Expensive Shit You Might Need

I’ve bought way more than my share of expensive shit I don’t need, but what’s the expensive shit that was totally worth it?!?

The made-in-Japan Zojirushi Things. They’re so well made and they’re unbelievably useful, I love the water boiler and the rice cooker. When I clicked open the rice cooker the sense memory of well constructed electronics hit me, like I was cracking the hood of my Playstation ‘fore the turn of the century. People don’t make electronics like this any more.

I blew the budget on some nice Japanese knives from Knifewear on Main, with the … you know, the pretty damascus pattern on the side? They were more expensive than knives should reasonably be, but still they literally make dinner easier for me to cook, not just because they’re excellent knives, but because of the psychological effect of having badass kitchen knives. Clearly anybody who owns such knives must be an awesome chef, I had better go justify it by making some dinner.

One time I bought an enamelled cast iron dutch oven, not the unbelievably expensive La Creuset ones, a Lodge (they make enamelled cast iron that’s IMO just as good for a fraction of the price) and it’s joined my other cast iron cookware in the holy pantheon of daily driver kitchen tools. Get thee some cast iron.

I watched Craigslist for Herman Miller chairs like a hawk and got my home-office butt into a used Mirra 2 for hundreds-but-not-thousands-of-dollars and it’s really an extremely high quality chair. After years of use, the foam padding on the armrests get a little worn, so I just wrap layers and layers of big fuzzy crew socks over them.

I love the Kinesis Advantage series of keyboards. They’re ungodly expensive and learning how to type on them takes a while, but they are in my opinion and with no reservation the Best Keyboard In Existence, and if you spend a lot of your day typing you need to get your mitts into one, preferably before the RSI starts to set in.

I bought a big king-sized comfy expensive latex pillow, - pillows are expensive and I was getting tired of replacing expensive ones every couple of years - because latex as a material is well-known for its comfort and resilience. I went out of town for a bit, and when I came back my wife had stolen my pillow and instructed me that she was holding my pillow hostage and in order to get mine back I’d need to order her one, too.

I discount it sometimes because they’re so ubiquitous that I think that everybody knows this already, but my iPhone (with wallet-case so that I never lose my 3 important cards) is literally the most important single object in my life, narrowly beating out my laptop and e-reader. My wife’s completely in love with her Steam Deck, because she’s an intense gamer type, but I’m not in love with the short battery life and relatively small screen on my early factory run unit.

ooh, also the Crokinole board.