A lot of things could go there i guess haha, here’s some things I’m thinking of at this moment:
- a dishwasher. I will never go back this is the best invention humans created since the wheel
- AC. Same as above it changed my life
- keybar. This is a nice tool to manage keys and some other tools in a swiss-army like format.
- a good usb-c docking station. I need to jungle between multiple laptops for work, this really helped doing that.
- Going full public transit, bike and carsharing (communauto). Less traffic, and between these options it’s rarely more difficult than a car. And muchhhh cheaper, with gas, maintenance, taxes and depreciation it’s a bit crazy how much you put towards a car. It really helps to live comfortably with my budget.
No car/public transit was going to be my answer too. Sold my car about 9 years ago and switched to using the bus, carpool, or walking. At first it was a financial decision because I figured it would save me lots of money, and it did. I was surprised though how much more connected to the community I felt. I made friends and talked to people on my commute instead of sitting alone in the car. It also makes me feel more free to move around the city instead of just going from point A to point B and then home again.
Walking/biking is really the best for this, I feel like i live in a city with a community instead of living in disconnected “places”.
Seconding your 5th point. Getting rid of my car (NO, autocorrect: not my cat!) massively improved my life. Even if I don’t factor in the fancy restaurant visits and weekend vacations I take with my “car budget”.
AC also changed my life. My doctor thought I was dehydrated, but I also had symptoms of over-hydration. Not only did everything about my time at home improve significantly, but I also started sleeping better than I ever had in my life.
Where do you live that public transit is a viable option?
Montreal
Not OP, but in Berlin the situation is the same. Most of my daily ways are done by cargobike, as it is even faster than public transport and public transport is faster than a car.
Solitude.
I appear to have had extraordinarily bad luck in my life, as nearly every significant friend or lover or family I’ve ever had is consistently some.combination of abusive, exploitative, duplicitous, violent, criminal, hypocrite, never willing to hear my side of any story.
Been by myself with a new phone number in a new state for some months now and I’ve never been less stressed out, never felt less burdened, never felt more free.
Took me 35 years to figure out… wait, what if I did what I wanted to do, enjoyed things because I enjoyed them instead of pretending to like some other thing because someone else does, what if I stopped bending over backwards to solve everyone else’s problems when they usually just go out of their way to cause more problems for me, and never give anything meaningful back, and in fact usually blame me for things I have no control over, and then spread unfounded rumors about me due to their own massive neuroticism and guilt complexes?
I am quite happy now. I’ve never needed much to be happy, and nearly no one who has ever claimed to care about me has ever once been able to handle my honest opinions about what they have put me through.
Its been astounding to realize that actually, I make friends quite easily and get along with most people I meet great, whilst everyone I used to know has spent decades convincing me I am an unlikeable asshole who is merely to be tolerated.
I am going through setting strict boundaries and getting those people out of my life right now, so glad you managed the same!
Well, the final straw was when a number of them made me homeless, and the rest were either too busy or too emotionally burdened to help right now.
So after losing all my possessions, losing my job, being homeless for nearly a year, getting the shit kicked out of me regularly by fentanyl addicts uh… well, I should not have survived.
But despite nearly being killed more times than I can count, being held hostage by madman (who the police held for 30 days and then let loose), and witnessing a number of people I’d met along the way die…
It was not exactly easy.
But, by basically dumb luck, I survived.
And, being alive, having not only hit rock bottom, but having been dragged and kicked along its jagged ground… well, now I am free.
It is only after you lose everything, that you are free to do anything.
And for me, that means not having to deal with anyone while I do a whole lot of PT on disability.
Also, I now have a great deal of self confidence, as I am 100% certain any of those dumbfucks would have died going through a tenth of what I went through, yet I persist.
What is pt?
Also, amazing story and glad that you’re doing better
Physical Therapy.
Whole lot of my tendons and muscles got torn, shifted into the wrong places and misused as I had to keep moving with the muscles that were not completely fucked, bones broken, etc.
I still can’t really walk for long periods of time without massive pain, but it is slowly getting better.
Thanks for the well wishes =)
Linux.
Maybe not Linux per se, but certainly learning how to write scripts and other technical stuff, to automate boring tasks or alert me of things, or writing applications to do things I need, has been a massive time saver - but also a time waster as I enjoy it, and probably spend longer on these things than the amount of time they’ve saved.
And as footnote, it’s always easier to do this stuff on Linux than Windows… plus you can stick things on a Pi so it’s cheap and quiet.
standing ovation
My god you people are annoying.
Every single goddamn thread
Cargo e-bike. Errands are fun now and I get way more exercise. It’s hands-down my favorite way to get around town.
I would like one, but I have no space to store it, I live in a two room apartment and the bike storage is only really designed for a normal bike.
I used my normal bike with a bike basket on the parcel holder for shopping, it was brilliant!
No need for a bag, just pack the basket when you have paid, and hook it on the parcel holder.
Sadly I lost my bike during a year when I missed that the bike room was being cleared out and didn’t tag it, so it was thrown out as anandoned, this happened as I had messed up my knee, had double flat feet and double heel spurs.
I now drive my car to the shops bur it’s only one kilometer so it feels a bit dumb, meh I drive on electricity so it could be worse.
Once my situation with my general life stabalize a bit more I’ll looks for a bike.
Password Manager. I use Bitwarden, which is open source and free.
It’s probably the single most significant quality of life upgrade I’ve had since I started on ADHD meds 5 years ago. I wish I had started using one sooner.
+1 for Bitwarden. My Dad’s password manager actually made taking care of him in the last years of his life alot easier. I essentially had to “wind down” his life (pay bills/debts, close accounts, stop subscriptions, etc), and as his memory was going it would’ve been impossible to get that information from him. With myself too though I’ve got so many dumb accounts all over the place, having a password manager is the only thing keeping me sane half the time when having to log in to everything to pay bills and such.
PlayStation 3. Yeah, it was a games console, and had lots of awesome games (such as the Uncharted series, LittleBigPlanet, Ratchet and Clank, Journey, Warhawk, I could be here all day), but it was the extra features that really made it appealing in my opinion.
This was the cheapest and best Blu-ray player you could possibly get. It even stores media files on the internal storage, rips CDs too, upscale DVDs to 1080p resolution, not to mention the XrossMediaBar user interface was just so easy to use, and aged quite beautifully. It even has funky themes. It can play your PS1 games (some models can even play PS2 disks, but all models have some PS2 games downloadable from the store), you can manage files on your PSP or Vita. It had remote play, but it was… pretty limited to say the least.
It quite literally only does everything.
An air conditioner.
I don’t buy the hype. I’m waiting to see if they catch on.
Electric wheelchair. After my 2nd heart attack, it became harder and harder to do things in the world. Grocery stores were impossible unless they had scooters of their own, which were usually in use or out of service.
Now I just bring my own.
I use a wheelchair part time, and it’s unbelievable how much starting using one can help when you’re partially ambulatory. I find it funny how able bodied people use phrases like “wheelchair bound”, which perpetuates this idea of wheelchairs being like prisons, but at least for me and a few people I know, finally getting a wheelchair was hugely freeing.
Same, I hadn’t really left the house since 2018. Once a week for groceries and prescriptions and that was it.
Jesus, just being able to go to a movie theater was huge.
And do you feel like a king/queen in it?
My sister made stickers for the sides so now it says “Majestic AF”
Finally setup up my smart home. Lights coming on at dusk across my whole house with varying levels of brightness, from nightlight to lighting up the living room. Shutting down everything in my house and arming my security system all with one phrase. Temp automatically adjusting throughout the day/night for better energy savings. It really just made life a little easier in multiple ways. Especially once you realize there are smart IR blasters.
Using smart lights as an alarm clock is a game changer. Fades on 10 minutes before my alarm, and lets me wake up slowly and drift in and out of sleep during that interim period. Only occasionally do I go all the way until my audio alarm, and this way is way more pleasant to wake up to.
My Hue system is probably one of the best things I ever bought.
I live alone, in a suburb north of Stockholm, so during winters it get really damned depressing to leave the office after sunset, and then get home and open the front door to a dark hole.
Being able to turn some lights on before I open the door has made wonders for my mental health, it makes it feel as if there is someone at home taking care of it and waiting for you to come home.
Then in the mornings, using the lights in my bedroom as an alarmclock in combination with my phone makes me get up far quicker.
And when I have guests over I can set the mood and make my apartment look cool.
No joke, implementing automated MMO style daily quests on my smartphone harnessed my brainrot for productive means. I struggle with depression and ADHD among other things, so before l pretty much never made my bed or worked out, etc. I do all of that consistently now, and I feel all the better for it.
I’ve been looking for a way to invert that and make a number go up instead, and maybe implement gacha, flashing lights and FOMO into my daily routine to really exploit my busted psychology to its maximum.
How do you do that, is there an app?
Plenty, IFTTT for android, Shortcuts for ios.
I’ve got a setup where all reminders with the Daily tag get set to incomplete at 1AM, and all with Weekly tagged get set up on Sunday, etc etc
A spine. Got tired of doing everything for everyone, so I started setting rules. It’s shifted the energy from physical to social/emotional, but the house is cleaner.
A collection of spines does send a message.
!rimworld@lemmy.world is leaking.
A $1 backscratcher from a local pharmacy. Makes scratching my own back effortless. 10/10 investment. And way more affordable than the full-time backscratching assistant I was paying all those years.
Did you mean assistants? Or were you really surviving on just 40 hours of back scratches in a 168 hour week?
The Lance of Longinus has its uses.
My wife really likes the beach, but I hate the sand and I find laying flat in a towel very uncomfortable.
This thing fits in my backpack and folds out to a very comfy air filled bed. It does lose some air over time, I expect to re-fill it every 2 hours or so, but filling it is just a matter of catching some air by moving the Lamzac around. It only takes a couple of seconds and doesn’t require a pump or anything.
A NAS. Godsent when you’re dealing with multiple machines.
Selfhosted VPN, another godsent for bypassing network restrictions or using public wifi.
