More from the Hub: the guides that don't fit one room
The Hub's odds-and-ends shelf — seven guides that refuse to pick a room, from a $41 waffle maker to the desk chair you sit in more than your bed.
Start here
The three that matter first
If you only buy one appliance this year, make it the one that replaces six. Pressure, slow, rice, steam, sauté and yoghurt from $109 — the Russell Hobbs 11-in-1 covers the lot with a family-size 6L bowl.
Eight picks from a $33 entry to a full reverse-osmosis system, with NSF/ANSI certifications and three-year cartridge maths done for you. The BRITA Marella XL (~$61) is the honest default — its cartridges sit in every supermarket aisle.
You sit in it more than your bed, and a $300 ergonomic chair is cheaper than the physio bills a bad one racks up. The SIHOO M57 (~$299, 4.8k reviews) has been the internet's budget favourite for a decade.
Every house has a drawer that holds the things with no natural home, and this page is ours. Seven guides live here because they refuse a room: the Sunbeam Verve iron at around $64 belongs to whoever's interviewing tomorrow, the $61 BRITA jug belongs to the whole kitchen-tap situation, and the Artiss sofa bed at around $640 belongs to whichever room the in-laws claim.
Everything on this shelf is held to the same bar as the rest of the hub — live listing checks before publishing, plain words when a category is thin on Amazon Australia — it just doesn't fit the floor plan. At least two of the seven end up in every first home eventually.
The bench-space negotiations
Four kitchen guides for appliances all fighting over the same square metre of bench — a multi cooker from $109, waffle makers from a $41 mini to a $328 smart machine, food processors from a $52 mini chopper, and water filters from $33 up to full reverse osmosis.
The room that does double shifts
The desk chair you sit in more than your bed and the sofa bed that turns the study into a guest room — most sofa beds are terrible to sleep on, so this is about the ones that aren't.
The laundry holdout
Six tested irons across steam, cordless and steam-generator tiers, from a $30 basic to the Philips PerfectCare with a 1.8L tank, because pressing a work shirt on a bath towel stops being charming around week three.
Quick answers
Why do these seven guides live here instead of a room?
Because each one genuinely straddles rooms. The multi cooker is six appliances in one, the sofa bed is lounge furniture or a guest bed depending on the night, and the desk chair belongs to a home office that's usually just a corner of somewhere else. We file things where you'd actually look, and for these seven, no single room is honest.
Where do I start if I've just moved in and own nothing?
Work through our new home checklist guide first — it sequences the first month room by room — then use the room pages in the menu above. The guides on this shelf are the odd jobs: a generator before storm season, a label printer once the garage gets serious.
How are the picks in these guides chosen?
Same standard as the rest of the Hub: every pick is checked against a live Australian listing before it's named, with real prices and review counts. When the best product isn't stocked where we link — Magimix food processors, for one — you get a plain pointer to the retailers that do carry it instead of a quiet substitution.
A tidy taxonomy is a lovely idea; a house is not one. This shelf keeps the other thirteen honest.
— Anish Puri, NestPath
CERTAIN CONTENT THAT APPEARS ON THIS SITE COMES FROM AMAZON. THIS CONTENT IS PROVIDED ‘AS IS’ AND IS SUBJECT TO CHANGE OR REMOVAL AT ANY TIME.