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.

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.

8 years ago, i got an EUC, aka Electric Unicycle, seamed difficult strange, i managed to learn how to ride it, everybody said i looked like an alien…

8 years later i ride a Veteran Sherman S (suspension model) and i freakngly still love to ride it!! Got a couple of friends hooked, now i’ve got a whole team in Greece! 😉

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.

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.

A mini keg of a Christmas beer. At the store after drinking a bit, thinking “Oh it’s a little cheaper per ounce, lol”. My wife rolled her eyes, but she lets me do stupid things. Next day I was thinking “Well that was stupid.” But it was a few days before Thanksgiving, and we opened it then, and it turned out to be a lot of fun. Draft beer, at home! Fiddling with the stupid pour thing. It was just fun to have something different.

A burr grinder for coffee beans. I thought coffee snobs were full of shit. I was wrong.

A cheap little green alien soft dog toy. My dog has destroyed every soft toy we’ve ever given her except that one. The head ripped a little at the seam, but we just re-sewed it. She hasn’t made a big hole to pull out the stuffing somehow. And she loves it.

I wanted to get a backup, but the company doesn’t make that toy anymore. I got an alternative from them and it got torn apart within a few days. I guess it was too good of a dog toy.

Mechanical keyboard. Almost had no money back then, but wanted to treat myself. It costed 100$, and I regretted it the next morning. Felt like shit, but it was so cool to type on.

After 5 years, this metal-frame keyboard managed to survive many outside gigs, long travels, literal war, and it’s still with me. And I still love typing on it. Sometimes I code just to type. You can guess why I don’t use code completion tools.

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

A toy accordion I bought at a truck stop 30 years ago. I blew all of my $30 in vacation spending money on it and everyone said I’d regret it. It ended up kind of joke\prop instrument in all my bands and I still have it and it’s still fun to play.

A set of small neodymium magnets. Didn’t have a plan, only they looked “super cool and strong wow”.

Used for:

• Locating needles in the carpet.
• Fishing keychains out from behind sofas, gap between garden deck and house, and so many other places.
• Makeshift fix for an old cabinet door that tended to glide open.
• Holding nails and screws while fixin’ stuff.
• Attaching a soda bottle to the office lamp in a way that is easy to undo while still pissing off HR.
• Slapping it on a screwdriver to make it magnetic.
• Fidget toy.
• Regular ol’ fridge magnet.

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!

A bicycle. It was kind of a stupid purchase for me because when I got it I wasn’t really into doing exercise or outdoor stuff. 900 dollar on clearance gravel bike back in March 2019. I wound up living on that thing, worked my way up to a 160 mile solo gravel ride by September 2019, biked to work in 2020, got into running in 2021, ran a 50K in 2022, now I run to and from work. I put 10,000 miles on that bike in 2 years, explored my city/greater metro area until I ran out of things to explore, pretty awesome impulse purchase

A cheap usb microscope. I wanted to get into macro photography but my eyesight is pretty terrible even with glasses and struggle to see fine details so struggled to set the mounts up. (Small insects, grains, etc)

Saw a usb microscope for 20€ on Amazon and thought for 20 euro it’s going to be terrible but worth a punt. It’s bloody brilliant. Have used it for a whole variety of things from threading needles to soldering work, repairing stuff with glue and tightening up glasses as well as the macro stuff. Coupled with some ‘helping hands’ it’s a permanent fixture on the pc desk.