4 THINGS YOU CAN BUY TO ACTUALLY IMPROVE YOUR LIFE

I don’t take the shopping advice I get online most of the time. I’m jaded by the countless spam emails and promises from Nubian Princes that just need one last check before coming into their inheritance. I always regard purchasing advice with a weary side glance—and if it’s bad enough—a disdainful smirk. There’s so much terrible advice out there that I might never smile straight again, but that's my problem.

YOU are here to focus on the positives, and after years of internet lurking, I actually now have a list of the best purchases I’ve mined from the depths of the internet archives.

Drum roll please, for these nuggets:

1) Sleep On A Good Mattress

Most people should spend 8 hours a day on this foamy and plush horizontal surface. Some of us count ourselves lucky if we get 5-6 hours on the sometimes expensive apparatus. However, even that meager amount is cumulatively over 20% of your lifetime! A good mattress can help mitigate the inevitable back problems that you will have when you're ancient, and serve as a counter to all those college days of finding yourself asleep in various arrangements on someone else’s dorm room floor. Be an adult, get a good mattress.

2) Buy Better Toilet Paper

You might not be able to take the plunge on this advice given the availability of these prized commodities during Covid times…or any national emergency, really. Now that we know toilet paper is worth its weight in gold during times where shit hits the fan, it is very important to have rolls at the ready, and not just the single ply transparent film either. Treat yourself and your toosh to a luxurious sweep of 3 ply for the much needed wipe. A good wad is the cheaper, better picker upper for when you're down in the dumps, literally.

3) Upgrade Your Shower Head

THE BEST boost you can make to your rental situation is a nice shower-head. All the better if you own your own home, you rich bastard. Even those of us not graced with handyperson skills can do this replacement. Make your shower experience infinitely more enjoyable and inversely make your water bills tremendously worse by changing your shower head, making you never want to leave. But life is short, live a little - preferably under the misting massage of the warm liquid over your naked body... mmm be right back, taking a shower.

4) Buy Some Books

This fully dates me as a member of the generation that still remembers the floppy disk. For the uninitiated: it's a 3D version of the save icon. Call me old fashioned, but I still love the feel of flattened pieces of dead wood rubbing between my fingers as I savor sips of more dead plants steeped in boiling water. It may sound macabre for the vegetation sympathizers, but I swear it gets your head into a good place. All you need is a book, and for very minimal expense you can be transported through worlds and be amused for hours by the imagination a reclusive author - no batteries or charging necessary.

Bonus - Sunscreen

Someday, once we’re freed from our self-imposed prisons and can frolic in the ultraviolet radiation of our blistering star again, you’ll need some. Especially if you’re anything like me and find yourself hissing at the overtly cheerful rays that the sun bestows.

Visit www.doineedsunscreen.com in case you are curious if you need some.

Hint: It always says yes.

Photo credit to @cloudyfriction