Other applications for small stuff can be for spread sensors.
But running something else it's simply too unreliable. Let's imaging just a simple washing machine on p.v. directly. If it's a sunny day with no clouds at all ok, but if there are just few clouds the irregularly input power makes hard to complete a cycle safely. Similarly we can imaging cooking devices, useful yes, but you can cook only if the p.v. output is there and constant enough. Water heaters with large water storage might be used, since they do not need constant power, BUT they need something else to give hot water in adverse climate, like a wood stove with pipes or something equivalent.
Doable, yes, but I do not know how many can invest enough for having a meaningful set of solar panels + MPPTs and DC devices to power directly for such unstable usability. We have on sale a handful of p.v. direct irrigation systems and they are NOT so cheap, not super expensive, ok, but still not that cheap, so if someone can afford them probably can afford batteries as well, at least for a limited usages just to ensure intra-day services.