I was thinking about how I missed having an indoor thermometer that measures humidity. It’s such a small specific thing, one I’d never think of getting unless pushed to it (which I was by one particularly dry winter). But I like having one now.
What are your small, “random” or “junk drawer” type of gadgets that you actually use or like having around?
I got a carbonization machine. I’ve been drinking way more water these days. I always thought I liked soda because of the sugar. Actually I liked the fizziness. It gets fizzier than anything else I’ve ever drank.
I can’t agree more! I have tried both soda stream and drinkmate and would recommend the drinkmate. It’s just better, you can fizz juice and non-water drinks. Soda stream is also a consumer boycott target if you don’t want to support the genocide in Palestine. 😬
I’ve been wanting to get one for forever, but was told you couldn’t carbonate non water drinks, and to mix flavor into the carbonated water (which, to my thinking, would make it go flat…). In the drink mate, could I make Kool aid (with Splenda) and carbonate that? Cause if I can have fizzy cherry drink, I’ll be a happy boy.
You can carbonate non-water drinks with anyone of those, regardless of brand - heck, Sodastream even sells you flavoured syrup to mix with your water.
Just, be careful to clean those nozzles more, as sugary drinks are sticky by nature.
You can totally carbonate non-water. But be careful.
Wine is pretty nice, rum and whiskey will take ten times the amount of gas and then explode all over, ‘fallen soldiers’ will still taste stale…
Fruit juices are good too, but also will take more gas than they can hold
Thank you for already trying the things i was curious about
You can carbonate and then add Kool aid liquid drink mix. That will keep the carbonating nozzle clean while still giving you your choice of flavor.
I have a Soda Stream and use powders. The trick is to turn your powder into a “syrup” first.
Mix your powder with 1-2 oz of water, stir it well (I use a hand held milk frother), and then put that into your bubbly water.
If you corbonise rose wine in the soda stream, put less than you would have put water. Like 80%. Or the bottle might like get a bit stuck. Or so I have heard.
Also guess don’t put sugary wine in it, never knew why you shouldn’t though, CO2 doesn’t react with sugar, right? Please do tell if you know!
It dislodges and shoots red wine all over your kitchen.
I’m lazy AF, so I just give it a gooood rinse in hot water after every use. I will say it is one more step than the soda stream but there is the added benefit that you never will need to play against the clock when dumping syrups it after you’ve carbonated. I always ended up with a sticky mess after failing to seal in time with the soda stream.
Cold, fresh seltzer water is the nectar of the gods. If you get unflavored seltzer in a can it has a noticeable unpleasant aftertaste, which I guess is why almost all of them are flavored. But plain filtered tap water in a seltzer maker? Glorious.
I’ve had a hacked up sodastream for over a decade. I get a 20lb co2 tank connected to it. Seltzer all day for months for like $30/refill
Ide recommend an in line filter for that co2 tank. Had a 20# set up for my kegerator (had a tank just for carb water) The gas should be clean but there was definitely an odd taste to it until I installed a filter. A bit expensive at <200USD but highly recommend.
Interesting. I haven’t noticed any weirdness and the place refilling it advertises it as ‘food grade co2’. I also use it for my beer kegs. No issue. I used to get refills from a wedding shop. That was a bit sketchy but also no issues with taste.
I was under the impression that my source was food grade as well, but I noticed it when coming from soda stream to kegged carb water having a slight bitter taste. Disappeared with the filter and subsequent refills for both soda and beer. It could very well be how strong I made the carb water too.
That’s really odd. I’m glad I never did deal with that.
A bit on the costly stuff but I find the vacuum cleaner robot (not sure it’s called this in English) very useful. The house is cleaner to be vacuumed every day (even if it’s not as efficient as manual vacuuming or cleaning). Especially with pets and children.
My circle unfortunately calls it a Roomba, even if it’s off brand.
Kind of like how sometimes we call tissues Kleenex.
As soon as I find a decent mop and vacuum that doesnt require the internet for full features I am buying it
If you’re willing to put in some work https://valetudo.cloud/ is a great project that takes an off the shelf vacuum and de-internets it.
You can also make an IoT special WiFi connection without any links in the rest of the home network.
Some routers have this or at the very least a guest network option.
Its more the data getting back out of the house i dont want so the guest wifi woupdnt work. I will look into the IOT network.
I make sure to remind people mine is a Conga (real brand)
Safe Cut Can Opener, traditional can openers should be extinct. It unrolls the original seal so there’s no sharp edges. It also doesn’t leave a lip, so none of the insides get stuck on the ledge. Then, if you don’t use all the can, just plop the lid back on and throw it in the fridge.
Technology connections convinced you too?
Technology Connections is the universal method of converting to better tools. How does he do it?
Painstakinglly detailed scripts and smooth jazz, mostly.
on a slight tangent, i find that i often have to put on lofi music in the background to be able to enjoy his content, which is not something i do at all with other music-less creators like adam ragusea. i’m still wondering why that is the case.
Through the magic of buying two of them.
I only ever used this sort of can opener:
But most cans are now like this:
I have one of these and dislike it because it makes it harder to drain a can of tuna (which is the canned item I eat most often).
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Lime and lemon squeezer, since I like to make cocktails this was essential.
I have a counter top commercial grade juicer and it is an absolute pleasure to use. Manual citrus juicer
Is there a specific model you’re talking about? I’m getting a lot of different results searching online and I’m not sure they’re the same. I’m not a fan of the can opener my wife has, though; its cuts are jagged and uneven and sometimes gets the outside dipping into the food.
I have the following and it works really well.
https://www.starfrit.com/en/mightican-can-opener-with-soft-grip-3
If you like boiled eggs, you need a boiled egg timer.
It’s a clear “egg” made of heat-tolerant plastic with a color-changing temperature gauge visible inside. You throw it into the pot when boiling eggs and it lets you know when the eggs are soft boiled, medium boiled, or hard boiled. It’s very readable even in boiling water, and the results are always perfectly accurate. These things are totally worth the few dollars they cost.
May I suggest an actual timer? Almost all of us already have one, it’s even more precise, and does not require additional plastic waste. 7:30 makes a perfect medium egg every time.
Can confirm. Elevation may cause variance though.
I got an egg cooker that came with a small measuring cup for water, which told you how much to put in for soft/medium/hard-boiled. It’s about $10 and cooks up to 7 at a time. Others can do more. I’m never cooking eggs in a pot again, as long as I have this.
I’ve seen those, and while the appeal of something I can set and not have to turn off at an exact time is there, I always felt like cleaning it looks like a bigger hassle than cleaning a small pot.
The one I remember seeing had you puncture the base of the eggs, and then they sit on a plastic tray over a heated metal pad. The metal pad is attached to the heating element so you can’t just scrub that with soapy water if any egginess sticks to it. The plastic tray also looked like it had a lot of nooks and crannies where all sorts of eggy proteins can get stuck.
That and single-purpose appliances don’t really appeal to me as I don’t have much space. Not to discount how helpful they are for people with different physical needs than me, but I don’t know.
I eat enough hard boiled eggs that I consider getting one every so often, which is why this comment is as unnecessarily long as it is.
If you’re just hard-boiling, it shouldn’t get dirty at all. It just steams the eggs, and I keep the side with the hole facing up so nothing has come out. I’ve only scrubbed it once, and that was from the hard water buildup I got.
I have one of those, it’s completely useless. It had novelty value but the eggs never came out the way I wanted them. I’ve gone back to a normal timer.
I got this bundled with a pot and it changed my life.
Got a few cheap ones from Amazon Each one worked once and the egg still came out harder than was supposed to
huh. We always just toss our eggs in the kettle and boil them in there.
I got a set of metal picks from Harbor Freight for like 3 bucks. They’re similar to the pick tool that a dental hygienist uses. I use these things nearly every day to scrape stuff out of a crevice, retrieve something out of a narrow hole, pull stuff out of a tube or straw, precision clean corners of things, etc. I love them.
Every day? fascinating
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Can confirm, I have the same set, and I do probably use them every day. It’s one of those tools that you don’t realize how often you need it until you start using it.
Those are the ones!
A night light that turns on automatically as it gets dark. No more stumbling around when I have to pee in the middle of the night.
We have small lights that plug into the socket. They turn on automatically when there is movement and it is dark, or if the power goes out. We can also take them out of the socket and then they become flashlights.
When we built this house we specified power outlets in each toilet for exactly this reason. The low light levels from the motion sensor lamps we have don’t sear your eyeballs when you get up in the middle of the night to pee.
I think I’d like to get this; do you have a brand you can recommend?
I’ve been using this one: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B074N9LRCQ/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&th=1. Fun to choose which color or let it change colors on its own.
Indeed, being Belgian and an adept of the real French fries (double cooked) I was not convinced at all. In the end, I still prefer real fries but I find the air fryer very practical to cook (or warm up quickly - unlike microwave oven it does not make stuff soft) all sort of food.
I’m an American, so I can’t say how they’re cooked in Belgium, but I can say that boiling them in water for ten minutes before frying reduces the workload significantly and produces similar results.
Belgian fries (and any good fries in America) are fried once in low heat for a little while to cook the potato through. Then they are allowed to cool, and they can be frozen to use later, or you can fry them again at higher temp to crisp them up.
I’m aware of the double-fry technique, I’m just saying that similar results can be obtained by boiling in lieu of the first frying step
Small electric fan oven doesn’t sound as magical as air fryer. Good product, great marketing.
Came here to share air fryers.
I hate kitchen gadgets. Even toasters.
But I like this!
My kitchen has a solid ban on any product with the word “maker” in the name. They’re all junk that take up space and do a worse job than conventional methods.
An air fryer though. That was money well spent.
I was gifted an air fryer a while back. While it’s generally useful, cleaning if after each use is really obnoxious imo and so I hardly ever use it.
It’s a lot easier to clean a pan I used in the oven because I can just pop it in the dishwasher. I can’t pop the air fryer in the dishwasher. It would destroy it.
You can buy air fryer liners to minimize cleanup.
Thank you for this knowledge. This will honestly help me eat more chicken instead of less-messy frozen meals.
I recently found out about these and they have been a huge help, but I found that food still manages to make it’s way into the rest of the basket, even if it’s not as much.
Mine came with a little pan or tray that we can line with foil easy peasy. Much less to clean.
The idea of getting something before I know its usefulness confuses me. Do you mean finding that something is more useful than you expected?
If that’s the case, I once had an alarm clock which curiously had a thermometer in it to measure the temperature in the room. I was able to use it - for years - to hold my landlord to account for being shitty on the heat during the winter.
Sometimes its a gift. My bread maker was a gift, and it brings me a lot of value, but I prob won’t pay for it.
Other times it’s something pushed on you for fun. My wife made me buy a thermostat gun and now I love it. I test it on the kids too for fun.
I have a digital clock with thermometer feature and a dedicated thermometer. I’ve been logging the measurements every half an hour for months. The clock is ~1.5-3 degrees off (or the other way around, who knows). Just be aware they are not always super accurate.
The idea of getting something before I know its usefulness confuses me.
My spouse buys things because they seem neat. Uses them once or twice, then not again.
Seriously the most useful thing I ever bought for around the house is barely even a gadget. It’s literally just a screwdriver where you can flip the tips and the shaft so that it has four tip sizes; two Phillips and two flatheads. Oh and also a tape measure. That tape measure will save you literally all of the headaches when it comes to purchasing furniture. A good socket set of Allen wrenches for assembling set furniture too.
. A good socket set of Allen wrenches for assembling set furniture too.
I’ll push back and say that the 3-pack of imperial, metric, and SAE hex wrenches you can get these days are better than a socket set
Sure, ratcheting is nice, but the ability to rapidly service ANY hex item without dicking around with my sockets or having to memorize which exact size a specific screw has been amazing
Just grab the matching collection of wrenches (idk what to call them, Swiss army wrench?) for the size you’re working in, or all 3 if you’re unsure, and you’ll be done in no time!
You’re talking about those folding ones aren’t you?
Yeah, these:
Ratcheting is nice, but the torque I can get with these + ease of use and carrying means I never use my hex sockets anymore
These are nice for when you need to tighten something random and you have no idea what size it might be. They do not excel at being a dedicated tool for a larger job. Definitely a matter of preference, but if you find yourself being the go-to person for assembly, a dedicated tool of the correct size is like night and day. If you find yourself just needing something convenient that can jump from bed frame to electronics project and fit in your pocket, these are the way to go. Personally I’d have a hard time imagining not having both options in different tool boxes.
For me ratcheting is way more important. Trying to get one of those stupid little Allen wrenches to turn in the space you’ve got to maneuver is oftentimes a pain in the ass, and of course the thing gets tighter to turn with that silly little no leverage piece of crap as you drive it in.
I don’t think I’ve encountered one that’s hard to reach with my folding set, actually. Probably the one time I’d want to get my socket set, so fair enough if you encounter it more often
I bought several of those flippy screwdrivers and keep 1-2 on each level of the house and in the garage. I never have to leave the floor or often the room to fix something I notice is loose.
InstaPot. I hate gadgets and things that have limited purpose so when this was gifted to me I planned to regift it. I use it so often I got an upgrade model. Totally worth the counter space!
edit: oops wrong reply
Bamboo tongs for taking hot things out of the toaster. They even have magnet built into the handle so I just stick it on the side of my fridge when not in use.
I just use chopsticks …
That’s a great idea! I haven’t burned myself lately reaching into my toaster oven, but it’s only a matter of time
I bought a variety pack of scouring pads and brushes that I can attach to my cordless drill. Super handy for cleaning stuff that would otherwise take some major elbow grease. Probably bad for my drill, but it’s worth it to me.
I made one of these years ago with a round dish brush and a long bolt. One of the most effective cleaning tools in the house. That plus “barkeepers friend” cleaner will take care of any hard-to-scrub grime.
I have a few motion activated lights in my house and really love how convenient those are. One is an in wall light switch and another is a screw in one in a ceiling light socket.
I also use my pour over coffee set daily. And my coffee grinder.
I bought a cheap little wire cutter and keep it in my junk drawer. Great for cutting zip ties and twist ties on packaging.
I keep a water bottle in the fridge. Always have cold water and hardly use glasses. Bring it to the table when you eat.
Lazy Susan on the dining room table for salt, pepper, toothpicks, pencils, sticky notes, etc.
Long plastic dollar store shoehorn by the door.
I get big packs of 3M clean removal hooks from Costco and use them all over the house to hang keys, pants, hats, string lights, jackets, etc.
attaching things to the walls (hooks for jackets, backpacks, pictures, tools, etc) is a game changer.
Extendo arm. It’s goofy as hell but it’s a god send when there’s a bunch of random crap on the floor. They also have deceivingly good grip strength too.
Hand held vacuum. I don’t think this is that niche anymore but it works really well for cleaning tables, random tight corners and I park it next to my clothes dryer to easily clean the filter. I also use it a TON for sucking up bugs. Buy a corded one since battery operated ones die fast (I went through 2 or 3 of these personally)
Bench scraper. Easily removes 90% of any grime on hard surfaces. Honestly more effective than a rag and detergent. When I bought mine I decided to try it out on my “thoroughly cleaned” kitchen counter and removed a disheartening amount of grime. Afterwards I use some detergent just to sterilize everything.
I use my grabby arm thing constantly because bending over kills my back. Sometimes I’ll dual wield the things lol
bend your legs
Having worked in restaurants I am amazed that more people dont use scrapers to clean counters etc. It does such a better and quicker job than scrubbing.
I bought mine as a paibt scraper at a dollar store. Works just fine.
Yeah, I actually use a cheap kiwi nakiri and flattened the edge 😆
A Moka pot, it’s the best coffee I’ve tasted, I’ll never go back to using those coffee machines with the basket and the glass carafe.
Also, a really good chef’s knife, kept really sharp. I use a couple of Global ones.
Same, but Aeropress for my coffee. I haven’t yet tried a mocha pot, though I’d like to.
Aeropress coffee was always the best tasting. But I found I just didn’t have the patience for making it that way every morning, especially since I drink four cups at least.
That’s fair, it works for me because I just have one cup but it would be tedious for multiple cups each morning.
