5 small appliances to ease the cost of living in 2025

Swapping out your family feasts from your local chicken shop for a homemade version is one way to make some substantial savings on dinner, but it’s not the only one.

A good air fryer can use less energy than your electric oven to cook some meals–which can reduce your energy costs over time. The extent of the savings depends on several factors, including the type and portion size of the food being cooked, the cooking time, and the size of the appliance, but in some instances, it may be up to 60% cheaper to use than your regular oven.

With many models now also able to bake, roast and grill, an air fryer can be a faster, healthier and cheaper cooking option, especially if you usually cook for just one or two people and don’t need to use the full space of a regular oven.

If your daily coffee run costs $5 or more, a home espresso maker can pay for itself in 2-6 months - and that’s just for one person. If there’s more than one caffeine connoisseur in your home, you can recoup your costs in half that time, or less. When you factor in the price of coffee beans, milk, electricity and water, your homemade barista-style coffee will likely only cost you between 50 cents and a dollar.

If you’re a cappuccino or latte lover and you want to replicate that freshly ground cafe taste, remember that some of the cheapest machines may not come with built-in grinders or milk frothers. You can buy these separately, but it could end up costing you more than splashing out for an all-inclusive machine in the first place.

Whether you’re looking for a top-of-the-line automatic model, the hands-on barista bragging rights of a manual machine or the clean capsule convenience of a Nespreso, prices can range from a couple of hundred dollars to a few thousand. With a daily cafe coffee now averaging over $1,800 per year, though, even most higher-end models can pay for themselves within a year or so.

OzHarvest reports that the average Australian household wastes between $2,000-$2,500 of food every year. Preventing even a fraction of that waste could pay for the food-saving capabilities of a vacuum sealer.

These handy food prep tools remove air from the bag and seal it to lock in freshness, helping to prevent freezer burn and extend shelf life beyond that achieved with a piece of cling wrap. If you find yourself with meat that needs immediate eating or chucking, it can buy you some extra time and save that pricey steak from hitting the garbage.

Vacuum sealers also open up options like sous vide cooking, where the water-proofed meat is slowly cooked in a low temperature water bath. Some models even have specialised programs to infuse meat, fish, poultry or veggies with extra flavour than you get with regular marinating.

Like an air fryer, the smaller capacity of a multi-cooker compared to a regular oven gives it a couple of efficiency advantages: heating an 8 litre volume space uses less electricity than a 70 litre oven and takes a lot less time to preheat, so you can start cooking sooner.

A multi-cooker is really good for batch cooking because you can ‘set and forget’ all kinds of one-pot meals–from curries and soups to risottos and pulled meats. Unlike supervising pots on a stove or leaving your oven on all day, you can load ingredients in the morning and return to a ready-made meal after work, along with plenty of extra servings which you can then portion and freeze for future dinners.

Cooking in advance like this makes for cheaper per-portion meals, less effort and less temptation to order expensive and generally less healthy takeout delivery from Uber Eats and the like. Prices start from under $200, depending on the size and number of cooking functions you want.

If you love biting into a crunchy-crusted sourdough you may be finding the ever-increasing prices a little hard to swallow.

It’s not unusual to fork out up to $10 - or more - for a bakery loaf across much of Australia. Whether you love sourdough, wholemeal or gluten-free white, making it at home is usually a cheaper option than buying it, with each loaf needing about 500 grams of flour, a few grams of salt, perhaps some sugar, oil, water and a little yeast or sourdough starter. Even if you factor in a few cents for electricity, it should only cost you around $2, depending on the flour you like to use.

You should be able to pick up a good breadmaker starting for between $100 and $400 (depending on what functions you want included). If you bake a loaf even once or twice a week instead of buying one, the machine would soon pay for itself. Over a year, this adds up to substantial savings, plus you control the ingredients, avoiding preservatives and extra additives.

It’s also very satisfying to bake your own bread, it makes your home smell amazing and a freshly baked loaf is always a popular contribution to take when you’re invited to a friend’s for lunch or dinner (the only danger is you might upstage your host).