Smart Lights It is great to be able to control the light. Make it bright and cold for cleaning or work, dim it and make it warm for cozy evenings. Wake up by slowly increasing the light instead of burning your eyes in the morning with the power of 1000 suns. Even those Philips Hue Kits are not that expensive, but there are even cheaper alternative bulbs out there. Look for Zigbee, they are all kind of compatible.
HomeAssistant Get a cheap thinclient or raspberry pi (~100€). Set everything up. Control your smart stuff with an awesome privacy friendly interface and build automations you couldn’t even dream about a few years back (like “Water the lawn, but not if rain is predicted”)
robot vacuum Why should i vacuum my house when there is a robot totally capable of doing it?
3D printer Sounds a little bit crazy, but you can buy a 3D printer at ~150€+ and it’s awesome to print little custom fixes and stuff for your home. Is there some ugly gap or device somewhere? Print a custom cover. Broke something? Print the replacement part.
Ethernet.
I really like warm lighting in general so I replace every light bulb with a warmer color. I particular under cabinet lights and above cabinet lights are cheap and easy to do with led strip lights now. I love indirect lighting and task lighting and you can do a lot with $100.
Fridge with auto defrost and an oven with pyrolitic cleansing function.
If you get to replace these I’d shell out a little extra on these qol features.
Defrosting the fridge and cleaning the over are a chore I get very happy about not having to do anymore.
Smart lighting.
Specifically Philips Hue with the switches that look like normal switches/dimmers.
The bulbs are pricey but I’ve had some of them for 10-15 years. Still going strong.
Thick, foam mat to stand on in the kitchen and at the bathroom sink.
I can run and hike for hours, but standing in one place for 5 minutes wrecks my lower back and the arches in my feet. Been like that since I was a teenager.
So, the foam mat is essential for daily cooking (even 3 minutes for eggs), cleaning dishes, and hygiene (brushing teeth, washing face).
I have one similar to this one, purchased 6+ years ago (before I started limiting Amazon purchases). It’s held up great - it looks brand new. No cracks, or signs of wear. Still just as squishy as when I first got it.
This is sad to say but I’ve lived so much of my life with making everything “passing” or “just enough” that for me bringing everything up to snuff feels like a luxury.
So like whoever had this place before me half assed that plastic crap you line a shower with. It was coming off and the caulk job was god awful so bought a couple things of liquid nails, took it apart, checked for leaks, fixed a couple little things, glued shit back together and caulked it properly. Another thing is recently I had to go down the rabbit hole of having a well and holy crap the things that are wrong. I spent hours looking for and measuring the casing of the old well and finally found what I needed and wanted for like 100$.
It feels like a luxury to spend the time, effort, and money getting shit done right and knowing that I don’t have to worry about it when I’m done.
A bidet.
Maybe I’m doing something wrong, but I don’t get the point. I was convinced by a billion people online and got a nice one with water and seat heater, dryer and a ton of other features. It sucks. Nobody in the family likes it or uses it now because afterwards you’re still wiping dirty ass that’s now wet.
None of us are especially fat or have weird bodies as far as I can tell.
Do the rest of you really get up with a clean asshole that you can just tap dry after?
What the fuck are we all doing wrong?
Wipe first. Use soap if you want to be really clean.
I got a cheap bidet a few years back and I use it all the time. The fancy ones can be nice but most of the extra features are gimmicky things that don’t have a large impact on function. They’re marketed like magic poop-away devices but bidets aren’t magic. Bidets are showerheads for your toilet bowl meant to make buttwashing more accessible. Use your bidet like a butt-shower instead of a magic no-effort poo cleaner and you’ll have better results.
