From time to time I look at something around my home, in my life, etc and just think “damn, I’m really happy I have X and think it was an awesome value for whatever it cost me.” This is a compilation of some of those things. Sometimes I’ll have a specific brand/model and sometimes it will just be a category of item.
Levoit Classic 300S Smart Humidifier
We have owned a handful of different humidifiers. They mostly all suck. This one is very easy to clean, has a large water tank, and is smart enough to let me set a schedule for it to run. Most importantly, I can turn off EVERY light on it for use at night.
Cuisinart CPK-17 Electric Kettle
I very much enjoy tea. To make tea correctly you need to steep the tea at the correct temperature. This makes that very simple. Boils fairly quickly. Also, it will maintain whatever temperature you set for 30 minutes after it reaches it. Super useful in case you forget to deal with it for a little bit.
Smart Lights and/or Switches (Any)
I’ve been using smart lights for ~7 years. Almost every bulb in my house is Philips Hue. I have schedules set up for lights turning on and off, motion sensors, etc. One of my favorite things is just being able to dim every light. You can reduce costs by getting the white-only bulbs.
Cordless Stick Vacuum (Any)
This can serve different purposes depending on the model you get. We got a fairly cheap version (from Wyze) that works overall pretty well. Because it won’t give us a super deep clean, it’s mostly used to clean up litter around our cats litter box and do random quick vacuuming around the house. I will say, I’ve noticed I’m much more willing to vacuum more often because of how simple and quick this is to use.
Toner Printer (Any)
We don’t print things very often – maybe once a week if we are printing a lot. We also very rarely need to print in color. Since we print so rarely a toner printer is perfect because unlike inkjet, if you only print once a year it will still work when you come back to it. The print heads don’t dry out, etc. It just works. Perfect.
Fujitsu ScanSnap iX1500 Document Scanner
I recently decided I want to have a more paperless life and this is an incredible product for that goal. It sits in the dining room on a side table and when I bring the mail in, if anything is important then I scan it (it automatically goes to Google Drive) and shred it. No more filing cabinet full of things I can’t easily search, no more being worried about a fire causing us to lose a ton of documents.
Healthy Pet Simply Feed Automatic Feeder
I love my cat. He loves food. This helps with that. If we are out running errands/etc he still gets his food exactly when he expects it. Going on a trip? Doesn’t matter, he still gets food the same way he always has! Easy, highly recommended. He also doesn’t wake us at 7am angry because he is hungry. He just wakes us because he’s a cat and does cat things. I like this specific one because it doesn’t have any smarts and can run either on battery (Four D batteries) or on an A/C adapter. Even better, it can do both – default to plugged in and use battery if you lose power.
Shower Speaker (Any)
Here’s the ~8 year newer version of what I use
I like listening to podcasts in the shower. This speaker was like $20 and I bought it ~8 years ago and it still works perfectly. No idea if the newer model is as good. The one I have sounds totally fine for podcasts and probably relatively bad for music.