Ask Lemmy

Electric air compression gun.

Good for cleaning and for cooling down after a workout

Glass Tupperware, if you look all your plastic ones I bet they are scratched - melted or otherwise damaged. All those missing parts end up in the food.

Quick Release garden hose fittings.

You can get them for about $8 at harbor freight and it makes switching hose attachments easy!

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.

Cooking thermometer probe. Take the guesswork out of cooking and never overcook and dry out your meats again.

A bidet

Cheap plastic bowl scrapers. Like these:

I use these every time I cook. I use them every time I clean the kitchen.

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.

An oil sprayer. I was looking for gift ideas and came across a "misto" brand oil sprayer and now I use it all the time! No more spray cans of oil and God knows what else, you just fill it half way with whatever oil you want (except coconut oil for some reason) and you pump it to pressurize the oil so you can spray whatever you want.

https://mistosprayer.com/

A shoehorn.

A portable power bank.

My work gave me one a few years ago, and while I only end up using it a few times a year, when you're in an airport or on the road somewhere and you need to charge a device, it is glorious to have. Cheap and exceedingly useful.

I'm actually planning to get a bigger portable generator, just as planning for climate change, as I expect more outages in the future and want to have access to power regardless.

French press. Didn't even know what one was until I was around 50, thought it was some fancy, complicated thing I wouldn't care about.

My wife drinks coffee day and night so we have 4 methods of making it. The cheapo French press is the best IMHO. Use whatever coffee grounds you like, make it as strong or light as you like.

Mine was $11 on Amazon. Finish wore off, looks like shit, works fine.

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.

Various I²C compatible chips from Adafruit + a raspberry pi zero. Endless possibilities.

Silk pillowcase. Absolute game changer for my hair and face.

Head lamp with both red and white light, a game changer for walking the dogs. Red light preserves night vision