Things to buy | near.blog

This page is a list of some great purchases I’ve made. Until advertising becomes much more efficient, many of the best purchases we make are direct suggestions from friends!

Other Lists

Many others have made similar lists, so I’ll link them here should you want to browse them:

Things for Recovering Hoarders Like Me: List from Aayush Gupta – mostly household items (kitchen/bathroom/sleep) with a travel section (backpack/travel) as well as some fun items and software
Things I recommend you buy and use: List from Sam Bowman with a focus on sleep, cooking/kitchen items, and some other notes about UK
Tools / Gear: List from Alexey Guzey focusing on computers, software, apps, and browser extensions
Recommended Things: List by Andrew Connor with sections for home gear, sleep/travel, kitchen, desktop/AV, and productivity
Blueprint items: List from Bryan Johnson that includes many amazon links to good choices for e.g. skin care, oral health, etc (expand the sections at the bottom of the page for these!)
My 40-liter backpack travel guide: List from Vitalk that focuses on backpack/travel and uniqlo maximalism.
Tweet responses from a @strangestloop tweet: top suggestions include sleeping masks, matching socks, bidet, airpod pros, air fryer, sous vibe, the usual.
Tweet responses from a @natfiredman tweet: top suggestions include humidifies, ray-ban metas (from Yenn LeCun..), tonal, mosquito bite eraser, bambulabs printer, flame thrower

Have additions to this list of lists? Please say hi to me on Twitter!

My lists

1/8th sleep (separate post): a cheaper homemade version of the eightsleep (no subscription!)
optimal webcam setup (separate post): if calls are an important part of your life, consider looking good
supplements (separate post): many supplements, mostly for longevity. ymmv

Additional items

Below are many more items I’ve bought and enjoyed. All links are to Amazon (no affiliate links used)

Gallium: a metal that melts at 86F. It’s fun for like three minutes, sometimes five

Plasma candle lighter: the best way to light candles

Wooden tray: set objects on it; gives a much better feeling to kitchen or bathroom counters

Giant (64oz) water bottle: saves so much time

Zbiotics: reduce hangovers by ~2/3rds via a genetically engineered probiotic that consumes acetaldehyde in your gut

Toto washlet: heated toilet seat + bidet, you won’t regret it

Stackable organizers: you can never have too many organizers

Pill organizer: by far the best you can buy, almost addictively so

Towels that are actually good: enough said

Smart plugs: power on/off arbitrary items from your phone!

NFC tags: you can put info or links in them. very cheap!

Caliper: it measures. it’s good at measuring

Caffeine mints: mediocre taste but exciting after-feeling

Satin pillowcases: super soft and easy on your hair

bone-conducting headphones: I actually prefer these to both airpods and airpods pro for office or exercise usage

Luminettes: The best blue-light therapy glasses to use upon wakeup. Great if you have sleep/circadian rhythm issues

Label maker: It makes labels, which you should want

Kitchen scale: You can never have too many scales

Drink mixer/k ilk frother: sometimes nice to have around

Aranet 4 Co2 monitor: All the AGI lab guys love this so it’s probably good. I never did find a consumer monitor for all other particulate matter types (vo2 etc) that was good though

Hue gradient strips: among the best lighting one can purchase for any surfaces out of regular line of sight. slightly better than the off-brand stuff but 8x the price

Phone holder: holds phones at many angles

Cube: it moves in entertaining cube-like ways

49 in monitor: absurdly long, absurdly great value

Cylindrical light: great floor/table lighting for hue bulbs

Hue bulbs: more expensive than some other solutions but worth it

Reolink PoE cameras: If you want cameras, Reolink makes no-bullshit (non-cloud) ones which are good. These require ethernet, but they have WiFi options.

Weighted blanket: huge ROI for some, ymmv

Rectangular light: great for floor/table lighting for hue bulbs

Extension cord with rotating base: lets you keep cables closer to walls to look nicer

Cable zip ties: you can never overdo cable management

cable velcro straps: you can never overdo cable management

Cable cord hider: huge improvement if you want cables to be near-invisible in rooms

iPad Mount: i use this + a tablet for my home control panel

Nanoleaf lines: among my favorite more exotic lighting choices. possible to make them look very good if you have taste

Mini fridge: they’re very cheap and the best way to separate drink types (I often use them as a ‘guest fridge’)

Shoe rack: useful for shoes, especially if you host many guests

Hue back lighting: great for lighting behind things

Bioré sunscreen: sunscreen doesn’t get much better than this

Airtags: track things before you lose them (or they’re stolen!)

Wet brush: the best way to brush longer hair (in the shower)

Airpods pro: great for airplanes. reminder apple products are often cheaper on amazon and you can also get 5% back via amazon’s card

DJI drones: surprisingly great for the price. HD footage from thousands of feet away from you!

Blackout curtains: (with a separate rod) are among the easiest ways to fully blackout a room

Curtain rod: use with blackout curtains, no installation or holes required

Under-door extension: I prefer to 100% blackout my bedroom, including sunlight from under doors

Tungsten cube: Great for using as a doorstop or paper weight – best purchase of this post!

Other categories

There’s many categories of items I haven’t included here: software, apps, browser extensions, electrical engineering hardware, 3d printing, collectables, anime merch, etc. I may make separate posts for some categories but I thought it’d be better to post something rather than nothing for now.

Parting tips

A few tips for thinking about this kind of stuff which may seem super obvious but I found useful:

Any time you have a problem, search for a solution. This sounds obvious, but it took me a long time to do for many obscure problems like “how do I stop sunlight from entering from under my door at 6AM in an aesthetic way”. With how good genAI is, there’s no excuse to not do this anymore. There are custom items for almost anything problem now, and if there aren’t, it’s easy to have them made.
Almost everything is really cheap. Sometimes I would hang onto an inferior version of an item because I “already had it” rather than throw it out and buy a new one. Most of my Amazon purchases are $5-25, and I’ve never regretted buying a better version of something, especially if it’s related to my main workflows or sleep.
Be pro-active about modifying your environment. The extent you can drastically improve your environment for little effort and money always surprises me if you find and make the right choices.
Actually put effort into organization and aesthetics. This may be controversial among some readers, but so be it – this is a post by me for others similar to me, and I under-did cable organization, wall art, closet organizers, etc, for a long time. Maybe one day I’ll do an interior design post!

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