What's one small thing you've done to make your life easier?
For example, I 3d printed a box over my outlet to protect my cables from my bed pushing against it. In addition, my cables never fall to the floor so they’re much easier to grab.
Pretty great 2nd date in my experience, not a great idea for an initial date unless you know the person ahead of time. But can pretty quickly reveal if they can cook too!
Try and find a cheap deal for a meal service like hellofresh or blue apron or any other service. I didn’t want to, but my spouse did. I’ve learned some good techniques and used ingredients I would not normally use. Don’t sign up long term, just get a box or two or whatever and cancel. Once you’ve learned your lesson you can extrapolate that.
In my experience with these types of people, they more and more frequently shift conversation to them wanting their beliefs validated, because normal people have stopped engaging with them.
I have a friend who was a classic Catholic libertarian in college–he held some views on trans rights, abortion, and economic justice that I find deeply disagreeable. It made conversations a little tricky because there were a whole set of topics I couldn’t bring up unless I wanted to wade into a debate immediately; sometimes I did, but often I just wanted to hang out and chill and that was hampered.
It took him exactly one year of being out of college and working a real job to realize that his economic views were fucked, and the whole rest of it unraveled from there. He’s now a staunch leftist, and it’s way, way easier to hang out with him.
That’s not, however, to say it’s not worth having friends you disagree with. We remained friends because we were able to disagree productively, and I feel I understand my own political views far better for all those long nights discussing them. Still, it was a friendship that took unusual effort to maintain.
My BIL is a Catholic Libertarian. Almost forty and still lives with Mom and Dad, so he never had the brush with reality that your friend went through. He thinks he’s politically savvy and always wants “civil debate” with me, but he’s utterly insufferable.
I’m not looking forward to Thanksgiving next week.
Deleting my social media accounts, migrating from yahoo/google mail, using a password manager, using an ad blocker, frequent backups, all kinds of scripting automations for work, Plex, home automation, learning to fix stuff around the house by myself (some plumbing, some electrical, whatever is safe and easier - it’s hard to come by a good, available specialist these days).
I mean a lot of the suggestions are do some work ahead of time to make everyday easier which is what I see now. maybe not the backups but that is more about reducing major grief in your life so ill allow it (but not op but love making pop culture references).
I don't buy personal electronics, phone cases, or other items in black if I have the option. Not quite as rigorously I've stopped buying black or dark clothing where possible. Decades of buying everything in black or darker shades as the default and at some point I realized it's pretty damn bland and makes everything harder to find if lost.
I’ve done the same with a lot of “easy to lose” things; I’ll go for white or other bright colors so it’s easier to spot and harder to misplace or forget. I lost my water bottle the other day because it was nighttime and the bottle is black.
As much as I love my own Nextcloud instance, I’m not sure that’s a “small thing” for most people. Also, now you have to secure it and keep it updated. I keep mine behind an Nginx reverse proxy and pass those logs to a small splunk instance with a dashboard to show me what’s hitting my server. With basically zero footprint, botnets and attackers have still found my server and are attacking it regularly.
Keeping it internal only keeps out a lot of the bad stuff. I actually have mine online, so tend to think in that mode.
The only recommendation I would make it, keep it updated. This goes for all software, you never know when a bug or vulnerability is going to turn into a bad day.
Labelled bag clips on all the stuff in the freezer. When something runs out, the clip goes onto a bit of string, hanging from the bottom of a cupboard. Instant freezer shopping list.
Edit to note: The only weakness is that you only add things to your shopping list when they run out. The workaround is to have 2 bags of everything, though this wouldn’t suit everyone.
I write everything in my freezer down on a list with a in/out side. Once the two sides equalize I cross the line off. I also record the date on the freezer bags and the list so I eat the older stuff first.
I saw a video that opened my eyes to what I could do with plastic wrap in the context of food storage. Also freezing stuff. In general I feel like both help me keep my groceries fresher and also waste less.
Some examples. Sometimes you only need half of an onion. I used to use an entire zip lockbag or just put it in the fridge as is. This is such an obvious idea but now I just plastic wrap left over veggies and they stay super fresh. Plastic wrap can pretty much be used to create a near airtight bag of any shape and size.
Another example with freezers is sometimes I buy things like jalapenos and end up only using half of them and eventually have to throw the other half out. Again this is such an obvious idea in hindsight but now I just freeze the other half. They can pretty much stay fresh for months and I will end up figuring out another use for them in the meantime.
Both these ideas seem so obvious but for some reason didn’t really come naturally to me until I watched some cooking videos and found this is what some chefs do.
So you are telling me that you found the idea of using disposable plastic wrap instead of reusable zipbags revolutionairy? Huh, seems like a step back to me.
If you knew the absurd amounts of plastic wrap every restaurant goes through, you’d see the metre or 2 that this guy goes through a month for personal use is of negligable impact.
I tend to use glass jars for this. They are reusable and recyclable, you can see what’s in them, they protect what’s inside from getting crushed, and they’re free if you repurpose jars that food came in.
I do this to the point of preferring certain brands of things like pasta sauce and salad dressing because they use continuous thread lids (Mason jar style) instead of lug lids. (The sauce company disclaims against reusing their jars for canning, but I do it anyway and haven’t had a problem yet.)
I like standardizing on one specific lid type so that I can just throw them in a pile instead of having to keep lids matched with jars, and so that I can use various Mason jar-compatible accessories (e.g. a fermentation lid, an attachment for my vacuum sealer etc.) with them.
I got rid of my cell phone. It ruins the point if you can’t use it while working, can’t use it while in a vehicle, can’t use it while sleeping, constantly have app issues, use it scarcely, and its usage is 90% car warranty. Not worth it, cannot emphasize that enough.
That is a different take from what I usually hear from people. Am I right in assuming that you are in a line of work that doesn’t require you to communicate that much.
But even so, how would you communicate with your family or loved ones if they ever have to be away from you for some time ?
I guess more people started using the so called ‘dumbphones’. Maybe owning something like that will the serve the purpose of occassional communication for you.
My work does include phones, just not cell phones, which also means I pay none of its bills. If anyone needed to communicate with me, there’s always what we’re doing right now.
I travel with a work toolbox, among my stuff are drill bits and taps. I used to keep them all loose in a small container, and whenever I had to both drill a hole and tap it, I had to find the tap and then fish around for the correct but. Now I tie them together with elastic bands, so whenever I pick up a tap it has the correct bit attached.
I leave a roll of trash bags in the bottom of the trash bin, so it’s where I need it when I need it - instead of taking up place elsewhere or getting lost. I do this for all trash bins. In the kitchen, at the toilets, at work, in the garage etc.
Also, with all the different sorting these days, I’ve decided not to sort the plastic, paper, glass etc. at the source, but just use one big container for all the clean stuff. When it’s full, I’ll take it out and sort it at the actual trashcan outside which is the place where it actually needs sorting. There’s no need to keep 5 or more different trash containers under the kitchen sink to be emptied separately.
I like my freezer not to be full of garbage, plus it doesn’t freeze instantly, so could leak on my food in there. No thanks. Or do you have a dedicated garbage freezer?
I did this too :D I used to have 20 pairs of non-identical black socks, which made matching hard and it felt wrong to wear socks of slightly different type or size. Much easier now
I keep getting socks for Christmas though, which I never wear cause they’d mess up the simplicity
Until the first few break down and you need to buy new ones, just to realize they are different from the ones you have by now (or discontinued outright).
Buy two bottles of cleaner. One in the kitchen, one in the bathroom. Tool box lives in the garage, but I have spares in the kitchen drawer. Trash can in every room. Extra shoelaces sitting on the shoe rack. It doesn’t take up a lot of space and it makes life much easier when you don’t have to look for something.
This is such a generational thing. My parents and grandparents would get shoes and have them resoled periodically. With a little care, a pair of shoes were expected to last decades. You used to see shoe repair shops in every neighborhood. I can’t remember the last time I brought a pair of shoes that could be resoled.
I’m currently wearing a pair of boots manufactured in 1982. They where my grandfather’s. I’ll have them repaired for as long as I can find a cobbler to do it. New laces on occasion and shoe polish every few months.
I disagree. I had a pair of cheap elastic sided boots from Rivers resoled, and my partner once got new heels put on his worn down Kmart shoes. It is possible to get shoes cheaper than the cost of resoling them.
it depends. I live in a studio, I still have a kitchen trash and bathroom trash, paper towels and cleansers in both. it’s just easier knowing I’ll always have quick access to clean up a mess. like cat vomit.
ideally I’d also have a flashlight and first aid kit stashed in both places, but those have been less necessary and so fell off the critical re-supply list.
I recently got a convertible standing desk thing, with a treadmill/walking pad for underneath. It has done wonders for my mental health while at work. Reading boring real estate contracts is a lot easier to get through when I’m standing up and moving instead of falling asleep in my chair while simultaneously destroying my back/posture.
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