Purchases That Made Sense · Reuben Ingber

Most of what I buy doesn’t change much. It shows up, it gets used a few times, and it finds a shelf.

But every so often a handful of things land at the same time and actually make the day a little better. (I did a version of this back in 2022.) The past few months have been one of those stretches. Here’s what stuck.

A watch box

My watches used to live in a pile. Just a heap in the closet, straps tangled, faces knocking into each other. Every morning I’d dig through it to find the one I wanted.

I grabbed a simple watch box on Amazon. Nothing fancy. It sits in a drawer in my closet now, and picking a watch takes about three seconds.

It’s a small thing. My watches aren’t expensive but it feels good to have a home for them.

New watch bands

Staying on watches. I had a bunch of old NATO straps that were pretty beat up — frayed, faded, a few holes stretched out past the point of return.

I picked up a few new ones, plus a couple of silicone bands. It made some old watches feel new again.

A 25lb kettlebell

I’m trying hard to get back into fitness. Part of that has been admitting where I actually am, not where I was.

My 35lb kettlebell just feels heavy. Every workout felt like a fight I was losing before I started. So I bought a 25.

Having the right weight makes working out a little more enjoyable again. I’d rather show up for a workout I can finish than skip one I can’t.

Clothes that fit

Same theme. I’ve gained some weight, and a lot of my fall clothes were feeling uncomfortably tight.

For a while I handled that by squeezing into things that were uncomfortable, or by wearing black t-shirts every day. Neither one felt good.

So this fall I’ve been buying clothes that fit the body I have now. Not a someday size. They’re comfortable, and I feel good in them, which matters so much.

A 3-in-1 USB-C charging cable

My desk used to have USB-C cables running everywhere. One for this, one for that, one I couldn’t trace back to anything.

Now it’s a single cable with three ends, including a high-speed charging one. One cord, a simple fix to a problem most people just ignore.

The Blackwing One-Step Long Point Sharpener

I love pencils. Zeke does his homework in pencil. And somehow we didn’t have a good sharpener in the house.

I saw this one recommended by Matt Ragland and bought it immediately. It’s fast, and it leaves a long, sharp point every time. Homework has fewer stoppages now.

Photo keychains

Judi made a photo keychain at camp this summer. Zeke saw it and, naturally, wanted one too.

So I bought a 10-pack on Amazon. I print two photos on my Kodak Zink printer and slide them in back to back.

Now my wife and both kids carry photos with them every day. Of everything on this list, it’s the one that cost the least and meant the most.

A photo booth album

My wife and I went on a date to Autophoto, a photo booth museum in Manhattan, and came home with a stack of photo strips.

I also had a bunch of strips lying around from random places with the kids — stuck in drawers, tucked into books, curling on the fridge.

So I bought an album made specifically for photo strips. They’re all in one place now, and flipping through it is a lot more fun than I expected.

An Olympus 35RC

My Nikon point-and-shoot broke. That same day, I saw an Olympus 35RC for sale in a Facebook group. I wrote about the first roll I shot on it.

It’s a rangefinder, so it asks more of me than a point-and-shoot did. That’s part of the fun. I may still grab a “new” point-and-shoot when the right one shows up, but this little camera takes great pictures.

None of these were big purchases. Most of them fixed a problem I’d been living with for too long, or finally matched how I actually live now.

And somewhere in Queens, three people I love are carrying a photo in their pocket.