Recommended things in my home that are total game changers

The other day I tried to convince a friend to buy something I loved when I realized I should probably roll up that mini-review with other things in my house I've recommended to others over the years and make it into a post.

All these things punch way above their weight and make my life better in some significant way. I've used them for years and none were free or given to me, it's just stuff I've bought that I would buy again because I'd instantly miss them if they were gone.

So in no particular order, here we go:

Govee Permanent Outdoor lights

I'm a big fan of Govee products, they're like the Philips Hue line of custom color LED bulbs and light strips, but much cheaper and easy enough to automate. I have the original 150' Govee Permanent Outdoor lights and the gist of it is you install them once under your eaves and they're so small and unnoticeable you can keep them there year-round.

So imagine this upcoming thanksgiving: if you spend a whole Saturday rigging these lights up on your house for the holidays, when you're done they're going to look great, but what's even better is you will never need to remove them and store them somewhere and take them out and put them back up again each year. The lights have some 3M double-sided tape on the back but it also comes with screw mounts for junctions and heavier parts, which I highly recommend using. I used additional screw-in anchors next to each light so the adhesive never sags and I know I will never need to touch them again.

More install tips: cut a scrap piece of wood around 2-3" long to use as a quick spacer to check your distance from the house walls when mounting, so the lights are mounted identically, giving a uniform pattern at night. If you buy a spool of 18 gauge wire with three wires inside (power, ground, data) you can cut Govee wires anywhere you need to bridge any "gaps" from one set of roof eaves to another, but be sure to use heat shrink tubing and heavy crimp connectors to keep it waterproof once you're done extending the wires.

The Govee app has hundreds of pre-programmed colors and lighting effects that dance around (you can also make any custom layout with colors you like) and we change them once in a while for various holidays (green on St. Patricks. Red/White/Blue on July 4th, etc) or otherwise keep them warm white year-round. I plug mine in to a HomeKit-friendly outdoor outlet that comes on automatically at sunset every night and goes off just before I go to bed. It remembers the last color settings so I only have to open the Govee app to change it once every few months.

Samsung Refrigerator with auto-filling pitcher

Fridges get a lot of flak online and some people will die on a hill to say one brand is better or worse than another, but I've used many different brands over the past few decades and here's the real secret: never buy a refrigerator with an ice dispenser in the door. A fridge door wildly changes temperatures as it opens and closes all day so any ice inside the door melts and reforms into a giant ice block, clogging your system so your ice maker is jammed. I've seen it happen with every brand of fridge, so instead, opt for one that has its ice-maker in the freezer area itself, usually in a drawer that auto-fills with cubes as needed.

Now, with that out of the way let's get to the good stuff.

We have a Samsung Bespoke model that looks sleek and matches our modern kitchen but the killer feature of it is the auto-refilling pitcher of filtered cold water. Any time I walk up to the fridge, there are 24 ounces of clean chilled water, ready to instantly fill a glass or water bottle. I drink way more water as a result because I'm not standing under a filler for 30 seconds trying to fill a glass dozens of times a day. You just open the door, grab the pitcher, fill, and go. It refills itself quickly so it's always at the ready. This fridge has had some other small issues but this feature is one I can't live without.

PillowCube SideCube Deluxe

I used to listen to a podcast where the hosts jokingly bought stuff from kooky Instagram ads they'd see, then they'd review items for each episode. They're skeptical people with good taste but I trust their judgment. They usually roasted items they reviewed, but sometimes they were surprised when a thing was actually good. One of the hosts liked this so I gave it a try. I tried out the 6" thick one (too much), then returned it for the 5" one that felt better.

It took a couple nights to get used to sleeping on what seems like a very high pillow, but after a couple days I noticed most of the lingering back pain I almost always woke up with was suddenly gone. I'm a side-sleeper and I'm tall and I sit in a chair for hours when I "work" so my back has always been a little messed up over the course of my life, but ever since I got this pillow I simply feel a bit better each morning.

I'm reminded of how good this pillow is any time I travel since no hotel has tall enough pillows to match it, so whenever I'm on a trip I'm reminded of how much back pain I used to live with day to day using soft squishy pillows that don't support my spine as I sleep. I should probably get their travel version too.

Kohler touchless kitchen faucet

A "touchless" kitchen faucet is a game changer. A bunch of different companies make them and it doesn't matter which brand you choose (the home builder used Kohler for all faucets when the house was built for someone else), but for about $300 you can replace your kitchen faucet with one you simply tap with any part of your body and the water comes on full blast at your most recent heat setting.

It's amazing when you're cutting up meat or doing meal prep and you don't want to get your dirty hands on anything in your kitchen. Just tap your elbow to the top of your faucet and boom, water rushes out. Got soapy hands? Do the same and it also works.

Over the past few years I've gotten so used to it, I instinctively tap other kitchen faucets at friends' houses and it seems "broken" when they don't come on automatically. Once you have it, you'll want it at every faucet. I'm not a germaphobe but it's nice knowing I'm not spreading salmonella or harmful bacteria whenever I'm working in the kitchen.

High Pressure Shower Heads

Don't let the looks of this janky ass 1998 Yahoo stores looking site fool you. Some unknown shadowy figure that runs it scoured the planet for the best high pressure shower heads on earth. Every model they sell has a pressure regulator installed that makes them legal for sale, but wink wink nudge nudge you remove the regulator piece of plastic from inside the head before you mount one in your shower and you're golden.

I've owned half a dozen different models over the years from this exact store, and all of them allow you to blast water almost to the point it hurts your skin. Have you ever stayed in someone's NYC apartment that has a giant rooftop water tower and uses plumbing from the 1800s when gallons per minute wasn't a concern for anyone? These are just like that. And it's fucking GLORIOUS.

I understand why we have limits on shower water pressure and if you live in the desert, this will waste too much water and you shouldn't get one but if you're lucky enough to live in a rainy place like I do where ample water isn't a political concern, this is a luxurious lifestyle upgrade and again, once you have it you'll forget you have it until you stay in a Bay Area hotel with a weak shower that barely gets shampoo out of your hair.

LG OLED TVs

Flat-screen TVs have historically struggled with showing the color black on lit screens, and in the old days, dimly shot movies like Lord of the Rings or Dune would look very darkish gray, but never quite black and kind of take you out of the films as the dark areas would render as weird blobs that moved.

Basically, OLED TVs produce total black by turning off individual pixels when they are supposed to be black, so dark spots look perfect in a film.

They're about double the cost of midrange LCD TVs out there, but the quality is worth it. Movies look incredible and it's like being inside a theater. TV looks extraordinary and gaming is as good as it can possibly be. When this tech debuted ten years ago, a 65" OLED TV cost around $8,000. Now, they're about $1,600 and they will change how much you enjoy your entertainment. We've got one OLED screen and one non-OLED TV in the house and you can definitely tell which one doesn't have a high contrast, perfect picture when you watch anything.

HomeKit light switches

If you've read this blog for any length of time you know I complain a lot about home automation, but honestly, after all the pain of installing and wiring and the endless software and firmware upgrades, once you have a good HomeKit wall switch like the Lutron Caseta Claro, getting to turn your bedroom light off by tapping your phone screen while inside your warm comfy bed on a cold winter night makes all the headaches worth it.

Don't use smart bulbs, and avoid most smart plugs. Instead, get smart switches hardwired into your house and you can not only turn things off and on, but also automate them to say, turn on the outside porch light at sunset, or light the way to your front door whenever your garage opens, or anything else you can imagine that will make things automatically a bit nicer and safer each day.

UniFi Network equipment

UniFi is a line of networking gear and when they first debuted 15 years ago I tried them out and they felt like products for IT guys with a hundred keys on their belt who love writing configuration files in text editors.

Eventually their stuff became more consumer friendly, and I've relied on UniFi for the past ten years in two different houses and I can say though they're not perfect, they are as close as you can possibly get.

I'm the tech nerd in my house so I'm the default family IT director. Over the years I've had to fix and refix so many tech things in our home, but I used to spend most time on networking equipment since any time wifi goes down, everyone gets mad at the head of IT. With other brands of stuff, I felt like I was having to reboot or fuss with router settings once every few weeks. I previously ditched Google, Orbi, and Eero's lines of mesh network products after years of tweaking that ultimately felt unreliable.

Once you go all-in on UniFi products, you can check on them once a year (or even less often). It's professional grade stuff you often see in offices, restaurants, and schools, but what's great about them is that they're truly set-it-and-forget-it kinds of products. They auto-update in the night and consistently give flawless fast WiFi all over the house for years on end. The times that wifi went down and it was the fault of UniFi devices is something so rare I can only remember it happening once or twice in the past decade due to one bad update or misconfiguration that was quickly fixed.

This brand of networking gear is a whole world with a steep learning curve that requires a ton of research and sometimes complicated installs to get ethernet piped throughout your house, but once you have it, you'll never worry about WiFi ever again and all the trouble is totally worth it.