Something some people may not know about me is that I am a massive fan of thrift stores, as well as the dollar store. I have found some truly innovative items there for way less than you would find anywhere else. My husband found a pasta maker at Savers for only a few dollars, and now he uses it to make his own pasta. And it's gooooood.
Of course, you can find incredible, mind-blowing products anywhere for super cheap--you just need to know where to look. ToteMyRatchet asked:
What life changing item can you buy for under 100$?
You can really find some game-changers for cheap if you go to the right places.
Be warned- these can work a little too well.
“Blackout curtains! I've never slept so well, and could kick myself for not doing this years earlier.”
“Pair them with a blackout curtain rod, and it's next level. I'll never go back.”
Soooo worth it.
pillow GIFGiphy“A good pillow. Granted, bedding can be unreasonably overpriced, but $20 pillows at Target are not awesome. Invest in a good pillow. You spend 1/3 of your life on it.”
“I bought an 'expensive' pillow from €100 to €50 in a sale. It makes so much difference! Any hotel I stayed couldn't offer the same comfort.”
A must-have.
“An emergency roadside kit for your vehicle.”
“At Costco right now (in the US) you can get a CAT jump starter that's also a compressor to fill your tires as well as a power station with 120v, 12v, USB plug ins for $99.
Perfect for camping and if the power goes out as well.”
Good shoes are a necessity.
“A decent pair of shoes on clearance. Nice shoes, like Eccos, that are good for your feet. You might not think about it, but your feet and how you treat them are crucial for the health of you ankles, knees, hips and back. You're standing on those mfs all the time. They work hard for you, so get good shoes!
I'm not talking about designer bullsh*t or whatever is trendy.”
Think of all the amazing stuff you can get for less than $100. That’s cheaper than a night out!
Ooooh this is a good one.
Season 1 Episode 6 GIF by Living SingleGiphy“Ladies... get a shower stool. I have a teak Japanese style one.. Shaving is infinitely easier without having to do shower yoga. Also, I no longer almost fall and die while switching legs. And it's easier to dissociate under the water.”
“I'm 1000% with you. I've had a chair in my shower for only a couple months and it makes everything easier. I also feel like I can sit in the shower and really REALLY tend to my feet without fear of slipping, falling, and dying lol”
Crazy Historical Events That Sound Fake But Are 100% True | George Takei’s Oh Myyy
Life-changing af.
“A weighted blanket - my sleep life will never be the same.”
“Weighted blankets are great for people who like to cuddle or snuggle up to something when they sleep.”
Grateful gums.
“Electric toothbrush. Your teeth and gums will thank you forever!”
“Can confirm. Was gifted an electric toothbrush and have been teeth ever since. Gums still send me holiday cards.”
Of course, some things are much more crucial than others.
Much needed.
season 2 dancing GIF by NETFLIXGiphy“Condoms. Your life will change if you DON'T use them!”
“True. It won't be $100 anymore but your soul and your paycheck.”
A lot of useful info here.
“A good flashlight. The tl;dr here is that you need one more than you think, it's one of the most useful things you can own, and maglites and plastic crap are not even close in capability to what you can get these days.
Many of you have probably seen the feds recommending owning a dedicated flashlight- not the one in your phone. Which is absolutely good advice, because in the event you need a flashlight to see there's a good chance you're in a situation where you are not going to be able to charge your phone, and will have better uses for your phone battery.
And a lot of you are probably thinking "yeah no worries I have that plastic flashlight laying around here somewhere" or "oh yeah my dad's old maglite is in the garage." Guys, I love to break it to you, but the flashlight you have is probably terrible compared to proper modern flashlights.
And no, I don't mean the ones you get in the sporting goods section of WalMart- although some of those are reasonably okay, they're almost universally overpriced for what they are. And I sure don't mean this US MILITARY HIGH POWER EXTREME BEST FLASHLIGHT IN THE WORLD marketing traps you see on TV ads and kickstarters.
Nowadays you can get incredible flashlights that will light up your house better than your actual overhead lights, turn nighttime off in a 50 yard radius of you outside, or even fire a beam of light across a field or lake a mile away. For less than $100 bucks. Hell, in many cases, less than $50.
Now obviously I recommend heading over to r/flashlight if you want to do some research- although fair warning, you might catch the flashlight collecting bug and there's no coming back from that. But if you want my personal recommendation for some to check out-
The Sofirn SP36 is about the size of a soda can, and can put out about 100 times as much light as the flashlight on your phone in a big floody way that fills up rooms easily. Hovers around $60 on Amazon.
The Astrolux FT03: this is about as typical looking a flashlight as you can imagine, but the standard model can put out about 50 times as much light as your phone and will blast it out over 800 meters. About $35 if you're willing to sit around and wait for it to come from China in a couple weeks.
The Lumentop EDC18 is a pocket sized flashlight about the size of your thumb that can do over 50 times as much light as your phone. If you don't want a fancy user interface, go for the EDC18L. $50, or as little as $30 with a coupon on Amazon.
Anything from Olight, Sofirn, Convoy, Emisar, Noctigon, Nitecore, Wowtac, Thrunite, Surefire, Fenix, or Zebralight is going to blow your mind if you've not used a real modern flashlight before and will be probably be more than enough for a normal non flashlight fetishist. There are plenty of other companies I've forgotten to put in there I'm sure but I'll personally vouch for all of those.”
That sounds fantastic.
“Smart bulbs. Put one in a lamp in your bedroom and have it slowly brighten in the morning. It will change your life.”
“I have them all over my house and love them. I set them up with Alexa so they turn on and off on a schedule, I can tell them to dim or brighten, you can go party mode with different colors that flash or brighten along with the music, they're LED so they'll last forever, and it's great "security" when I'm out of town to make people think I'm home. All for like $10/each. Worth every penny, my lighting matches my moods now”
I hope all of you have added a few of these things to your shopping list. Put $100 aside from your next paycheck, and invest in a few of these truly life-changing item. You won’t regret it.
Redditor r3tr0gam3r83 wanted to hear about which realizations in life have left people SHOOK, so they asked:
"What is something that blew your mind once you realized it?"
Avocados are not vegetables.
They're fruits, berries to be exact.
Like what?!?!
Colleagues
GIF by Bud LightGiphy"Sometimes it is more important to like your colleagues than the actual job."
"I had shi**y jobs with the most amazing colleagues and had shi**y colleagues and the most amazing job. I'd pick the first every time."
chr989
Star Trekking
"That you could legitimately travel at warp speed through the center of galaxies and never run any real risk of hitting a star. That’s how spread out space really is."
justanotherguyhere16
"Also, galaxies, stars, and even the Universe is constantly moving. I think time travel has been invented, but they can’t figure out the 'space' part of it.
"Yes, they can travel back in time, but relatively speaking, they can’t figure out how to navigate to the part of the planet they want to reach. So when they travel back in time, it’s relative to where they currently are, and end up not moving through space, thus ending up in the middle of an empty vacuum."
theknights-whosay-Ni
Jaws is Old
"That sharks predated the rings of Saturn."
BeardedDominant
"Sharks also developed the immune system that ended up in both dinosaurs/birds and mammals."
csiz
"We don’t know that. We can’t say for certain that the rings are only 100 million years old. It’s still debated."
The_Kek_5000
"I'm pretty sure that sharks are older than trees."
Cayderent
From the Trees
"One day I sat on a tram, passing a river. There was a duck in a tree. I realized I'd never seen ducks in trees. No one else seemed to notice, but I was puzzled. Now whenever I come across something that seems intuitive but I have never considered I call it a duck in a tree."
Ol_Pasta
"This realization happened to me this past year. We apparently have a family of wood ducks in one of the big trees in our yard. Our neighbor said she has seen a duck walking around on a branch. I made it 37 years without knowing some ducks can roost in trees. My wife caught a video of the mama leading like eight ducks into the field next to our house. We aren't even near water."
jwbourne
Artistic Timeline
Confused Eminem GIFGiphy"Pablo Picasso and Eminem were both alive at the same time."
leebon427
"I’d bet a lot of people think Picasso is a Renaissance artist."
editormatt
I admit it. I'm one of those people. Pablo and Marshall, in one lifetime.
New facts are fun.
The New World
Design Loop GIF by xponentialdesignGiphy"They were colonizing the Wild West at the same time as they were building skyscrapers in Manhattan. I always think of them taking place eighty to a hundred years apart. It's wild."
Emilayday
Oh the Power
"Nuclear power plants are just steam power plants that use nuclear reactions to heat the water. There's no fancy magic extracting energy directly from nuclear material. They just boil water and spin a turbine."
RenaKunisaki
"Most electrical generation is spinning a turbine. Photovoltaic solar power is pretty much the only exception, and it's not the only form of solar power. There's solar thermal power, which uses mirrors or lenses to concentrate the heat of the sun to make steam and turn a turbine."
Brawndo91
The Empire
"The Roman Empire fully fell less than 50 years before the discovery of the new world."
South-by-north
"The Romans also had copper wire, magnets, and battery acid. They could have invented electricity hundreds of years before it was actually discovered. But they didn't. The wire was used for jewelry, the magnets as lodestones, and the battery acid was used to clean the rust off of swords."
Kahzgul
"RIP Byzantine Empire. 1453 never forget."
crossbowman44
The Witness
"Owl‘s silent flight. I mean I always knew that but a while ago was the first time I actually witnessed it. Owl came flying towards me and landed only a few feet away and you couldn‘t hear anything. Crazy."
Zealousideal-You-324
"I saw a barn owl swoop down and catch a mouse while hiking at night, and the whole thing happened in complete silence. It gave me a deep sense of unease because it was literally like someone hit the mute button on life."
VulcanVisions
Bad Kermit
Kermit The Frog Meme GIF by IdentityGiphy"Poison dart frogs aren't poisonous in captivity."
"I own 5 of them and anytime I tell someone I own some I always get 'Do you ever lick them' or 'Can you go kill someone with them.' But yeah they get their poison from what they eat, and all I give them is fruit flies."
JMfury
Poison frogs?
That sounds like something Rose would have a story about on 'The Golden Girls.'
Redditor rentinghappiness wanted to hear about the things everyone really didn't know anything about until it happened to them, so they asked:
"What is something you used to think people were over-exaggerating about until you experienced it yourself?"
We never really know anything about anything until we try it for ourselves.
Mouth Issues
Dentist GIFGiphy"Dentist chiming in… tooth pain. I knew academically how painful they could be until it happened to me."
juneburger
"You know the pain is serious when you start looking forward to the inevitable root canal."
HailMari248
Wonders of Nature
"Giant sequoia trees. When I finally saw them in person, they looked fake. I could not comprehend a tree of that size."
schaefer001
"And we may have lost 15-20% of the remaining trees during some big fires in 2020 and 2021. A 2011 estimate puts it that there were only 80,000 remainings. They truly are wondrous organisms that I feel like everyone should have the chance to experience if they can."
"I'm a big believer in doing everything we can to protect and preserve these silent giants. It's really sad that so many were cut down by loggers when the wood is such poor quality for human purposes, to begin with. Such an utter and sad waste."
this_is_poorly_done
Just Me
"Loneliness."
Fried__SoapI
"I'm with you. Put all my cards into a girl who went suddenly cold and dark on me. Now I'm alone at rock bottom figuring out my next moves. You know, the smartest people in the world and also the happiest people in the world can be the loneliest?"
"I was only recently informed it's okay to talk to myself and hype myself. Enjoy my own company. I'm absolutely going to learn to do that. I'm thinking of painting, walking, and weekend trips out on a bus. Would be nice if you could have joined me even if we sat in silence."
Roofdragon
The Years Gone By...
"The physical pain of getting older. Damn."
marklikeadawg
"The emotional pain too. I get so nostalgic and teary over the past and how much has changed. It's a weird grieving process over losing your youth and the way things were."
heethersmeether
"On my 35th birthday, my wife woke me up with a cupcake and a candle, sang me 'Happy Birthday' and then congratulated me on being '15 from 50'... that really hit me hard. The other day I turned 45 and she said '5 from 50' and that hit me so hard, I just wanted to stay in bed all day. I still feel like an irresponsible teen but I'm pushing 50. Insane."
Opa_Kalaka
It's Hazy
Confused Always Sunny GIF by It's Always Sunny in PhiladelphiaGiphy"Brain fog. I had an alcohol withdrawal seizure in March. My short-term memory and sense of time are absolutely sh*t right now. On the plus side, I haven't had a drink in over 90 days and I don't want one."
Sideshow_Bob_Ross
Oh the wonders of the brain.
What a mess.
Scorched
Menopause Hot Flashes GIF by Kino LorberGiphy"Hot Flashes. I didn’t think they were this bad. I’m a 31-year-old man who took Wellbutrin for the past month and hot flashes are a side effect."
"I thought you just thought you were hot. No motherf**ker you are. You’re super hot legitimately, and you have to do something about it or you’ll go insane. It’s not in your head. It’s your brain raising your temps until you can’t focus on anything else."
_PswayZ_
Everlasting
"Chronic illness, there is absolutely no way you can truly understand the impact unless you experience it."
Disastrous-Phase-979
"Just that idea of always being sick and you will NEVER not be sick again."
"AND you're expected to participate in society just the same as everyone else. It's deeply f**ked up."
Farisr9k
"I like the part where I've been in pain for 25 years so I can kind of still function even when it's really bad."
"And then I try to get an ambulance guy or an admin assistant in a hospital to believe that I'm having an emergency and they're like 'You seem fine, take some Tylenol and go home' until I finally get a blood test, and then the doctor goes 'Holy crap, you're about to die, why didn't you come to the ER sooner.'"
"Like, listen up MF, I had to take a go**amn Uber to get here and then argue with reception for an hour."
BlahBlahILoveToast
Stoned
"How much a kidney stone hurts."
SpiritusSanctu
"Most people expect it to hurt the most when passing a stone through the urethra. Nothing prepared me for the pain as it passed through my kidney/ureter."
"One second I would be fine, carrying on conversations, prancing around nimbly-nimbly. The next second I would be keeled over, crying in agony, losing my lunch due to the sudden onset of crippling pain. 0/10 ... Would not recommend it."
King_of_Lunch223
Close Your Eyes
"Insomnia."
Successful_Fall7801
"Oh, what I would give to not have insomnia! I go through periods of sleeping more or less normal, and then for seemingly no reason, I’ll have weeks on end where a good night of sleep is IMPOSSIBLE. I’ll get 2-4 hours of sleep despite pills, tea, baths, white noise, meditation - everything."
"I’ll spend my days so deeply, utterly exhausted that I can barely think, and my whole body feels heavy, lifeless. It’s hard to feel any kind of emotion, let alone happiness or contentedness. Just existing as a human-shaped puddle until the time when I can go to bed and hope to god that tonight will be different for some unknown reason."
"Insomnia is a real bi*ch. It will tank your mental health and send you spiraling really fast."
thesmallshadows
Beep
Meme Reaction GIF by TravisGiphy"Tinnitus. It’s torture."
DissidentBliss
"I don't mind it much 'cause I've had it since I was born. That means I don't know what proper silence is."
77x5ghost
"Me too, they thought I had hearing issues when I was young because I couldn’t really hear some of the beeps well because they matched the pitch of the ringing."
ehter13
Don't judge another until you lace up their shoes and walk a mile in them!
Do you have anything else to share? Let us know in the comments.
