The Worst Things We Bought in 2024

There are few things more unsatisfying than making a well-informed or otherwise necessary purchase, only to find that it fails spectacularly at its task. Charting the stuff we buy that we love is fun, but as we head into the New Year, taking a look back at the stuff we bought that we absolutely hated is also an important exercise. In with the good and out with the bad! Here’s what Dwell editors and contributors spent money on this year that, sadly, we wish we hadn’t.

A candle that didn’t do its job 

I can never say no to a luxury candle—a Diptyque, a Trudon, that Flamingo Estate one that smells like tomatoes. This year, I bought a Maison Margiela candle at Sephora because I’ve always liked the perfume: never again! It was supposed to make my home smell like a cozy fireplace and it smelled like absolutely nothing, plus the flame got too high and scared me while I was watching Real Housewives of Salt Lake City! A week later I bought a candle at the grocery store I liked a lot more—there’s a lesson here I’ll (hopefully) learn! –Angela Serratore, contributor

Countless pairs of (relatively) useless dishwashing gloves

There are few chores more irritating to me than doing the dishes. I do not have a dishwasher in my apartment and I live alone, so that means the endless dishes that pile up in the sink are my responsibility alone. And I was taught from a young age that the right way to do dishes requires gloves—all the better to save your hands from the ravages of dish soap and the scalding hot water that issues forth from the tap. Every single pair of dishwashing gloves that I’ve bought in 2024 has ended up in a freaking landfill because within a month or so, a hole appears, rendering the gloves useless. Surely this is in part due to the fact that these gloves are all purchased at the dollar store, but even when I do spend the money on a "nice" option, the same thing happens! Perhaps in 2025, I will learn a lesson and spend a significant amount of money on rubber gloves that won’t break. I imagine it’s cheaper than finding a new apartment with a dishwasher. –Megan Reynolds, senior home guides editor

Shitty frames

Buying frames is one of those tasks that, like getting your jewelry repaired or a pair of pants hemmed, will sit and wait for you for months if not years until you drag yourself to get it finished. Unless I am personally paying to frame something significant that I want done very well, for which I have my go-to guys, it’s a saga every time. Finding the right one to fit what I want that doesn’t seem like it’s going to fall apart always seems to take forever if I want to avoid Amazon. A few months back, when I needed just some basic five-by-seven-inch frames for some prints from Walgreens, I stumbled across a Reddit thread that suggested Ikea. The price ($2.99) was right and they’d actually deliver, which meant I got to avoid a trip to Red Hook. But upon arrival it became clear that the frame was just barely too small for the print it said it would fit. "Why would they make this not fit the thing it says it’s supposed to fit?" I raged to my partner, as I got out my X-ACTO knife. "Because it’s a cheap, shitty frame," he responded calmly. Yes, lesson learned: you get what you pay for. Luckily, my relatives who received photos in said frames appear none the wiser. –Kate Dries, executive editor

Kitchen tools that are maybe toxic?

The award for biggest waste of money would have to go to all of my black plastic kitchen tools. Luckily, I didn’t buy them all at once—my collection of plastic cooking utensils had gradually grown. But all of them went straight into the trash this year once the news cycle reported that most of them are toxic since they’re often made from recycled electronics. Apparently, those chemicals could seep into food while you’re cooking. And even though the severity of that situation has been since debunked a little, still—what the hell! Luckily, I have a bunch of wooden and metal kitchen tools that I can still use, but it’s a shame to know that I’ve been slowly poisoning myself right in my own home. First, the nonstick pans. Now, black plastics. Will I ever find peace in the kitchen? –Jinnie Lee, contributor

A wall-mounted wood coat rack for my kid 

One way you can tell a home-improvement purchase sucked is if you still haven’t installed it, 10 months after buying it. Such is the story with the cursed coat rack I bought for my two-year-old’s room in March. It looks very cute: it has multicolored pegs and a smooth, natural finish. It also has a kind of Montessori mouthfeel, so I had a vision of hanging it at about two feet off the ground to encourage self-sufficiency (or something!). And yet, here we are, in mid-December, and every time I take that thing out of my kid’s closet to go install it, I get a headache and retreat from the project.

It shouldn’t even be that hard to install the thing, but I just have this instinct that I’m going to mess it up when I try to drill into the wall. It’s taunting me with its preschool aesthetic—as if to say "this should be easy, you dumbass." I’m out here hanging the kid’s coat and backpack on an adult-height coat rack as though I am this kid’s servant. The coat rack is still in the closet at the time I’m writing this, and I suspect it will stay there until the kid goes to college. If anyone wants it, it’s yours. –Kelly Stout, contributor

Wooden shelf brackets with the wrong hardware (not my fault!)

The thing I most regret buying this year is a four-pack of wood shelf brackets from Amazon. It’s not because they were flawed, or I didn’t like the color. I very much like the color, in fact. I bought them l because I wanted to put wall-mounted shelves in my daughter’s room as a place to keep dolls, as an attractive and classic solution to her clutter problem. But the brackets we bought from Ikea weren’t working; for some reason, they didn’t come with the right mounting hardware. No problem, I thought—we’ll simply get brackets that we can drill straight into the wall. Only, as my husband informed me, there seemed to be no apparent studs in the wall where we wanted to mount the shelves, and the Sheetrock wasn’t strong enough to hold the shelves. Now, clearly, there’s something holding up the roof. I’m sure with enough Google and YouTube searches we could have found a solution. But at some point, we just ran out of initiative. Which is why we still haven’t patched the holes in the wall, either. Next year! –Kelly Faircloth, contributor

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