I clicked through almost 100 pages of orders for this, ok? Also, I know how to spell regrets.
My Amazon order history is not a place I often look. It’s lengthy and a little frightening – it appears that I generally place about 200 orders per year. Yikes. In my defense, that does include a lot of orders placed for work, as well as orders placed by my husband, but still. As I went back through all my old orders (dating back to 2010 when I got my own Prime account), I chuckled at a few things and groaned at a lot more. The worst part was realizing that there were all kinds of things that I either disliked or know I never used, but that I don’t seem to have returned. At one point, I had an “Oh well, it’s already spent” mindset, meaning that I rarely put in the effort to return an item. Now, I’m the queen of returns. It’s a very easy switch, but makes a remarkable financial impact. Groundbreaking, I know.
Aside from the large volume of post-its, garbage bags, and hang tags I order for work, there were a few other trends I noticed. Rick orders a pair of boots about once a year. There was a bittersweet period (no pun intended) where I was ordering copious pregnancy and ovulation tests. For a while in 2015/early 2016 we ordered a LOT of canine antidiarrheals. Please, ask me about how much fun that was. In all of those orders, I was hoping that I’d find a few items that I absolutely love, so that I could pass along the recommendations. Luckily, I did. Here are some of my tried-and-true products – things in my history that I think are worth the buy, and why. I’ve listed them below for quick access (in case you don’t want to read all my thoughts about all the things).
Blackout Curtains – For the vampire in your life!
Fabric Shaver – Soooooo satisfying.
Screen Door Repair Kit – A niche product, but just what you need, if you need it.
Lunch Box – Take it to your home office for a little extra fun in your day!
Keyboard – I feel strongly about this.
Zit Stickers – Not the least gross paragraph I’ve ever written.
Laundry Hamper – Further fulfilling your domestic dreams.
Phone Case – Because I don’t know how people can live on the edge and go naked.
Notebook – Living out my Harriet the Spy dreams.
First, these blackout curtains. We have a lot of experience with blackout curtains in this house – for a long time, Rick worked nights. We tried lesser curtains (plus the blinds on the window) with no success. The current variety we have in our room came from Costco, I think, and they’re fine. We had another mediocre set in the nursery, but last week I decided they just weren’t cutting it. We have followed the Taking Cara Babies courses since E was born (I HIGHLY recommend them – worth absolutely every penny), and one of her recommendations is to make sure that there’s as little light as possible in baby’s sleeping environment. We definitely had limited the amount of light in the nursery (where E naps), but baby girl is almost three months old and after a few days of very, very poor sleep I had had it. I ordered these curtains and prayed they would work. While I don’t think they were the magic answer, they absolutely do their job. Like, as someone who hates blackout curtains, I am kind of annoyed at how well they work. I have to open the window during the day because otherwise it feels like we have a cave in our house – they’re heavy and noise-muffling and just all-around solid, for a reasonable price.
Next up: the perfect gift for the neatest person in your life (though they might already have it) – a fabric shaver. I am only sort of joking – I love this thing. I gleefully took it to our couch the first day it arrived. My husband teased me when I used it on his Nike joggers, but the next time he put them on he had to admit that they looked like new. I was putting away a load of laundry the other night and ran into some unfortunate pilling, so I got myself my fabric defuzzer and went to town as, Rick said, “one does on a Saturday night.” It’s a lot of fun, and very satisfying. Definitely worth the $12.
Less fun, but perhaps even more satisfying, is this screen door repair kit. When we moved in, there was a tear in one of our screen doors. The tear itself was about 6″, but had been sewn up as a temporary repair. This worked fine for us for a couple of years, until a friend’s dog decided to put herself through the door. Then, we had a giant flap in the screen. We got this cool pet door (from Chewy, not Amazon) and cobbled it together so that Carl could go in and out. That worked fine for another couple of months, but since the door was already damaged, it didn’t do a great job of holding on. I spent some time searching for costs on new screen doors (which of course segued into window shopping for new sliding doors, French doors, etc.), but everything looked very expensive. Then, Rick discovered this repair kit. It took us under an hour to do the whole repair, including re-installing the pet door, for under $20. It was not an entirely painless process – I smashed my finger and was pretty over the whole thing after about 15 minutes – but Rick was able to finish it up on his own, so take that as a good sign.
Rick has always been good about taking a lunch to work. This is primarily driven, I think, by the fact that he doesn’t have much of a choice. The places he is working and the way his breaks are set up, he’s not got a lot of time to run out and get food. Plus, when he was paying $15/day for parking, the added expense of lunch really just isn’t that appealing. Years ago, he bought a lunch box, and it was fine, but he was always rather frustrated with it. Only the smallest of our food storage containers would fit into it, and only one. When COVID hit and he was furloughed, I started taking lunch to work – largely because I didn’t want to make my usual trips to the grocery store during my lunch break and partly because the leftovers Rick used to take were now going into my lunch box. I refused, however, to use his lunch box, so I got one of these. It’s amazing – it keeps food really cold, fits a large ice pack, and can fit a square container, plus a yogurt, cheese sticks, etc. When Rick went back to work, we got him a matching lunch box and we have been happy campers ever since.
I love to type. I was all about the AlphaSmart in third grade, and I have continued to hone my skills in the years since. I like to say that I type with purpose. I am, as a result, a bit of a keyboard snob. I do love the idea of a mechanical keyboard but I am hyper-sensitive to the amount of noise that they cause (especially with my aggressive typing) and don’t feel like I could bring one of those to the workforce. My office provides horrible solar Logitech K750s by default, but they are flat and make my wrists hurt. Yeah, I get sore wrists from typing. I’m that lady. Therefore, my work keyboard of choice is the Logitech K350, which conveniently still pairs with my mouse and any other dongle in the office, is full size, has nice key response, and is more ergonomic. I’m on my third one in seven years, but I think that says more about my purposeful typing and the occasional pho spill on the keys than it does about the quality of the keyboard itself.
I could write a whole post on anxious tics, but that’s for another day. Suffice it (for now) to say that I am not good at not picking at my nails, eyebrows, skin, etc. particularly when I’m anxious. So, these zit stickers (more elegantly called hydrocolloid patches) serve two purposes. First, they actually do what they say they are going to, which is absorb gunk and reduce the size and appearance of pimples. Second, they’re like having a band-aid on your face, without having an obvious band-aid on your face. It’s a tactile reminder to pick at your zit, while also providing protection. Plus, at the end of the day (or in the morning or whatever) you get to peel it off, which is itself very satisfying. These are great, I’ll stop talking about zits now. You’re welcome.
Here’s a thrilling purchase: a laundry hamper. I know, I’m a lot of fun. We got a new dresser about a year ago, and my previous hamper situation suddenly didn’t fit in its spot. I searched something like “narrow laundry hamper” and this is what Amazon spit back at me. It’s awesome. I like that there is a frame, so that the hamper itself always stays in one place (though it does have wheels if you want to get a little crazy), but I can take the canvas bags in and out as needed. As discussed, I rarely sort my laundry any more, but when I do, this is a good system. I’m not sure anyone is putting a hamper on their Christmas list, but if they are, it should be this one.
I don’t consider myself a clumsy person, in general (though my husband might disagree). I do, however, seem to have a penchant for throwing my phone across the room unexpectedly. Also, dropping it on my face, but that’s a separate issue. (Do you ever have those moments when your hands just forget that they’re supposed to be holding whatever they’re holding? No? Just me? Ok.) In any event, I drop my phone a lot, but I refuse to put on a giant TACTICAL MEGA SAFE phone case. Instead, I have entrusted my last three phones to this Spigen case. It’s slim, relatively lightweight, and most importantly, actually works. I am a little scared to write this, just in case I jinx myself, but it really is worthwhile. A comparable OtterBox is in the $70 range – the Spigen is under $20. Plus, the Spigen comes with a screen protector – that’s a $40-50 add-on with OtterBox.
Finally, let’s talk about this Black n’ Red notebook. I’m a notebook junkie – I have many, many half-filled notebooks in various places. I really enjoy taking notes, but it can be frustrating to try and take notes in a crappy notebook. Which is why this wire-bound, hard-backed, large-sized version is so wonderful. I have literally bought these as gifts. The paper is nice, you can write on it anywhere because the hard cover acts as a sort of clipboard, the spiral-bound-ness means that it lays flat and can fold back on itself, the pages are perforated so they pull away cleanly – I could go on and on. It’s a great notebook. I highly recommend it for all your note-taking, journaling, documenting, and list-making needs. As a bonus, when I ran a Google search for this notebook, I stumbled across The Pen Addict, which is just… magic. My name is Maddy Hickman and I love office supplies.
So there you go – my most worthwhile Amazon purchases. While some of these aren’t really things that I will need to buy over and over, I would if I had to. I considered putting together a “very ragrets” list, but really it would just consist of: Soylent (I went through a phase), lingerie of questionable quality/fit (there’s literally nothing that will make you feel less attractive), and pretty much any women’s clothing that wasn’t Amazon Essentials brand (it smelled funny/didn’t fit/fell apart immediately). I think there’s a way somewhere to see the total you’ve spent on Amazon, but… no. Life is already hard enough, I don’t need to add that stress to my life. The end.
None of the links in this post are sponsored/affiliate links.
Hickmans at Home 