Ask HN: What tiny purchases have disproportionately improved your life?

I had such a service for a while. The only two issues I ran into was:

- Getting the physical mail out of them was hard. In theory they kept main for some number of days if I needed it physical for some random reason, but the two times I needed to have them forward me some important document, it had already been shredded. All in all, this was a minor edge case really.

- One company, All State, could not for the life of them realize that I did not live in some PO Box in a different state. They kept changing my rates to the state of the service, and I had a confusing call with a CSR each time where I tried to explain my mailing address and my residential addresses were unrelated. All State was the only company I ever encountered with this issue, everyone else that needed my home address had no trouble with this concept. I solved this by ditching All State.

I only stopped using them because they got bought out and only kept business accounts. I should look for a replacement company, it was very useful.

Some that come to mind.

__Health__

Melatonin. There is no other way for me to go to bed and this knocks me right out (I use 0.2 - 0.4 milligrams).

Sleep mask (no more waking up because a stray light hits my eye)

I'd say sleep earplugs but I have a sound in my ear, but otherwise earplugs

Mosquito repellent scent (for sleep as well).

Silicon earplugs when going out, I never thought I'd get ear/hearing damage because I didn't go out a lot. I was wrong. They protected my ears after I noticed I got some ear damage.

A dumbbell (used at times between breaks to move a bit)

__Other__

Fuet (another HN'er once posted this as such at some thread years ago I can't remember, and I agree). It's a sausage and IMO too good as a snack.

LG 4K monitor for about $350

Moving labels. Got a bunch of moving labels for a few bucks, and slap them whenever I need to label something. Apparently, I tend to label my external HD's mostly and a few boxes that have specific items in them (e.g. only USB cables or power cables, etc.).

Not a purchase but a lifehack and since I see many responses are about cables I guess it's relevant ;-) Instead of spinning your cables in a circle, spin them in a figure 8 (two circles). Somehow it's harder for them to get weirdly tangled when you store them like that. See: https://youtu.be/buVUvnM_AzU?t=104 (I don't use the other life hacks :P)

A headlamp. Allows me to hike in the evening or night. Super useful to hike in the winter when it gets dark early. It never crossed my mind that hiking in the night was a thing but it's pretty cool and I now do it all the time.

Then maybe my commute bicycle that I bought for $200 and that I've been using almost daily for 15 years. So much better than a car or public transportation (at least where I live).

Then we're getting a bit specialized, but as a guitar player, a Yamaha THR (amplifier for playing at home). Tried many solutions and settled for this many years ago.

Bareroot native trees and fabric pots.

A watering can.

Now I collect seeds and nurse baby trees to plant out. It takes hardly any time from day to day, and I always have something to look forward to. It's the only activity I've found that perfectly embodies the "think global, act local" ethos.

I got one called "Worx ZipSnip Cordless".

Pretty happy with it.