18 weird but useful things we've bought for our homes

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When outfitting your home, you know the basics you need to address: cookware, cleaning supplies, a seemingly never-ending stream of paper towels, and some nice bedding.

But it’s not until you really live in a space that you become acquainted with all the quirks of your life there, and you begin to think of a whole new, peculiar list of things you'd like to buy that didn't make the first.

If you live many, many flights of stairs above the laundry room (or many flights of stairs and then some city blocks away) you’re going to get sick of schlepping your laundry bag around. You’ll begin to want an alternative.

If your patio is beautiful — and both you and the pigeons agree — you might invest in a little scarecrow owl with a rotating head.

You might realize your outlets are pretty inconveniently spaced out and do some extensive online searching to make sure you don’t wake up to a dead phone again tomorrow.

No matter what your particular battles are with your living space, the ingenuity used to solve them is something a lot of us could benefit from hearing, so I asked my colleagues to divulge the weird — but very useful — purchases that they’ve made for their homes.

Unless noted, everything can be found on Amazon.

Below you'll find the 18 unusual purchases we're glad we made for our homes:

An over-the-faucet shelf

Amazon

I live in a small NYC apartment and this product been a real space-saver. It sits right over my bathroom sink and helps me keep handy the things I use most often. My built-in medicine cabinet is small and shallow, so this provides additional storage for my tiny bathroom!

Over-the-Faucet Shelf, $7.13

Wall outlets with USB slots

Amazon

If you have the means to install these outlets (don't replace outlets if you have no idea about electricity), these will come in more handy than you think. You never have to worry about a dongle or a plug for your phone. It'll charge your phones, tablets, and external batteries, and you can just leave the cords there. I put one in the kitchen... use it every day when I'm cooking after work.