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.
Peg board in the garage. Organizing tools is easy now
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.
This is a great tip. The only thing you have to watch is enterprise grade networking is usually louder and uses more power. You can replace fans to make it quieter on some equipment, but sometimes it needs the airflow. I just got a brocade icx6450-48p network switch delivered for $85, 48 poe ports and 4 sfp+ ports. You can get some great used enterprise hardware for amazing prices.
undefined> Canopyflyer
Licensing fees can be a bear too. I would avoid true Enterprise gear, such as Cisco, Alpine, etc.
Ubiquiti makes very good enterprise grade gear that is more for the home. I’d call it “Prosumer” rather than enterprise, although I’d have no reservations running a small to medium office on it. My previous home router was a Unifi Security Gateway. Until I upgraded to 300/300Mbs fiber. The USG is only good to about 120Mbs. That’s when I put PFSense on a virtual machine on my Proxmox server. Picked up a 4 port server NIC and am running it all on a Dell Precision workstation that has a Xeon processor and ECC memory. I picked the workstation up off of Dell Refurbished, with a 40% off coupon for $300. Both the WAPs in the house are Unify AC Pro’s.
Since doing the above, our internet service has been rock solid. My wife was the president of a national non-profit for two years. One year, during the lockdown, she had to run the national yearly meeting for an entire week. Thousands of users all over Zoom. She had to stream video, audio, presentations for 6 hours a day for a week. The only things I did was take one of the WAPs, put it on its own isolated subnet, which only her computer connected to and gave the PFSense VM a bit more memory (which I was thinking of doing anyway). It ran rock solid that entire week. Even with me working from home and the kids having virtual school.
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.
Bidet
Bidet by far. <$60 USD, easy to set up, and my goodness have I never looked back. I do a lot of home improvement (and garden work) and every time I use the bidet I think, “this may be the best purchase I ever made”.
$100 hand truck. It has paid for itself many times over. Every single time I use it, I tell my wife, “I bought that for $100! It’s totally worth every cent”
Keypad deadbolt lock for my front door. Not a “smart lock” (I try not to have anything online outside my house). I haven’t pulled a key out of my pocket in years.
If it died I would buy one same day.
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
Fitting secondary glazing in addition to the existing double glazing. It entirely eliminates “normal” traffic noise (as in - you see cars driving past but don’t hear them) and people walking past. You still hear excessively loud exhausts, but they’re significantly diminished to not be a “jump out of your skin” annoyance.
An added benefit I’ve noticed with the recent sunny weather - a significant reduction in unwanted solar gain. Usually, I have to put up exterior solar mesh screens to shade the windows from April to September, but so far this year, they haven’t been needed. I imagine it’s a combination of both the UV-blocking properties of the secondary glazing (soft-coat low-e and laminated glass) and having the regular window blinds between the normal windows and secondary meaning that much of the energy gets reflected straight back out again before entering the room-side of the secondary glazing.
You couldn’t call it a sub-$1000 investment if doing the whole house, but doing just a bedroom or living room fits and the quality-of-life improvement if on a noisy busy road makes it worthwhile.
But also, solar mesh screens especially on south-facing windows - they’re a nice cost-effective way of controlling the summer sun.
smart bulbs in the bedroom. About 50-60$ 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.
Why a lightbulb though? I considered just getting a smart light switch, especially becauase most of my switches control multiple bulbs.
Most smart switches don’t do dimming, so you can’t do the gradients (5%, 50%, change color, whatever). Most of the time, it’s on or off, binary state.
Light bulbs give you more versatility.
If you don’t need color changing features, Lutron Caseta product line has been very reliable and they’ve got multiple dimmer versions we’ve been using for years.
Soft close toilet seats are a game changer. Now I find myself slamming the lid at my friends’ houses.
I said bidet in another comment, but if you are looking for some other suggestions.
- Bathroom fan timer switches: replace your switch for the fan with a timer. Best way to keep bathrooms less humid without having to remember to turn off. I used this one as it doesnt require a neutral
- French Door Fridge: not really home improvement, but man it makes a difference in qol. I meal prep for the week and can easily access food, store whole trays, and never had to bend over to get items on the bottom shelf.
- Bug screens for door: they have magnetic closing bug screens for doors. If you live in a temperate climate, it can be very nice to keep the doors open without bugs coming in. Also allows pets easy access to backyard without pet door.
Katchy insect trap. My husband likes to leave doors open and I was getting eaten by mosquitoes. Katchy has nearly eliminated the problem.
You can try magnetic bug screens for door. They allow a person to go through, and close magnetically behind someone. Could lower your mosquito problem even more. Something like this. Note that I have never used this exact one.
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.
I did the same and linked it to my fridge’s water dispenser. No more expensive proprietary filters.
Home automation for sure. I bought a Homey and control virtually everything in my house!
Wow, Homey looks nice. I have a Home Assistant/Homebridge setup I’m pretty happy with, but their UI and integrations seem very enticing.
