Reusable zip ties, goddammit! Regular zip ties are useful once in awhile, but the fact that you need to cut them makes them impractical for many applications.
But the reusable ones, which you can fasten and unfasten with equal ease? Holy shit. I use these bad boys ALL. THE. TIME.
For starters, just think about the cords, ropes, cables, and wires in your life. You have a great many of them, and they are probably a mess. ZIP TIES. Wrap an extension cord or laptop charger up in a loop, pinch it together, and zip it up. And that's just for starters.
Sleeping bags? Blankets? Towels? ZIP. TIES. Roll and zip them and they will pack down much smaller than just rolling them alone, and they won't come unrolled, making packing/storing way the hell easier. I can keep going.
Most applications where you might use an elastic band are actually better with Z I P T I E S. Need something squeezed tightly, like the aforementioned sleeping bag? Zip ties ratchet down tighter than an elastic band can. Need something secured gently, like a bag of chips? An elastic will crush your delicate chips, but a zip tie can hold the bag closed with gentle pressure bespoke and delicate. With zip ties, YOU are in control. They last longer and are much more resistant to temperature and sunlight than elastic bands too, so you can use them in the freezer or outdoors or wherever and they will outlive you.
Get yourself or a loved one a bag of 100 for like $5 right now. Hand them out to children on Halloween. Offer them as gifts to friends and acquaintances new and old. They will change your life and theirs. Reusable zip ties.
Pill organizer. Start when you take just 1 once or twice a day, get used to filling it each week and checking on it until it becomes a routine. It'll keep you from double dosing and save fretting if you remembered to take your meds or not. Then when you're taking multiple pills multiple times a day you'll prep them 1/14th as often, and open<5% the bottles you would be. For a 1 time 3 dollar investment (you can find them with logos for free quite often) save yourself a few minutes a week, hours a year, days of your life.
A cheap digital kitchen scale, never fret with converting oz to grams again, just click the button and it's changed it's units, some even do liquid measurements so long as the liquid is similar density to water. And food cooks more consistently (therefore tastes better) if you use consistent ingredients, and how can you do that if you're using a "more or less" system? Get your accuracy to half a gram really cheap, a tenth of a gram (more than enough for cooking) for not much more.
This book actually changed my life.
"Discover What You Are Best At" by Linda Gail.
I worked all my life, and always hated every job. Then I read the book and learned that I might be well suited for a position I had never considered. Took a course and did well, passed and applied for a job.
If you can wake up on a snowy Monday and not hate waking up, you've solved most of your problems.
A scissors sharpener. You don't know what your scissors can do.
Knife sharpener. Sharp knives are safer. You can also very often buy dull knives for cheap... and make them sharp. I am pretty happy with my 3 stage sharpener.
Costco executive membership. It will pay for itself. Also get the Costco credit card and be sure to use it to buy all your Costco gas.
Spring assist flipper knife with deep pocket clip. Buy a cheap one first and sharpen it...with...your knife sharpener! It is incredibly useful to have a sharp knife in your hand a second after wanting it.
Lemon/lime squeezer. Stop struggling.
Pour over coffee setup.
Coffee grinder. Fresh ground is so much better. I used a manual one for a long time.
Pepper mill.
Bamboo chopsticks. Very cheap. I prefer them to the metal ones I also have because they grip better.
LED headlamps. Get some with red lights to take camping. Keep them all over the house and garage to light dark rooms, corners and outside.
Paper maps. I have the USGS map of my area up on the wall by my back door. I also have many in the door of my truck. Free at state visitor centers or by mail.
It depends on your definition of cheap, but towel warmers. Just pop your towel into a little tub with a heater a few minutes before jumping in the shower. Then it's as warm as if it just came out of the dryer by the time you get out.
Staying at hotels seems so lacking in luxury when you have to dry off with a cold towel.
Hot water bottle or equivalent warm thing
Toothpaste
If you don’t ride the bus regularly, a 10 trip bus pass.
desk lamp
A box of disposable wooden chopsticks.
Do you ever want to poke something? Unjam your weed pipe? Stir tortilla dough? Scrape some unspeakable crap off the garage floor and then discard the scraping thing? Chopsticks are so insanely useful when you have a jar full of them and you just grab them and use them for any disposable task.
The cheapest are the best because they flex and they are rough. Because of the texture, they are very absorbent. The head of it is square so if you need to have a scraping edge you've got it, and then the tapered tip fits into so many areas. You can snap them in half, jam a wad of paper in the middle for a fulcrum, and using an elastic band on the other end turn them into quick clips
I don't even want to go on and on about all the things I use them for, because this would be the longest Lemmy comment in history.
