Peg board in the garage. Organizing tools is easy now

Bidet

Using an enterprise grade networking equipment in the house. My setup uses PFSense (free), which runs in a virtual machine on Proxmox (free) and Ubiquiti WAPs (2 X $100). I have not heard the “Dad the wifi is broken!” call from anyone for a while.

Stock Tank Pool

I have a tiny sloping backyard. A stock Tank pool was super cheap and just the right size to fit on my level ground

Soft close toilet seats are a game changer. Now I find myself slamming the lid at my friends’ houses.

I’ve done a few really great ones. I got the UBolt Pro for a fancy lock I can track who accesses, auto lock, unlock remotely if needed, etc. It’s very handy for visitors because I assign their access code as the last 4 digits of their phone number so they never forget. I got Zigbee smart bulbs everywhere, but if I were to do it again, I would do smart switches in any places I didn’t need dimming or individual bulb control. Here’s another great idea: FANS. Ceiling fans, desk fans, whatever. You can connect good Vornado desk fans to a smart switch so you can get cooling on demand without getting out of bed. Lastly, an Aquasana under sink water filter. Only filter I know of that removes PFAS and PFOAs and is third party certified to do so. Good delicious safe water.

From most to least expensive:

• Robot vacuum with autoempty station. Scheduled to run over different areas of the house at the right times. We have pets so this is major. Bit fiddly to automate so that it doesn’t clog itself on pet hair, but I figured out a good rhythm now.

• Smart bulbs in some rooms, automated to dim at night and turn off in morning.

• External sensor lights around the house and garage. And internal sensor lights in pantry and deep closet space.

They are small things that you feel the benefit pretty much daily.

My attic used to have 2 light bulbs with pull chains on them. Going up there was always a battle to feel around and find the string to the light. And it was barely lit even then.

I bought these 2 led bar lights from Costco that are motion sensing. They are super bright. Now, as soon as I pull down the attic stairs, the attic lights up like the sun. I’ve had many compliments on them from workers coming over for pest control or ac maintenance.

smart bulbs in the bedroom. About 50-60$ per lightbulb, control them as a group, and no fighting with the spouse “you were the last one in bed, you need to go turn the lights off” vs “you’re closer, you turn the light off”

Link them to your wiretap speaker of choice (google home or Alexa) and you can issue commands to it.
“Ok Google, turn off lights”

“Ok Google, set lights to 5%” (good for just a little light, getting ready to bed, not disturbing your spouse, or sexytimes)

You can get really crazy with something like HomeAssistant, but that’s pretty technical in nature, but then you can control everything with your phone app, run automations to turn on the house lights when the garage door opens between 5:15 and 6:15pm (assumes you’re just getting home). automatically lock the doors at 11pm, let you know when the trash hasn’t been taken out, adjust lighting when the TV is turned on, etc etc etc.

Under the sink water filtration system. We spent maybe $300 on ours and couldn’t be happier. Clear, clean tasting water where before it was sketchy at best (farm country) and no more need to fill up the Brita pitcher every single day. Took maybe an hour to set up.

Brother P-Touch TZe label writer

While the brand isn’t super important, the Brother supports e.g. iron-on label tape that I can get from the local shopping centre.

Katchy insect trap. My husband likes to leave doors open and I was getting eaten by mosquitoes. Katchy has nearly eliminated the problem.