Answering to how the question is worded:
Toilet paper. I wouldn’t normally think to buy but it’s kinda essential.
A screwdriver set with all the tiny weird heads that you almost never would use. I got one as a gift and it’s been really useful
Yes, but please, get a good one. A crappy one is likely to strip heads.
Ifixit sets are highly regarded.
I have a Wiha set, but that may be overkill for many.
Würth sets are also really high quality, but also overkill. My Würth set has more bits than my Ifixit kit but doesn’t have the little QoL tools like spudgers and tweezers like the Ifixit kit does.
Wurth is just a badge engineering company with stupid high markup. I used to own a sign company, and we bought stuff from them. We slowly realized that they essentially sold convenience, a one stop shop formula.
Give me the real GOATS anytime: 3M, Hilti, any of the big pro power tool makers, etc.
With the internet, the convenience factor is gone.
I can’t think of it
A bottle of ginkgo biloba costs under $100
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Head lamp with both red and white light, a game changer for walking the dogs. Red light preserves night vision
Yeah and if you’re camping or anything a red light is awesome you don’t need to blind everyone to go get wood or chuck a piss etc
This one is way below $100, but about ten years ago I bought a roll of twist tie wire at a dollar store. It’s fifty or a hundred feet, with a little guillotine cutter. It’s still just a bunch of twist tie, but it punches WAY above its weight with quality of life improvement. No more hunting for the one you dropped, or wondering how you’ll close up a veggie bag. Also good for (fairly light) pictures that use wire instead of sawtooth hardware, and I’ve used it in a pinch when I didn’t have cable ties. I dunno. It’s just an oddly useful substance to have lying in your junk drawer.
In this theme, you can get so many rubber bands for cheap.
Just be careful of the material you get. There are some that degrade over time. That said, I loved playing with bags of rubber bands when I was a kid. I’d stick my hands all the way in the bag and just squish them around. It feels great!
or wondering how you’ll close up a veggie bag.
Get yourself some of these for all of your bag-closing needs: https://www.ikea.com/se/en/p/bevara-sealing-clip-anthracite-dark-yellow-90524179/
Costs just above 1 EUR for a set of 6, so you can probably even afford to get 2 or 3
Another one in the theme: Fishing line or nylon string. A transparent fishing line can hang pretty much everything and supports 10kg or more.
Need to cut a cake into top and bottom halves? Fishing line can do that too. Do a hitman choke thingy around the cake.
Keychain? Can be done, why not.
Nail is too far to hang stuff? Just tie a fishing line between the things
Cracked plastic needs extra support? Fishing line.
Out of zip ties? Fishing line.
I’ve just been hoarding all the twist ties that come with other purchases. Only costs me a little bit of sanity every time I look in that drawer.
If you double it up and twist it together, it’s way stronger.
I’ve used it forever for the garden.
I had that same revelation decades ago, and always keep a roll in the junk drawer.
One day, I was out with my father-in-law, and I saw a twist-tie roll for sale and bought it for him. It was only a couple of bucks, but he received that gift like it was a bag of gold. He immediately thought of how handy it would be.
Funny how simple things like that can excite us when we get older.
Rope.
Buy some rope, like 3 different sizes: 1-2mm, 4-6mm and 10-12mm. Watch a few rope videos and then throw the ropes in some drawer. Every now and again you will have an issue that the ropes can fix.
As a kid I once got a 15mm*40m rope for my birthday from my uncle, I thought it was the weirdest thing, but over the years I used it so much that these days I consider it to be one of the best gifts I’ve ever received. And as long as you don’t need them for anything related to safety, they basically cant expire.
What are some things a person can fix with rope?
Attaching things, hanging things, making custom items such as a keyring, lifting or carrying things, dog leash if you find a stray, and more.
That’s why there is a rope issue part of a standard adventurer’s kit in dnd.
Electric air compression gun.
Good for cleaning and for cooling down after a workout
Quick Release garden hose fittings.
You can get them for about $8 at harbor freight and it makes switching hose attachments easy!
Attachments? I just vary the position of my thumb like a pleb
Adjusting the thumb to vary spray type is an essential part of learning basic hose operation.
Hahahahah, enjoy the upvote.
A bottle jack. Super cheap, but when you need to lift something super heavy, a bottle jack is the goat.
What? Really? Are they better than other options?
If you have a traditional tire jack, it can’t lift nearly that amount of weight.
Traditional like a hydraulic jack or a scissor jack
Cheap plastic bowl scrapers. Like these:
I use these every time I cook. I use them every time I clean the kitchen.
You can probably make this for free from some plastic packaging. I have some cut out from the lids of ice cream boxes.
Yes, man!
Baby wipes are really useful to just have sitting in your car, and next to your bed for those lucky enough to have nocturnal company.
Learned this shortly after our first kid. Baby wipes have a million uses. For generic cleaning, cheaper is better, as they won’t cover your car in lotion.
Just make sure they’re disposed of properly.
Yea, I get the fragrance and extra bullshit free ones. Just something simple to wipe up a mess.
and 100% straight to the garbage.
Just don’t flush them. Even if they say they’re “flushable”, they most certainly are not.
Sounds like words of experience
To anyone wondering why: they’re more akin to large cotton pads than toilet paper. They don’t break down.
Over time it’s like flushing a bag of t-shirts and wondering why your pipes get clogged. Draino ain’t fixing that.
Just to expand on that municipal sewage gets clogged by them because they turn into rock after some time and need to be removed with a jackhammer. Can also happen on a smaller scale before it reaches the municipality and then it’s on you.
A bidet
I should really get one. Blasting my ass with water sounds cool.
It’s refreshing on a hot day in the summer
What about a cold day in the winter?
Mine has a warm water feature so yes
Yes
Add me to the list of folks preaching the bidet
you can even get a squeeze bottle one if you don’t plumb or can’t! i have one and have been using it for years. massive qol improvement.
Lol
There’s this product called grab-a-rag… They are washcloth-sized washable microfiber cloths.
Comes in a large box (think maybe a box that new boots would come in) but it’s exactly like a box of tissues - pull one out, the next emerges halfway.
Once I wash them, I don’t reformulate this tissue box set up, I just throw them in the drawers, I use them for wipes, I wash the floor with them, I have some set aside for dishes. They are mind-bogglingly good for cleaning surfaces.
I give mitt-fulls away because they’re so cheap, and people freak out about how great they are.
I bought an LED customizable marquee nametag for $30 at a convention. It makes sense for a con; but it also works at any function where you’d have a nametag even better than those stickers since it can cycle through 8 messages (it holds up to 4097 bytes) and can even display images (though it is only a monochrome display so B&W pixel art works best) in a myriad of patterns as well as flash.
Silk pillowcase. Absolute game changer for my hair and face.
Quality dust mite pillow case and bed covers, was a game changer too for people allergic to it, and unable to entirely avoid dust mites. allegedly it helps /reduces bed bugs from hiding
