I bought a piece of 1.5 inch stiff foam to try to fix a sag in a bed. It didn’t work but having that thick piece of solid foam around has been a life saver.
Need something flat to put a laptop on? Throw it on the foam. Going to be doing something that requires you to be on your knees for a while? Get the foam!
It went from stupid purchase to something I’d gladly replace if it broke.
When I worked at a small startup, we were moving to a new office and I was asked to help with the buildout. I engaged with the flooring vendor, and he came by one day to drop off a carpet sample. He put it on my desk where my mouse was. It was a rectangle sample of tight knit office carpet, about 18”x22”. When I got back to my desk, I just put my mouse on top of it and started using it as a mouse pad. That was 15 years and 3 companies ago, and I still use it as my mousepad. It’s perfect for the mouse to glide on, soft enough for my wrist to rest on, absorbent of sweat or drink condensation, and large enough I never hit the edge. I will never not use it. It is my mouse carpet, and I love it.
How does it feel being superior to all the lame mousepad users?
Good. Really good.
I work in automotive interiors tooling. We had a customer bring by a sample of this headliner material. But they brought an entire roll of it, four feet wide, no idea how long. Probably 75 feet. I cut a couple feet off of it, now my whole desk is a mousepad.
Better than car carpet mousepad - imagine vacuuming your desk for 15 minutes and still have sand particles jumping around under the vacuum head like fleas.
That is a nice solution. There are also these giant mouse pads that can cover most of the desk. They are awesome.
So you’re saying you decline to take this business opportunity which could have made you rich for 15 years just to feel superior to us gaming-spaceage-mousepad plebs with your exclusive desk carpet? How dare you.
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
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.
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.
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A reusable floss tool. I was trying to cut down on waste by ditching those single-use floss picks. It’s just a forked piece of plastic that you thread with standard floss. I bought it 5 years ago and it’s still going strong!
Ooh awesome, will have to look into this! I use a waterpik already but it isn’t a 100% replacement for string flossing so this could be a good zerowaste alternative!
It still involves using floss. Just gets you to use less of it.
Exactly, just with less plastic waste than normal individually rolled floss containers or the disposable plastic dino flossers 🦷
Which brand do you use? Didn’t even know this was a thing but it sounds so useful
Thank you!
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.
Does it have a timer safety thing? I know my cat would turn the faucet on and let it flood the house lol.
It does! It runs for minutes without retapping, but not like ten minutes. Never really timed it, and only noticed when I was filling the sink up (it’s a big sink).
I have a Delta branded one. Yea it goes off after a few minutes.
the wet bandits strike again!
I bought a house with these and didn’t realize it had this feature for like a year (batteries had died). Now I love it. I find myself taping every faucet it use and am annoyed when others don’t turn on.
I actually bought a handfree soap dispenser to go next to it, which is a great combo. Preparing meat or something, I can clean my hands and tap sink with elbow and not worry about cross contamination of everything.
My wife and I always laugh when we catch ourselves tapping other faucets. The soap dispenser sounds like a good idea.
They make wall plug adapters for them, no more batteries.
Not many people put electric outlets under their bathroom sinks
This sounds like something I’d like to get for the shower, but with multiple memory settings, that’s a much different product… Unless I ducted two shower knobs… Oh fuck I feel a project coming on…
We’re about to redo our bathrooms and have started looking at things. One thing we saw that sounded cool are these new thermostatic shower controls: you set them to a temperature and it mixes the water to keep it at that temperature regardless of fluctuations in the hot and cold input. Huh, sounds neat. So we looked at one - over $3000 for just the valve. It doesn’t sound that neat.
Omg! Was it designed to go to space? I’ve got an idea for a T valve with 2 sets of always on knobs. The wife says as long as it looks good I can do it…
I think it’ll cost about 200$ to get good looking materials.
I’m guessing it’s just priced as a luxury item, not related to actual cost. Wealthy people will shell that out without blinking. Then when they sell enough at that price, they’ll start dropping it to get other buyers.
You can buy wall plug adapters for them no more batteries.
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.
An oversized poncho cape from the local Goodwill. It was woven in different shades of blue and while I’d never wear it outside, I’ve used it as a wearable blanket at home for a few years now.
I found out it was actually hand made, and costs 300+ USD from the original shop. Bonus points, I feel like a wizard when I wear it
How do you know you’re not a wizard when you wear it? Have you tried magic?
I bet its fantastic orb pondering wear.
If you ever break or have surgery on any part of your arm, you’ll be very happy to have that cape in the winter. I have a couple from when I broke my wrist and used them again when I had shoulder surgery.
You need to get a matching wizard hat
A PVC pipe cap.
I was making a lightsaber for my kid, and bought a length of clear PVC from Home Depot. (I know, they have bad politics, but Lowe’s didn’t carry clear PVC.) My local store didn’t have any clear PVC or clear accessories in stock, so I had to place an order for shipping, so I got a couple things “just in case” for the build. One of those was a pipe cap.
Didn’t end up using the pipe cap, because lightsabers don’t have that sort of end. It now sits at my desk as a teeny tiny trash can. Bits of thread from sewing, nail clippings, tags I clip off of shirts, a lot of things fit in the teeny tiny trash can. When it’s full, I empty it into the trash, but for a rather small pipe cap, it holds quite a bit of small trash.
I needed a “lap desk” or something to put my laptop on, but I wanted it to be low-profile and I could only find a wooden cutting board. Now wooden cutting boards are the only thing I use as lap desks because most actual lap desks I find are super bulky.
I read that as “fap desk” was intrigued then disappointed.
For fap desk you really want silicone
Just cut a hole in the cutting board
That’s how you end up getting a cutting board stuck on your dick.
Duuuude. That’s a creative idea I might also use if I need a lap desk again. And something easy for if you need to put a laptop on a soft surface, won’t be wobbly like the bean bag ones.
The “epicurian” brand is perfect for this, or their knockoffs. Its like 1/4" thick (6mm) composite wood. I have one that even fits in my laptop bag - way better than any designated “lap board” I’ve ever found.
I also ended up doing this after my dad suggested it as an idea… and it’s actually a really great suggestion, they work fantastically well for this purpose!
Yeah it’s exactly what I was looking for! The one I’m currently using was actually the only cutting board that was big enough in the store that I was in, so it has goofy cookings decals all over it 😂
It’s a charcuterie board, not a cutting board, its for parties, the illustrations are telling you what kinds of snacks to put out. What a cool idea for a lap desk, it’s so pretty and unique.
Monitor mounting arms that connect to the back of the desk. I have 3 times as much room on my desk now. It’s amazing how much room monitor stands really take up. It’s not just the actual stand but really the surrounding area because you can’t really set any large objects in the vicinity. It really is a game changer to gain a lot of desk space.
Yeah I got this thinking it wouldn’t work or there is a catch. Nope, the monitor arms are awesome and save so much space, easy to adjust, and also look nicer than two stands on the desk.
I got a similar effect by constructing a purpose-made monitor shelf. It’s not as good for having a wide area open for large items, but it allows multiple levels for stacking, which works out great. It has one low shelf inside, just high enough to fit a keyboard and hands underneath, and then the top surface to put the actual monitors on. Keeping the bottom floor clear makes it easy to slide the keyboard in to make some temporary room in front of the structure, and the inside shelf provides a large general-purpose cavity for papers, mail, snacks, or what-have-you. There’s also some room on the top to pile things up next to the monitors.
The original goal was just to get the monitors up to eye level, but I ended up enjoying the extra space at least as much.
Which brand/model did you buy?
North Bayou, but only because I got a deal on them for cheap. Not sure if they are any better than any others, but they work as intended. Edit: these might be them: https://a.co/d/0MJRj7B
I’ve actually been considering this recently. Are you able to give me any suggestions or tips for what to look for?
What sizes are your monitors? Personally I think gas springs are the best, as any good one will allow you to adjust height and position with relative ease. Biggest thing you really have to watch for is the weight of your monitor vs the capacity of the stand, but if you’re not dealing with huge monitors you likely won’t run into this.
They’re like two random bedroom style (ie, intergrated DVD players that don’t work) flatscreen TVs so I think I would need relatively strong mounts. The smaller one is a 19 inch. I guess the other is a 22 but I’m not sure or able to check right at this moment. I guess monitors get so much bigger than that now that maybe these sets aren’t actually that heavy in comparison?
Honestly, I don’t think you’d have any concerns with finding some that are suitable, those are the sizes of monitor that the overwhelming majority of the stands are made for. Monitors get absurdly large now.
A Potato Ricer. My wife thought it was dumb as hell, until she made the best mashed potatoes we’ve ever had. It’s like a massive garlic press for potatoes
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Can confirm, also made bomb mashed potatoes with a ricer
Also great for hash browns. After shredding but before cooking, give them a press in the ricer to get the liquid out. Don’t push them all the way through, though.
> potato ricer
OMG did you just call JDM car enthusiasts a “potato”?
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.
An ebike: I don’t even really drive anymore most of the time and it beats the hell out of being stuck in traffic. Getting around is fun again.
I always enjoyed cycling and still ride my MTB, but for getting around town quickly, ebikes are hard to beat.
Same here with the ebike. I live near Seattle and everything I need is within a few minutes of ebike driving
If I can’t ebike, then I uber and it saves me a ton
Feel free to check out !micromobility@lemmy.world
Thank you for the recommendation!
It’s great that Lemmy is already growing with niche communities
can we get some more deets on what you use it for in terms of terrain/altitude/distance/weather?
Seriously considering an ebike to replace a 20 minute car commute (12 miles). There are some 750w used bikes on my local craigslist for ~1-2k USD, but there’s also a super cool dual-motor bike with rear suspension for $3k. Any advice?
I have an ebike I use as my daily commuter for a distance of 11 km each way (6.8 miles) over decently hilly terrain in a windy city as a large man. It still only takes 25 minutes and I charge my battery once a week? Maybe twice if I’m tired and using more boost.
Are you mechanically inclined at all? I purchased a motor conversion kit and a battery to convert my regular bike to ebike. It wasn’t really a difficult process, the hardest part was removing the bottom bracket as it was quite stuck. Took some thinking to get enough leverage without having the tool head chew out the bracket teeth. The rest was relatively plug and play. I was able to get the 500 W motor and 48 V 18 A hour battery for ~$1200 CAD together. I use it to commute to work so I wanted a longer range, if you don’t need as much power or as much range you could do it for cheaper.
I went for a mid drive motor which are more efficient but more expensive than hub drive, if you’re budget conscious you could do a hub drive. From my understanding the hub drive can be more difficult for maintenance (the wheel is a special version, so you need to buy another wheel that works with the hub drive if any issues occur) but I’m no expert.
All of that is a moot point if you don’t already have a bike to use, but you could find a local bike recycle store to get one cheap? Or you could get a new bike and convert that. I had a marin fairfax 2 that I converted over and it works great, haven’t had any issues and I’ve put on a couple thousand kms on it since converting (the display tracks total distance which is handy). I believe the marin was $700ish new from my local store.
https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B083J95GJP?geniuslink=true&psc=1
https://www.amazon.ca/10AH-Electric-Bicycle-Lithinum-Battery/dp/B09C1RP9KV
You could search for other options if you don’t want to support amazon, there are different sites to source the parts from, those were just the first two that I saw.
Here’s a battery from a Canadian company.
https://lunacycle.com/no-drill-battery-mount-kit/
Here’s a mounting bracket for the battery if the bracket seems unsteady or the holes don’t line up like with mine.
This is what I ended up going with. Let me know if you have any questions, I’d be happy to chat about the process more.
All of this is canadian specific because I reposted the meat of it from an older comment, bug I’m sure you could find local alternatives easily enough.
You don’t need much, 500w is enough.
Hell many people can get by with just a cheapo e-scooter.
