicinity. It really is a game changer to gain a lot of desk space.
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!
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.
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.
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.
