This was inspired by the great toaster thread. (VERY cool toaster.)
My quality of life needs improvement. This obviously means I need one or more household or kitchen gadgets. Not so much straight electronics or computer toys, as I have a bunch of those.
By “quality of life” I mean something that will save time, be fun to watch in operation, make my life easier, make me happy, make me look forward to coming home so I can use it, just generally make life more worth living. Something that will add value and meaning to my life.
I love mine. Just got my second model, after having my first for three years. It needs a little more maintenance than one might normally do on a vacuum - you have to manually clean out the brushes every three uses or so, which is easier than it sounds. It also doesn’t really replace a deep vacuuming. However, I hate vacuuming to the point where I really put off doing it, so having a Roomba to scoot happily around my house, cleaning up pet hair and the like, is pretty awesome. My place is lots neater than it would be otherwise, and it does a good job.
Plus, just the thought of having a robot vacuum your house is pretty darned neat.
I have had an assortment of kitchen food processors over the years and thrown out many to save space. The one I use more than once a day is the Braun stirrer with attachments. The main attachment is a chopping/blending container. This is the 400watt model as opposed to the 200watt. This device has the power to get the job done. I can take a pot of vegetables and blend it up with this wand in no time and clean the attachment under the faucet and be done.
My second tool is an old Little Oscar processor. That too is over powered and makes quick work of blending and is easy to clean.
Thirdly, I need a coffee grinder to grind up flax seed and sometimes more.
I’d be in trouble without all three of these tools.
I second this one. I have a cleaning person who comes twice a month and, let me tell ya, it’s one of the best investments I’ve ever made.
My wife and I both work long hours 6, sometimes 7 days a week, and have absolutely no time or motivation to clean the house. Since building the house 11 years ago, we’ve gone through 4 cleaning people/services. We’ve had our current person for a little under 3 years now and she’s great. We’ve gotten to the point where we feel comfortable enough to have given her a key and her own security code, which frees us up from having to be home when she’s scheduled to clean. She knows exactly how my wife likes the house to be cleaned, what products and materials are acceptable and what to avoid. She does everything except wash our clothes, which my wife has a thing about.
Our cleaning person usually spends 4 hours per visit. The only time she will spend more than 4 hours cleaning is for special occasions, such as when we’re prepping for a holiday party or visitors. 6 to 8 hours seems like a lot, unless you have a huge house. Ours is around 3400 sq/ft. Then again, we don’t have kids, so that probably makes a huge difference.
A Vienna Superautomatic espresso machine. My husband and I are coffee drinkers, and we love ours enough that when the first one died after six years of daily service, we didn’t hesitate to buy another.
We get delicious lattes first thing in the morning and all the espresso guests can drink at dinner parties… plus iced coffee on hot summer afternoons. There’s just no other way to get good espresso at home… we figure that one of these machines pays for itself in a year.
Going on vacation away from it feels like roughing it in the coffee wilderness.
A digital gram-weight scale. It’s not just for drug dealers anymore. For about $20 bucks you can get one that can handle up to 5 kilos. Not only is it superior for measuring dry goods, it is also very convenient for liquids, because water weighs 1 gram per ml, and water-based household liquids are close enough to this density that applying this rule won’t make a difference worth worrying about in the kitchen.
A food processor. My knife work is so-so; not bad, but I’m not making perfectly uniform dice quickly. The processor allows me to chop up small items very quickly, such as when making salsas, hummus, minced onions for curries. A good one will even let you make dough, although Bricker’s suggestion of a Kitchen-Aide stand mixer is MUCH better for that. I don’t bake that much, so I haven’t bought one. As Al Bundy notes, a small grinder is also very good for coffee beans and whole spices. You can use a mortar/pestle, but it take me forever and I don’t notice any difference in the spice quality.
Knives are more an essential tool for me like pots and pans, than a kitchen gadget, but I guess they qualify too.
Eight hours is a lot, but then again she only comes monthly. Also, she has OCD issues with cleaning. After all of the usual cleaning, she will do things like emptying the refrigerator and wiping down the shelves. Then, as she replaces items she wipes each thing, removing crust from the top of the rooster sauce bottle, etc. And we have no kids, and my gf and I keep the place clean!
I second a quality food processor. Kitchenaid or Cuisinart are both top brands, and the difference between them and low-end units by Black and Decker or Hamilton Beach is amazing. With low-end units, stuff clumps up and gets pushed up the side but doesn’t blend well…you end up with a bunch of stuff thrown out to the side, and some mixed/finely chopped stuff in the bottom.
I use mine half of the time for food, half of the time for mail!
This might not qualify as a gadget but if you have a half acre or more of lawn, there’s no reason you shouldn’t have a riding mower. My dad must have been some sort of sadist to make us use a walk-behind all those years. Us kids were no more fit for having to use it! I got my own place and tried a walk-behind for a few years and I hated mowing my lawn. Now I have a big 'ol John Deere and I love going out there to mow. Viva la tractor!
If you have an electric range, get an induction hob/plate. It works so much faster & is supposedly more efficient than gas. I’m considering getting an entire induction range because I love that little plate so much!
Yep, our cleaning person empties the fridge, and the pantry, and wipes down the items as well, but there are rooms in the house that we don’t really use much, if at all, which require a simple dusting and vacuuming, so that probably helps to shorten her visits.
To respond to the OP, do I consider my cleaning person a household gadget that has vastly improved my quality of life? Why yes, yes I do. She’s a living, breathing Roomba, with unlimited attachments and versatility.
