10 Items Under $100 That Changed My Life
It’s hard to know today what products are actually a good bargain. You don't have to spend a lot to get a great value. Here are 10 less expensive items I've bought that are totally worth it.
It’s hard to know today what products are actually a good bargain. There are always different price points for nearly anything you could need to purchase, and sometimes you might be convinced to buy the more expensive item, thinking it’s better quality.
People sometimes say, “Buy it nice or buy it twice,” and I think that’s not really great advice for most people. For one thing, there’s a lot of pricey companies out there that are just producing trash now because people expect it. You used to only need to replace phones when the operating systems stopped working for newer apps. These days the manufacturers make batteries that drain once the phone reaches a certain age to force you to replace it. Even appliances aren’t safe from planned obsolescence. When we remodeled our new house, we specifically avoided getting a Samsung fridge because they’re not as reliable as their ranges.
I’m usually very satisfied with the things I buy, and these items below are personal favorites of mine that have really improved my life.
Google Pixel 3a
In 2022 I needed a new phone. The back button on my old one stopped working and wasn’t able to be fixed. We checked with Verizon and everything. To my credit, I was able to work around the issue for a couple of months and waited until we had moved to Arizona to replace the phone.
I’d previously had a Samsung Galaxy S7 or maybe S6. My husband owned a Google Pixel 3a XL, and he suggested I get the smaller version of this phone, which was a couple of years old by then. I prefer to buy my phones used, and I got the Google Pixel 3a for $100 on eBay.
It’s the best phone I’ve owned. The Google software is more user-friendly than Samsung’s Android. It has absolutely every feature you’d want, and since it’s a bit older, it’s reliable.
Pearl Earrings & Necklace
About two years ago, I got it into my head that I needed to dress nicer for work. I don’t regret that decision, but I tried to replace most of my work wardrobe rather fast and spent more than I should have.
One of the items I decided I needed to look professional for work were pearl earrings and a matching necklace. I was originally concerned that pearls were expensive, but I got them both for $31.33 total on eBay. They were shipped from overseas, which probably explains the low price. They were freshwater Japanese pearls, and they look imperfect, so I’ll tell myself they’re real.
I love the pearls because they’re my “power accessory.” When I wear them, I feel like an important woman who should not be trifled with. They look great with everything, and I think that wearing them also conveys my age easier to others. I’m 42 but look much younger and sometimes get treated disrespectfully because of it.
Cuisinart Oil Master
I saw this Cuisinart Oil Master on YouTube a few years ago, and it’s one of the only things I bought that an influencer recommended. I usually bought generic Pam cans to spray baking sheets when I made brownies or cakes. I didn’t like throwing away the cans all the time, and I was interested in a lower waste option.
These refillable glass spray bottles are an absolute must-buy. I have two and fill olive oil in one and canola oil in another. They both come in handy for cooking, baking, and making popcorn because I can spray the popped corn and then sprinkle flavored powder on them. They cost only $12.56 each and save me money since I no longer buy a can of cooking spray anymore. They also reduce any trash I was creating with the canned spray oil. Plus, not buying a consumable over and over is a huge win to me.
Nike sneakers
Ever since I was in junior high, I’ve worn Nike branded sneakers exclusively. I had Reebok when I was younger, and there was some junior high nonsense that made all the kids think Reebok was an inferior brand. It’s not, but when I tried wearing Reebok or other brands later in life, I found they didn’t fit my feet as well. I have an odd arch, and Nikes were the only sneakers that I felt fully comfortable in.
In 2019 I got married to Mr. Green. We were driving from Chicago to the UP of Michigan for our honeymoon, and we stopped in Wisconsin for lunch, though I could not tell you where exactly in Wisconsin we were. I had been wearing white and navy Nike sneakers for maybe five or six years. I had them when I lived in Vegas with my ex, and I had them when I moved to Chicago after getting divorced. They were so worn that soles were starting to come off.
I wore these sneakers almost every day. In the winters in Chicago, I needed special snow boots, but in Vegas, that’s not an issue. I wore them all winter in warmer climates and almost all summer (unless the occasion called for flip flops). These shoes had been everywhere with me and had seen it all.
At a Culver’s for lunch, the sole of one of my Nikes came completely off from the toe to the middle of my sole. My shoe looked like it had a flapping Muppet mouth. I told Mr. Green that we needed to stop by a mall so I could buy another pair of shoes. I hadn’t packed anything else, and our honeymoon included three full days of hiking in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan—a gorgeous area with lots of deer and waterfalls—so I knew I would need decent shoes.
We looked at a few shoe stores in a mall, but I didn’t find anything that was a semi-neutral color that fit my weird arch well. We finally ended up somewhere with Nikes, and I found the pair that I still wear almost daily five years later: My black and pink Nike sneakers for $70. The tread on these is still going strong, and I don’t expect I’ll need to replace them for two more years, even living in a city where I wear them every day in the winter.
That was five years ago, but you can still find great Nike sneakers for under $100, and I promise unless your feet are growing, they will last you practically forever.
Rubbermaid Modular Containers
I’m a big fan of kitchen tools that work well. I love cooking and baking and do it weekly at least. I also like to keep a lot of my regularly-used supplies and ingredients on hand because I tend to not really come up with ideas for what to bake when I’m writing my grocery list.
When I met Mr. Green, he had these Rubbermaid modular food storage containers where he kept flour and rice and sugar, among other things. I really love them because they’re great at keeping a tight seal, they’re durable as hell, and they have lasted quite a long time.
I often see the OXO push-button top containers touted on YouTube, but these Rubbermaid ones are the real deal. They’re also the perfect dimensions to fit in an upper cabinet, so they fit small storage spaces well, and you don’t have to store them where there are any containers behind others. These are the size that lets you see everything at once, unlike the OXO ones everyone else likes.
These are durable as hell. I have no idea when Mr. Green bought the set he started with when we met, but we have been together nine and a half years now, and we have never had to throw away a single one. We’ve bought additional containers so I can use them as food storage in our pantry for snack crackers and trail mix. I’ve even begun storing my tortilla chips in them because they stay fresh and won’t get smashed in the pantry.
One thing I love about them is that there’s one size that fits an entire standard package of almost any foods. The tallest one fits a 5 lb. bag of flour or 5 lb. of rice perfectly. The second tallest fits 4 lbs. of sugar or 48 oz. of oats, the next one fits an entire bag of Splenda, and the smallest ones fit a full can of cocoa powder, brown sugar, or powdered sugar. There’s no “backstock” of opened packages of groceries to worry about.
The four-container set is $30 in the above link, and there is one size of each in that set. You can find these individually for $14.00-20.00 on Walmart’s website or for roughly the same on eBay from time to time. They aren’t sold in most stores anymore, and I don’t know why because they are really the epitome of pantry food storage.
Russbe Reusable Bags
In 2019 I got very into zero waste initiatives. I’m not as concerned about it now because I realized I was being too hard on myself to find ways to avoid throwing out things or using single-use plastics, and this American life is not made for people concerned about waste at that level.
But one purchase I have kept using are my Russbe reusable food bags. I had bought some silicone bags originally, and there was a separate plastic sliding piece that was needed to seal the bags. They didn’t seal well unless you got the opening of the bag wet, and even then, it was difficult. I was using them to store my frozen duck soup for my ferrets to eat.
Russbe bags aren’t silicone. They’re a thick, reusable plastic that’s dishwasher- and freezer-safe. And you can get them in standard plastic bag sizes, unlike Stasher. Eight gallon-size bags are still only $12.99. I bought my first box of gallon bags at that same price to use for duck soup storage at The Container Store in 2020 or 2019 after I gave up on the silicone ones. They’re very durable and much, much more affordable than Stasher. One thing that irked me about Stasher when I was looking to replace my silicone bags was that they didn’t have a gallon size. I believe the only standard size they made at the time was a sandwich bag. Russbe has snack, sandwich, quart, and gallon bags. I have purchased all sizes. At the time of this writing, one of the gallon bags has a zipper that separated a bit and is therefore not as airtight in the freezer as it should be, but that could be due to my misuse as I tend to overfill the gallon bags with duck soup cubes.
I currently have zero available bags for food storage because I have so much in the freezer that they’re all in use. I decided to buy another set of gallon bags since I use them the most. We had been using food saver bags that vacuum sealed to store most of our freezer meats, but the waste was getting too much for me.
The Russbe bags are dishwasher safe, but I find the gallon size is awkward in the dishwasher, so I wash them by hand. They’re very easy to clean, and the front of the bag can be used to write contents of the bag and dates; the writing will come off safely with rubbing alcohol.
Aside from duck soup, I use the bags mostly for storing my cubes of jam that I make (the cubes are a perfect single serving for sandwiches), some cilantro I didn’t want to throw out—you can freeze cilantro!—and sun-dried tomatoes I made for salads in the toaster oven. I use the gallon size ones to freeze cookies, blanched vegetables, raw chicken, and buffalo chicken wraps that I microwave as single snacks.
Smart Outlets
We bought our current home in February of 2024, and for some odd reason, there is no outlet installed at the exterior front of the house. We have two outlets on the back patio. This is a townhome, and the garage used to be a carport, so my guess is that the developer didn’t put an outlet by the front door because the one by the laundry entrance was sufficient.
The owner who closed the carport and converted it to a garage didn’t decorate their yard for holidays, apparently, because he didn’t add an extra outlet anywhere when he made that conversion. Our neighbor tells us he was an electrician, so I find this all a bit baffling.
Our remodel budget didn’t include installing a brand-new outlet, so Mr. Green found a porch light that has an outlet already in it. I really only wanted it for holiday decorations, and I do mean multiple holidays. Since I’ve never had my own yard as an adult, I wanted to decorate for Halloween, Christmas, and Mardi Gras.
This $17.99 Kasa smart outlet was a great purchase for getting the holiday lights to turn on and off without my having to remember. Before we bought it, I would have to remember to go outside to plug in the lights at sundown and unplug them before bed. The porch light is also a bit tall for me to reach, so I was straining to plug in the lights each time.
Now we can maintain a schedule on the Kasa app, and the lights use our Wi-Fi to learn when sundown is scheduled for the day. They turn on at sundown and turn off at 10:00 pm. It’s a great benefit for very little money.
Menstrual Cups
In 2019 when I was super into zero waste, I also decided to stop using disposable products for my periods. Menstrual cups can cost a lot. I didn’t understand why the Diva brand everyone talks about was $40 per cup. That seemed crazy to me.
I found a pair of cups for $12 on eBay, and you can still find silicone menstrual cups for this low online. Using a cup takes some getting used to. There’s definitely a couple of months where you can’t tell if you have in in correctly. But after five years of using one consistently, I can tell you that this was the best $12 I ever spent. I no longer have stains on my underwear, provided I remember when I’m going to start bleeding and begin using the cup in time. I don’t throw pads out in the trash or flush tampons. Menstrual cups are definitely a real life hack for women, and you don’t have to spend a lot to use one.
Bidet
This is another one my husband introduced me to. When we met, I visited his apartment and saw the bidet on his toilet. It was a part of a full toilet seat and lid, and I assumed it came with the apartment and was part of the toilet itself because he had a remodeled unit in Chicago. Back then, there weren’t a ton of remodeled spaces, and they were usually only in the very nice areas of the city. He lived in Uptown, and anyone from the North Side can tell you that in the 2010s, Uptown was like the neglected sibling of all the yuppie North Side neighborhoods. So his rent wasn’t that much higher than I paid for a run-down studio in Ravenswood.
However, he told me that the bidet was his that he installed himself. I was surprised because who would think to install something so unnecessary? Well, I was wrong about that. Having a bidet has changed my life. It’s made it easier to poop when I have days where evacuation isn’t as easy. And it’s made times when evacuation is messier a lot easier to deal with as well.
We originally had a Bio Bidet, which is about $350 now. It needs an outlet so it can heat up water in a stored reserve and give you a warm spray. We live in the desert now, and Mr. Green decided that the water wasn’t going to get as cold here, and we didn’t have an outlet near the toilet in our new home and didn’t really want to install one like we did in my first condo in Chicago. Luxe Bidet is only $43.99 on Amazon and attaches to the toilet without replacing your lid or seat. It’s very strong and can be adjusted, and it makes a great entry-level bidet for anyone curious.
I don’t think we will ever live without a bidet again.
Sewing Machine
I threw this one on at the end because it certainly changed my life, though I realize it’s not something a lot of people would purchase for themselves. I love to sew, and I had been using a Brother I bought on Black Friday in 2008 for a while. It wasn’t a great machine and could really only handle thin fabrics. Fleece was its enemy.
In 2017 when I bought my first condo, I decided to purchase a used Kenmore that I saw at the local sewing repair shop for $60. It was a 1967 model and avocado green. It also came in a sewing machine cabinet, so it had a built-in table for me to use it right out the door. It was also coincidentally the same model that I had been using before that I left at my ex-husband’s house. That machine belonged to his mother before I used it, and she wouldn’t let me keep it after the divorce because she thought her grandkids would use it. They were old enough to have expressed an interest in sewing if they were going to want to use it, so I suspect it is still collecting dust.
This Kenmore has made tons of doll clothes, costumes, and stuffed animals. It’s made at least one dress and is scheduled to make another in a week. I use it for repairs and alterations, which is something I need a lot when I buy clothes because I’m smaller than most people my age, both in height and weight, so most clothes for forty-year-olds are too big for me.
A vintage machine made with metal parts is always the way to go if you want to buy a sewing machine. They’re also not too hard to find in thrift stores or on other secondhand sites like Facebook Marketplace. Anything from the ‘80s and older would be a safe bet for longevity, and you can use YouTube videos to both teach yourself how to sew and how to repair and maintain it.
I hope you found this list of 10 items under $100 that changed my life helpful. I swear by all of these products and use them endlessly. They’re definitely worth the price and are proof that you don’t always have to spend a lot of money to get quality items.