Home improvement and lawn care is extremely important for any homeowner, or anyone looking to spruce up their rented living space. Whether it’s a new kitchen gadget or something to help with the lawn, these gifts can help make someone’s life much easier.
These gifts can help anyone from college students just getting their first apartment to someone who’s owned their own home for decades. They’ll help people with keeping their own homes in order as well as just little quality of life improvements.
Kitchen
The kitchen is a place with tons of gadgets available, all of which are supposed to allow you to cook different meals, prepare different ingredients, and generally make your life easier.
Many people don’t buy these gadgets on their own, because they don’t want to spend the money on something that they’re not sure of. They justify it because they’re doing just fine cooking how they are now.
However, once you have that one magical appliance that changes everything, you’ll wonder how you were cooking without it before. One such device that makes for a great gift is a multi-cooker.
These are large cooking appliances capable of doing tons of things, from slow roasting to frying, and even pressure cooking. With so many different functions, and while being able to be cleaned and stored fairly easily, this is a no-brainer gift for anyone with a kitchen.
Another kitchen appliance worth looking at is a new coffeemaker. Anyone who drinks coffee regularly probably has had the same one for many years now, meaning it’s probably dirty and not producing coffee very well.
You can either spring for the same type of coffeemaker or get a different one entirely. If they normally drink drip coffee, get them a French press or an espresso maker, something to change up their normal routine a little bit.
You can either spring for the same type of coffeemaker or get a different one entirely. If they normally drink drip coffee, get them a French press or an espresso maker, something to change up their normal routine a little bit.
Another versatile kitchen gadget worth looking at is a stand mixer. They can be used for all kinds of different things, and helps avoid the process of getting your counter all dirty in the process of making dough.
Lawn and Gardening
Taking good care of your lawn is of utmost concern for many homeowners. They like to show that they care about their appearances, and so they don’t let their lawn get overgrown very easily.
There are many lawn tools that can help keep a well maintained lawn. If you’re shopping for a new homeowner or someone stuck with their old technology, a fresh lawnmower is a great option.
These can range considerably in price, from inexpensive electric and gas push mowers up to rather pricey zero-point turn mowers. For most people’s lawns, a nice push mower with a self-propel function can do the job just fine.
There are all different kinds of energy sources for them, from gas powered engines to corded and cordless electric. Electric is becoming more popular in recent years due to the lack of any oil changes or filling up on gas.
What most people really need when it comes to lawns is the accessory tools. Most people have a mower to get the bulk of their lawn done, but things like weed-whackers and edge trimmers really bring a lawn to life.
These are used for more detailed work, such as getting right up against fences and along sidewalks and driveways, ensuring the lawn looks clean cut and professional all the time.
In that same vein, a leaf blower can work wonders on the time it takes to clean up a lawn, especially after it’s done being mowed. If you’re still relying on just a rake, a new leaf blower can help save you the time and trouble it takes to get the lawn clippings and leaves up off the ground.
For an avid gardener on the other hand, these power tools aren’t so interesting. If you know someone who’s interested in gardening, you might consider getting them an indoor hydroponic garden.
These allow you to grow plants inside your home easily, which is especially useful in kitchens to consistently have fresh herbs available. They have their own light and water sources, so you don’t need to worry about how much sun they’re getting and you only need to refill the water every so often.
If you want an inexpensive gift for an outdoor gardener, you might consider a good hygrometer. These can tell you how dry or wet the soil is, keying a gardener in on when they should water and when they shouldn’t.
These can be bought with other built in functions as well, such as sunlight and pH detection, allowing a gardener to get even more information on their soil conditions. Soil acidity and moisture is key to good gardening, so these can be very helpful.
Smart Gadgets
As smart devices become more reliable and more readily available, more people are utilizing this convenient technology in their homes. Smart gadgets can do both very specific tasks as well as many broad ones, all allowing you to better control your home.
The first thing you should start with is a home center. These are available from many different brands, and there are some that work with multiple brands. It’s recommended to get a home center that allows you to connect other devices from different brands.
Home centers essentially tell all the other devices how to communicate with each other. That way, when you lock the door on your way out, the light should know to turn off. Without the home center, these wouldn’t be able to interact.
Smart locks are very common and have helped people better secure their homes when combined with cameras. You can control your lock from your phone, while also keeping a doorbell camera out that sees any intruders.
You can also have other cameras set up around the outside and inside of the house, all of which can alert you via a phone notification when they see someone. That way you can check it real quick, no matter where you are, and do what you need to do.
Another common smart device that people are adding into their homes is smart thermostats. Getting up to fiddle with the temperature can be a bit of a pain, and if you forget to set the thermostat when you’re out and about, you won’t be able to adjust it until you’re home.
One option that’s becoming much more affordable recently is automatic vacuum cleaners. There used to be very limited brands to choose from and they were pretty expensive, but now it’s not so hard to get a little robot vacuum cleaner.
Much of smart device technology centers around scheduling and actions controlling other actions. For example, if your locks knew you left the house, it could turn on the robot vacuum to make a quick sweep and turn the temperature up or down a little bit to use less energy.
One great option to get is smart plugs. These connect other devices to outlets but can be controlled remotely, essentially making it a smart device. This helps so that you don’t have to rebuy a whole different lamp or replace too many things, rather just plugging everything in again.
Of course, much of it is also smart phone controlled. You want to be sure it’s something that doesn’t require you to be within a certain range to control, that way if you’re on vacation or something of that nature you don’t have to wait to get back to fix a mistake.
Home Theater
In recent times, fewer and fewer people have been going out to see movies at the theater. They’re unhygienic, and you don’t always get a good seat, and sometimes there’s people there eating or doing other things that might annoy you.
Since so many movie companies are putting movies out straight to streaming services, as well, there’s no reason not to move over to a home theater setup. They aren’t too hard to set up, but it’s a world of difference compared to watching a movie on your phone.
If you’re going to watch a movie, the first thing you need is a movie screen. A good projector and projector screen are very crucial. If you’re going to be looking at the picture for two hours at a time at least, you’re going to want it to look good.
One thing that’s important to look for in projectors is that they’re natively 1080p resolution. Many cheap projectors claim to support 1080p, while they really only accept that resolution and output a far lower one, something that would decrease image quality significantly.
You should also make sure you’re getting a high quality screen to project onto. If your wall has even a slight gloss to it, it won’t look great being projected onto, so you’ll have to get a thick screen that’ll reflect the light back to you just enough to look right.
An often overlooked aspect of a home theater is the sound system. Many people just go with some barebones speakers from their TV or some mediocre additional ones, but what really sets a home theater apart is surround sound audio.
Surround sound involves setting up multiple speakers around the room, such that you’re getting more realistic sounding audio during movies. This is what movie theaters use, so by getting a decent surround sound setup, you’re going to be one step closer to fully recreating that theater experience.
Finally, there’s the matter of the media center. Many people overlook this initially when they’re setting up a home theater system, but it’s pretty important. The media center controls all other functions of the theater setup.
Essentially it controls the surround sound, projector, and media you’re playing all from the same place. Otherwise you’d have to use multiple remotes to control the whole room setup, which could be a bit inconvenient.
The media center also helps ensure you’re getting the best audio and video outputs possible. If it’s being played from a mediocre source, you won’t be able to get the most out of your surround sound and HD systems.
Tools
Tools are always a safe purchase for anyone who likes to work with their hands, especially when it comes to most dads. However, you might want to avoid buying them something they already have, which might leave you at a bit of a loss.
Some people, on the other hand, don’t have many tools at all, and should be stocking up on some quality beginner tools that they’ll use frequently. No matter what, there are good options available for you to get.
If you’re shopping for someone who already has a decent amount of standard tools, you should consider getting them some more obscure tools, things that they’ll only use every now and again.
This is because they’re very useful tools when the time comes up, but most people don’t like justifying buying something they’ll only use a few times. However, when they get it as a gift, they love having it to use whenever they need it.
These slightly obscure tools might include picks for scraping material off of things and removing O-rings, some bolt removal kits for stuck bolts, things like that. However, it’s largely dependent on what they work on most commonly.
One universally helpful tool that most people don’t think to buy is an endoscope or borescope. Essentially, it’s a camera on the end of a long, thin, flexible tube. With it, you can see into spaces that are hard to look into otherwise, such as deep inside an engine or into a little hole in the wall.
Otherwise, if you’re trying to stock up on some more introductory tools, there are still plenty of good options. First, you should look at getting some good screwdrivers. There are a few key things to look for when shopping for these.
First, you ideally want the screwdriver to run all the way through the handle, meaning the metal doesn’t just stop partway through. Second, you want there to be somewhere for you to put a wrench where the metal meets the handle, for more leverage.
If they’ve already got screwdrivers, next up is a good socket wrench set. The key thing to look for in a socket wrench set is variety. You want to find as many different sizes and lengths as possible.
You should also make sure the socket set has both metric and imperial measurements, meaning it has some of the sockets in millimeters and others in fractions of an inch. These will fit differently depending on the bolts they’re trying to turn.
As for the size of the sockets, you should ideally find some that are long and some that are short, as both of these have their time and place in a tool kit. Long, short, and medium sized sockets are ideal.