Most used things

Wed, 22 Jul 2026 19:45:58 +1000

What’s the most used thing in your house? It’s probably your phone, but that’s not very interesting. Let’s restrict it to things that are actually useful. (It hasn’t escaped me that I’m asking these questions on a blog that has no comment facility – consider them rhetorical, if it helps.)

How do we define “used” here, to be the most of? If it’s in terms of time used, it’s probably going to be your bed. Maybe followed by your TV, depending on your lifestyle. If you’re very efficient (or space constrained), maybe you’ve combined those activities.

Really, anything here is probably going to be dictated largely by the definition of “used” and “thing”. If you’re diligent, it might be your toothbrush – used two or three times a day every day. Separate cleanings of your teeth are arguable much less contiguous than, say, separate uses of a laptop, which argues for a higher frequency of use. Also, to be honest, pretty boring.

What if we exclude things related to chores. That’d probably exclude your phone (do any of us enjoy time on our phones these days). Maybe also your toothbrush and your bed. Or maybe just something you use that doesn’t fill you with dread, if “chores” is insufficiently precise.

There is a pretty easy argument to be made that, if you’re going to be using something a lot, you should be a bit choosy in your choice of thing (which may or may not — but mostly does —involve spending more money on it). If using a thing makes you miserable, and you use that thing a lot, then getting a less enmiserating version of the thing will improve your life more than getting a better version of a thing you never use (or not doing anything). The typical example is that you spend a third of your life in bed (I wish), so it’s worth spending a bit more money if that means a more comfortable bed and a better sleep.

In my household we drink a lot of tea, so the thing that fulfils the “use it a lot so get a nice one” for us is a kettle.

We have a bright red stovetop kettle. It’s not an antique or anything, but we’ve had it for a few years and it’s mostly still going strong. It whistles loudly when it boils, but we’ve had it long enough that I’m intimately familiar with all the sounds it makes and even if it wasn’t whistling I’d know it had boiled.

It doesn’t turn itself off. It doesn’t keep water at a particular temperate (other than boiling, and that’s more a feature of state change physics than feature of the kettle). It has no transparent parts so if you want to know how full it is, you take off the lid. The lid isn’t hinged – you could easily lose it and because it’s friction-fit if you did you’d basically have to throw away the kettle.

It has no redeeming features other than it is red and it works and it’s used multiple times a day with little or no fuss for the relatively straightforward task of heating a couple of hundred millilitres of water to 100°C. Really, what’s not to love.

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Most used things