I was never a big dreamer about material things. I never wanted that one car, the house, that special guitar, the carbon frame bike and so on. Things are tools, and tools serve a purpose. They don't need to be the best among all, they have to fulfill their purpose within a set environment, and that's about it.
That doesn't mean I don't upgrade. When my oven didn't make the cut anymore, I bought a bigger, better one - but not because I wanted a bigger and better one, but because I needed it to keep working (and actually reduce my workload for a while, as the bigger oven makes more bread faster).
There are some little things though, nothing too expensive, that gave my life exponentially more quality.
Holy moly was I happy when I bought this one! I had it always in the back of my mind, to be able to grind my coffee freshly, like I used to while living in Germany. Back then, I had a beautiful old wooden grinder. This one is kind of High-Tech in comparison, but still, for 35$, it was a steal deal. Now I grind my coffee every morning. The smell! The taste! The feeling overall!
Okay, this one was a little more expensive - but used as well, so only $230. Best investment ever. Besides my daily oat-peanut-chia-banana smoothie, I make loads of peanut/almond/sesame butter with this machine which I can sell on the farmer's market. I have this machine for 4 years now I think, and made way more money with it than I expected. I even bought a second one that was brought to me from the US, just in case. But this was more a great investment than a quality of life thing (although those smoothies are SO smooth...)
Well isn't that funny? Every time I wanted to listen to music on my kind-of-antique sound system, I had to take my cellphone out of the case in order to connect it properly to the system. But then I had to go back the the system all the time when I wanted to change something. Then, one day, I thought: It's 2024. There MUST be a solution for this bs. And there was, and it was only $10, and it works like a charm. It's USB unfortunately, so I have to plug the BT-AUX converter into a 110V-9V converter aka cellphone charger. But as mentioned, I don't need perfect, I need working.
There are many other things that I spend very little money on, but gave me disproportional joy. And there are still things that I would love to have.
For example - a bathtub. Lily loves bathtubs. My brother rented a flat with bathtub last time he was here, and for one whole month, Lily did all her bathing at his place. Besides the quick showers after coming home covered in dirt or sand or whatever children find to roll around in.
I do love a good bathtub, too. It's relaxing, and one of the few things where I really don't care about the amount of water and heating used to make me comfortable. If I ever move out of this house (which is not clear yet - but I'd like to live with my girlfriend at one point, and be able to adopt a dog again), the next one will have to have a bathtub in it. And yes, I might just build my own house, but that's a little too much for a bathtub. Although...
