Totally agree with kitchen knives - i really loved the ones I received as a gift for xmas.
To add to that - I'd also suggest a really good skillet (eg I have a scanpan one). One good skillet every ten years is much better than having to buy a crappy one every year after the teflon peels off (or worse, eating all that peeling teflon). Also consider a deep saute pan with a lid, if you do a lot of multi-meal cooking - it doubles as both big frypan and huge pot.
One good skillet every ten years is much better than having to buy a crappy one every year
I recently realized that the price of the skillet is quite comparable to the price of meat being cooked in it nowadays.
What can I purchase with $100 that will be the best thing I can buy to make my life better?
I've decided to budget some regular money to improving my life each month. I'd like to start with low hanging fruit for obvious reasons - but when I sat down to think of improvements, I found myself thinking of the same old things I'd already been planning to do anyway... and I'd like out of that rut.
Constraints/more info:
Background:
This is a question I recently posed to my local Less Wrong group and we came up with a few good ideas, so I thought I'd share the discussion with the wider community and see what we can come up with. I'll add the list we came up with later on in the comments...
It'd be great to have a repository of low-hanging fruit for things that can be solved with (relatively affordable) amounts of money. I'd personally like to go through the list - look at candidates that sound like they'd be really useful to me and then make a prioritised list of what to work on first.