Tires

Floors, carpets, stairs, your feet, a bicycle, maybe even your car, dirt, gotta invest in good walkable dirt, uhhh, what else here… socks, probably chairs, ladders, flights, if you’re flying always invest a lot in it, uhhhh. yeah probably some other stuff.

I dunno I guess the point of my joke is that I think this is one of those heuristics, or like, general expressions, that ends up taking longer to say than what it actually means. “invest in your shoes and bed” takes longer to say than “invest in anything that keeps you off the ground”.

Anything OXO is tops in the kitchen

Shaving razor. I don’t mean the big brand stuff but getting yourself something that isn’t the cheapest available is a godsend. Stuff lasts you an entire month or two instead of going dull after 2-3 uses.

Also, I’d distinguish between pointlessly expensive and quality.

This is big RE: the kitchen knives. Science/engineering has figured out how to produce good steel, so it actually does not cost much to produce a very capable, good knife. Maybe you had to spend a lot for a good knife 200 years ago, but not now.

I got a Mercer chef knife from a restaurant supply store years ago. Just looking it up, it costs <$25, and it’s designed to be used all day by professionals. The often recommended victorinox fibrox is similar. They are easily sharpenable, and can do whatever you need.

I also have a ~$200 chef knife I got as a gift. It’s super nice, but the only real non-cosmetic differences are that the edges of the back of the blade are rounded over to make it a little more comfortable to hold while choking up on it, and it has a long warrantee that includes sharpening.

I second the desk chair as a fat crippled IT worker that spends 10+ hours a day in a desk chair. I used to get a new $500ish chair every 3 or so years when it fell apart. This last time I saved up and dropped about 2.5k on a really nice chair rated for 24/7 use by someone much heavier than I am and it’s a life changer for my back, and this thing should last a lot longer

I bought a nice sharp knife for my Mom because hers were dull. She has a utensil drawer she throws all the knives on.

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What’s special about quality underwear? I bought a bunch of fruits of loom ones which is pretty cheap but I never noticed it being and issue.

Quality knives do not have to be super expensive. The trick is to maintain them. Honing of course, and unless you are a super enthusiastic home cook, a proper sharpening by a pro on Japanese wet stone twice a year is all it takes. That’s like at most USD 20 in most places, probably less. Even mid range knives are fine, so long as you keep them sharp.

And you don’t need a lot. In theory a good chefs knife and a good paring knife will do. In practice, you also want a bread knife and filleting knife, but you can start small.

Instead of an office chair, I opted for a loveseat, on risers, that I can pull fit inside of my desk.

Risers end up being necessary for a standing desk, if you have a loveseat, apparently, because a loveseat sits much lower than most good computer desks that I’ve found, so to get comfortable typing position, you need good risers. You’re also gonna need a couch that stands up higher than your loveseat’s feet, so you can clear the feet and pull the desk in far enough (it might still not be enough, frankly). You might wanna opt for castors, though, since then you can make use of a standing desk, if you have one, which is probably a good idea instead of sitting on the couch for too long.

And, you know, after all that, I get a seat that’s kind of frankly not that comfortable to sit on for extended periods of time, because nobody has engineered their couch for you to sit on for multiple hours. I would wager that’s probably a bad thing anyways. I’ve been looking into standing-to-sitting desks, in order to overcorrect from this problem of sitting in one position, and get a desk that I can sit on the floor with, and basically whatever position I want. But that also kind of sucks, because there are only two and they are both like 1000 bucks.

On the other hand, a loveseat is much better for spooning, than having two office chairs. So that’s a bonus, if you wanted to spoon at your computer. Or you could just cast your screen to the smart TV you probably already have and buy a bluetooth computer controller for like 20 dollars or less.z

I hope someone reading this gains some insight because of this. You should buy a regular chair. It’s expensive but just buy it please I’m begging you, don’t make my mistakes again.

🤯

I mean seriously… totally true and I never thought about it like that.

This comment has come up a couple times. What’s the original source?

Once you let the magic smoke leave, you can never get it back.

Not to be nitpicky but this advice is meant more for things like car tires and shoes than patio furniture.

As a dirt poor musician who grew up recording with a computer and a ham radio mixer I had rigged up, I was always disappointed when I’d hear my music on any setup that wasn’t mine. It never came out right.

Good headphones changed that. One day I’ll go back and remaster it all even though I have no clue what I’m doing.

I’ve found a refurbished Thinkpad one generation out of date to be a great midrange option.

It does take careful research though since there are thousands of possible configurations and often subtle options that make a huge difference. One such option that made my recent purchase of a P14S III challenging was that there are two non-touch 1920x1200 displays, one of which has a crappy color gammut and less brightness.

Just as long as you’re not searching for a “gaming laptop”. IMO those do not exist to any degree of satisfaction. They are all a “choose two” among performance, size/weight, battery life, and noise.

Unless you are so mobile that you are never ever at home, and the prosect of only scraping mid graphical settings at best while being permanently anchored to a wall outlet any time you play is worth it to you, I’d suggest taking that money and instead putting it toward a combo of a desktop rig and a cheap netbook. You won’t be gaming on the go, but you’ll have a better experience for the price. And if there’s a more mundane task that the little netbook can’t handle, you can, provided you have an Internet connection, always remote in to the desktop workstation at home and delegate expensive tasks to it.

If all you need though is something that runs well with a dozen browser tabs open, doesn’t struggle playing back high definition video, and can handle playing a less demanding game every now and again, you can definitely find laptops that can do that while still being relatively slim, quiet, and cool. Just temper your expectations on how far you can push it.

Buy used refurbished laptops, it’s insane how cheap they are. You can buy a laptop with quadruple the ram (32gb) and quadruple the storage (512gb SSD) for a quarter the price (250$) than the cheapest new MacBook (1000$). I like PC Server and Parts, good customer service, good warranty and quality refurbishment. Buy from their website instead of eBay store, you’ll get cheaper prices.

Prices on used hardware are comically cheap, so use it.

I could rant about vacuums forever. So many people complain about vacuums not working well, but also never pull out and clean or replace the filter.

I picked up a karcher shop style vacuum for my home, cost a bit more than the cheapest home style vacs, but a lot cheaper than the expensive home style vacuum, and boy does this baby suck (in a good way). I feel like most of the home vacs are only expensive to make them small and maybe a little quieter. But if you don’t care about that, you can get a very good vacuum for relatively cheap.

We have a Roomba for so many years now and what it taught me is that consistent daily effort > heroic occasional effort. It’s not a great vacuum at all but it runs every day for a couple of hours and that keeps the floors so much cleaner than any good vacuum. No way am I going to vacuum every day everywhere like it does. Two dogs, two cats, three girls, so much hair, and clean floors.

If you’re getting a BIFL buy-once-cry-once vacuum, I’d go straight for the Miele cannister vac. I went into an ADHD deep dive on vacuums a year ago when my own Shark needed replacing. Splurged on one and it completely changed how I feel about vacuuming. Of course, I’m 4’11, so ymmv on that, but using a good cannister vac that is lightweight VS pushing around something big and heavy makes a world of difference.

Plus, I like that it uses bags instead of a cannister; I was tired of emptying the cannister and getting a face full of dog hair and dirt that I then also had to clean up (again). That may also be personal preference, though.

Can a blender really be worth USD 600? I don’t own any kind of blender and barely miss it. I do own a hand blender though, but that was like USD 50 and has been working fine for years.

Took 30 strokes off my game.

God damn. I heard they help, but I didn’t realize it was that drastic.

How tall are you? I think the impact is much greater if you’re outside of average heights or strength levels.

Gasoline?

Saran Wrap doesn’t stick as well as the Costco stuff. They removed the polyvinylidene chloride years ago. I’m unsure if the Costco film still has it.

charcoal (and probably propane) grills. Poor quality craps out so quick

Weber kettles are fantastic in this regard. They’re not super expensive brand new and can be downright cheap secondhand, but if you take care of them they’ll last decades. Also, Weber is pretty good about their warranty, and replacement parts can be found in most bog box hardware stores