Are there any household gadgets you found unexpectedly useful after you'd gotten them?
I was thinking about how I missed having an indoor thermometer that measures humidity. It's such a small specific thing, one I'd never think of getting unless pushed to it (which I was by one particularly dry winter). But I like having one now.
What are your small, "random" or "junk drawer" type of gadgets that you actually use or like having around?
It wasn't a gadget, but we put a grocery bag dispenser on our wedding registry. We ended up getting it, and it was nice to have a good place to put them that was easy to grab them out as needed. Haven't used it nearly as much now that we are using reusable grocery bags, but it's still nice when I need to put a bag in my office trash can.
This has been good for us for a different reason. I'm not pathological, but I do have a tendency to keep "useful" things longer than needed. A grocery bag dispenser crammed tight is a decent agreed standard for "we have plenty of grocery bags."
Also not a gadget in and of itself, but I built a home assistant server and zigbee network with all kinds of automations for time based, motion or event activation. Makes me feel like I live in the future lol. But that wasn't exactly unexpectedly useful.