Day 30: Today's Pick — The Kettle That Ended My Morning Crankiness

I am writing this from my kitchen at 7am, holding a cup of tea, in a state of mild contentment that I want to credit, partially, to a $115 electric kettle.

This sounds insane. It might be insane. But the kettle has been on my counter for nine months and my mornings are, demonstrably, less bad. The variable that changed was the kettle.

What it is

The Fellow Clyde, a 1.5L electric kettle with a single button, a beautiful matte powder-coated steel exterior, and a flat heat-conductive base. It boils faster than my old kettle (1L in about 3:45). It stays cool on the outside while the water boils. It auto-shuts off when it hits boil and beeps a single soft beep.

That's it. That's the kettle.

Why this is the actual review

The kettle does the same thing every kettle does. The water gets hot. You pour the water on the tea or the coffee. The product is functionally equivalent to a $20 plastic kettle from a supermarket.

What this kettle does differently is the design: the tactile experience of holding it, the visual experience of seeing it on the counter, the auditory experience of the soft single beep instead of a startling whistle. And the cumulative effect of using a thoughtfully designed object is — and I am genuinely surprised to be making this argument — a small daily lift in mood.

On price

$115 is, objectively, $115 for a kettle. That's a real number.

The math I'm running is: I use this kettle every morning for tea, and once or twice in the evening for tea or coffee. That's, conservatively, 3 uses per day. Over a year, that's 1100 uses. Over the kettle's expected 8-year lifespan (Fellow's track record on the Stagg suggests 8+ years is reasonable), that's about 8800 uses, or roughly $0.013 per use.

A $20 supermarket kettle that lasts 3 years and breaks: ~$0.018 per use, with the additional cost of ugly mornings.

The math is favorable. The math is also a defense. The actual reason I bought it was because I was tired of being cranky in the morning, and I had a hunch that a small good object could help. It did.

What it does well

• Fast boil
• Cool to the touch (no glove needed when handling)
• One button — no programmable temperatures, no app, no gimmick (the Stagg has those; the Clyde doesn't)
• Auto-shutoff that actually shuts off
• Pour spout that doesn't drip

What it does less well

• Plastic lid hinge. I worry about it failing in 5+ years.
• 1.5L is the only size; if you make tea for a crowd, it's small.
• The matte finish shows fingerprints if you don't wipe occasionally.

A small philosophical note

I have, over the past few years, been slowly buying nicer versions of objects I use every day, and slowly cycling out the cheap-but-fine versions. A nicer kettle. A nicer mug. A nicer leather notebook. A nicer chef's knife. The cumulative effect is, frankly, large. Each individual upgrade is small. The aggregate is "I like being in my kitchen more than I used to."

This is the entire daily-pick philosophy in one paragraph.

Tomorrow: a small Chinese tea I have been brewing for a year and learning how to brew correctly the entire time.