For example, I’m incredibly confused about how you’re supposedly to measure liquid laundry detergent with the cap. At least the kind that I have sits on it’s side, so if you measure it with the cap it just leaks everywhere and makes a mess.
Or at my parents house they have a bag of captain crunch berries that has a new design, where instead of zipping along the top of the bag like normal, it has a zipper in the front slightly beneath the top. That way when you poor it you can’t see what you’re doing cuz the bag is in the way. Like what the heck who’s idea was that?
Alec from Technology Connections is known for his extensive rants about household appliances: https://www.youtube.com/@TechnologyConnections
As for me, I’m just trying to avoid things in general, and things I don’t enjoy in particular. Perhaps the only things that I find annoying at my home are:
- An awful flow-through gas water heater, which requires me to wait for like a minute before water gets up to temperature every time I need hot water (I’d go with an electric one myself, but unfortunately I’m a renter for now). It’s also a poor design because it’s going to fuck over humanity in a couple decades via climate change.
- Packaging on almost all processed food. I don’t need everything I buy to be in a plastic bag. It’s an incredibly poor design because it is almost always non-recyleable, either because it has a thin foil layer or it’s a mix of plastics or both, filling the landfills forever and contaminating everything with microplastics.
- Poor window frame design, combined with inevitable building settling, has resulted in a cracked window twice within the last year.
I have many more gripes about things, some of the most prominent:
- Most modern smartphones just suck. Gimme back the headphone jack, an SD card slot, and a back that I can open with my fingernails! (thankfully my current phone has all of those despite being only a couple years old and very cheap)
- Generally everything that has a battery which I can’t replace
- Bluetooth headphones without a headphone jack or at least audio-over-USB are an awful design, it would cost the manufacturer like a dollar do add that functionality that can come in really handy and yet they don’t
- Fuck clothes without pockets!
- Cheap plastic crap from wish.com or similar that’s designed to fail after one use, it just shouldn’t exist. I hope CPC bans this shit soon. (although I find it fun to pull out broken christmas lights from recycling, fix them and then get free christmas lights for every New Year’s)
- “Teflon” or similar frying pans. Just get a cast iron one. Lasts forever, doesn’t poison you, also allegedly enriches your food with iron
I’m going to go with that horrendous, non-absorbent, 1/8th ply toilet paper that gets stocked in public and office bathrooms.
I’m on Team Bidet now, so it doesn’t bother me as much as it once did… but the stuff should not exist.
I’m guessing that one day, the people who buy the stuff will figure out that it they’re not winning if it costs one-third the price of normal TP when everyone has to use ten times more of it, but who knows when that day will happen. Because it hasn’t happened yet.
Okay Team Bidet, how are they actually supposed work?
- Spray bum
- Pat dry with TP
The tricky part with phase 1 is managing water pressure. Too little is ineffective. Too much blasts shit everywhere.
Do a test squirt into the bowl so you know what you’ve got to work with. Start with low pressure to get most of it, adjust angle of necessary, then hit it with everything.
I get that’s the principle, but how long are you supposed to spray for? How much pressure? Is there a trick to it? In my own limited experience, it doesn’t actually do much more than dampen the poo.
You know you’re supposed to use the bidet after you’re done pooping, right?
Yeah, but how long do you have to dampen your crack in order to feel the equivalent clean of two dry wipes?
Just dont try to spray up your ass, its pretty hard but you dont wanna.
But now you only use three or four squares of TP to dry off instead of fingerpainting shit all up your asscrack until the point you’ve been conditioned to believe is clean enough.
One problem though, shitting at your workplace or anywhere else will be insufferable. My LPT is to take one of the better hand towels and wet it in a sink before hitting up a stall. Thank me later.
A water bottle with a sport cap is a sufficient travel bidet.
Even with a bidet that paper sucks. Drying off you ass with it leaves so much paper crumble everywhere that you’ll need the bidet again…
Wine bottles. After thousands of years of drinking you would think humans would develop a bottle design that doesn’t dribble down the side after pouring.
We did.
Boxed wine.
However, bottle design is pretty refined, and they are quite reusuable.
Ok so my father makes his own wine, at home from kits/concentrate. He makes a lot of wine and drinks a lot of wine (and gives a lot of wine away as gifts)
One day he called me, and he was so excited. Like if he wasn’t a 61 year old man I would have guessed he was going to announce his pregnancy.
“You won’t believe it! The wine place is selling bags now!!! So I can put my wine in bags and put those in boxes!!! Omg why didn’t I think of this?! Think of all the time saved with corks and recorking!”
It was a happy day for him, certainly.
If this is a regular issue for you I’d recommend a decanter or at least a large carafe. It solves your problem, helps the wine to ‘breathe’ and looks fancypants as balls.
That’s why you should just drink it straight from the bottle.
That’s why you should just drink it straight from the
bottlebox.FTFY
The cap is a scam, it used to be the size of a soda bottles; now it’s a literal cup.
you don’t need to measure laundry liquid anyway,
just put the absolute minimum amount you can pour from the bottle directly in the machine and do 2 or 3 loads.
Or if you must use the cap, just drop the cap with the detergent in with the laundry. It will clean itself.
Any time there’s a ready meal from the supermarket and for some reason the adhesive is way stronger than the plastic film. You end up with loads of bits of film just sort of stuck to the rim of it. Super annoying.
The glue gets weaker when it’s heated. They use the same film for oven meals as well. It comes off fine when you finished heating, but it’s a pain in the arse when cold.
is it a good idea to microwave that plastic container, though?
I’ve dropped brands for that shit
Got a local one that puffs up to like 3x height in the microwave though and that pulls off a lot of the adhesive.
Front-load washers should have a brake for the drum that prevents it from rotating while digging out clothes. Last thing I want is twisted/sprained wrist while peeling towels off the walls of the drum.
How hard are you pulling out towels that there’s a risk of getting caught up in it ?
Towels (or other clothes) can stick to the drum and as you pull them out, the balance of the drum shifts and can cause it to spin. If you are grabbing something in a fuller load, your hand/wrist can become entangled and rotate with the drum.
I think mine might have that brake? It’s never spun while off even removing sheets, or several kilos of clothes.
It might not, but it doesn’t spin. Asko is the brand I have. It doesn’t understand the concept of time though. Just be ause the timer should go 17, 16, 15, 14 doesn’t mean it won’t end up going 17, 13, 29, 3, 26, off.
Step sister ? Are you stuck in the washer ? What ever am I to do!?
A person of culture I see
I just came over here from reddit. I’ve got some things to learn. Cut me some slack.🤣
A fellow migrator, don’t worry, things here seen to be better.
Yer fair enough, can’t say I’ve ever had that experience, mine moves around but like maybe a 1/4 rotation at about a snails pace
Yeah, why do people blow their noses into PAPER when you can just go to the bathroom sink and hork in your hands, and then wash up afterwards??? Why would people walk around with dried boogies on they face when they can wash?? Why? Why, Mister Anderson, why, why?
Or just going outside and ejecting that puppy without touching anything except the other side of your nose. Farmer blow FTW.
It’s probably habit, but it just feels somehow wrong to blow my nose without a piece of paper snugly against my nostrils. Like trying to poop without being seated on a toilet bowl.
Because it is not always possible… Also, take your time to clean the sink afterwards or you might get in trouble with you SO (I am speaking out of experience).
Just tell me that you turn the water on pre-hork instead of touching the fixtures with hork hands, and I’m totally fine with your suggestion.
Of course! You need the hork-lube to do it right
OMG I thought I might be the only one!
I do this too and it drives everyone nuts but it’s so much better!
Only thing is sometimes I miss a snot rocket that goes astray.
I can’t seem to pour out of my pyrex measuring glass without the water dribbling all down the front of the spout making a mess. You think they could have shaped the spout to prevent that better and it infuriates me every time.
Water has both adhesive and cohesive properties, and this bullshit is one of the results. I hate it so much. Basically the bit of wwater in contact with the surface of the spout likes to stick to that spot; and the above that likes to stick to the water stuck to the surface and so on, making it kinda roll along angled surfaces even when it seems like gravity should be yanking it right off.
And they absolutely could shape the spout in a way that stops this - they just choose not to.
Never heard of the oil coating trick @DontRedditMyLemmy mentioned, but it makes sense - oil is hydrophobic, so that could eliminate the adhesion part of the equation; and without that moving the stream initially, its cohesion won’t be an issue either.
Or do what they do in chemistry which is to take a rod (or in the kitchen anything like a dinner knife or handle) and place it against the spout and let the liquid then run down the rod.
Lightly coat the spout with olive oil
Why does it have to be olive oil?
Motor oil tastes funny.
I have to chime in here, as it’s a subject close to my heart. The old Pyrex measuring cups don’t do this. I went out of my way to buy some on eBay. I can’t imagine why they redesigned like this, but there’s a lot of things I can’t imagine.
It’s because they moved away from borosilicate.
Reusable water bottles, especially their lids. They build up microorganisms faster than a petri dish and the more complex the bottles are, the worse it is.
Worst offender are the ones with integrated straws. Sure, they look nice and are a good idea, but cleaning them thoroughly is a nightmare. Also, I don’t know how people tolerate the ones with exposed straws or mouthpieces. Isn’t that incredibly unsanitary?
More generally, why doesn’t anyone except for Nalgene make reusable bottles without rubber gaskets? Gaskets get stinky, then you have to peel them out, scrub like mad, and then awkwardly stretch them back in. I’ve been looking for a metal water bottle without a gasket for ages. They literally just need to shove the Nalgene-type screw-on top into a metal body.
Bonus points if someone designs a gasket-less bottle that opens in the middle so I don’t have to fiddle with a bottle brush every time I wash it.
Water bottles for bikes suffer from this.
You gotta get them really dried out really regularly.
Like if you only have one that you use every day it’s just going to get gross no matter what.
It needs to be bone dry for a few days to kill everything.
If you have 2 and switch once a week, the one that’s out of rotation will dry out and any funk will just die off.
I love my simple metal Yeti bottles.
I stopped using my water bottle for a while til they made a new cap where the rubber gaskets have a pull tab for easy removal and cleaning.
Easy removal of the gasket solves the entire problem for me.
About ten years ago I found and ordered a glass bottle with a fitted silicone lid. It’s not tight enough that the bottle can be tipped upside down without the water slowly dripping out, but it’s great for keeping stuff out.
I always wanted to see a company make a glass bottle with silicone top that was completely leak-proof.
The issue you’re highlighting is due to the difference between metal and plastic. I have an Orca bottle that has a plastic lid that screws on without any rubber gasket and I end up with shreds of plastic in the bottle.
Plastic rubbing on metal leads to the plastic degrading and metal on metal does not make a good seal, so I think a rubber gasket is your only option.
Perhaps a design where both mating surfaces are plastic with metal for the rest of the body? A lot of vacuum insulated bottles have plastic bonded to metal in the cap, they just have to repeat that with the bottle itself
Hangers with those hooks on the sides that I guess are meant to slip the collar of the shirts into? They don’t really serve as a good use plus they seem to get tangled with other hangers at times and hang securely anyways. I’ve seen better hangers at work where there is a strip of some rubber compound on the top sides of each hanger, they hold things much better and I feel that’s the more better of the design for a hanger.
They come in handy when air drying heavy, damp shirts
You can get the foam covers to add to your hangers.
Look for “foam hanger covers.” We ordered Foamies brand at the dry cleaners, but there wasn’t anything special about that brand, just that we got a lot of them. They just stretch over top of the hanger. We used them for the slinky fabrics that would slide off, and I’d something was really slippery, you could stick straight pins into them.
I have no idea if you’re a man or a woman, but I’m guessing based on your comment, you’re a man? You’re talking about those hooks/ indents like halfway between the hook and the end of the hanger? I think those are a lot more useful on women’s clothes, which tend to have much wider necks which means they just slip right off hangers. The hooks help wide neck blouses and jackets stay on the hangers, and they’re especially useful for tank top or spaghetti strap type tops and dresses.
those hooks are perfect for hanging two t shirts on, or a zippered/buttoned clothing, or even skirts
Toilets seem to be getting smaller and I’m having trouble sitting on it without my penis touching the front.
Rounded toilets are the worst for this. Elongated is the way to go.
Given your instance, I’m guessing you’re not from the US… but here there are two generally standard shapes for residential toilets–round and oblong. The round ones fit better in small bathrooms, but man when you are used to the oblong shape it feels like sitting on a child-size toilet or something.
Hey everyone get a load of this guy with his massive hog
Those ridiculous new caps on plastic bottles are awful. They only lead to wastage as it’s difficult for most people to reseal them properly and anything carbonated gets wasted. Tagging the lid to the bottle is not a world-saving solution for recycling.
I always separate the cap completely, it makes a little easier to close the bottle.
Not to be annoying but I actually carry a nice steel thermos with me and pour anything I might drink into the thermos.
It only feels like a hassle the first time. You get a steel thermos with a steel straw and now you’re really cooking with gas.
Doesn’t work for my tonic i have with gin, as I don’t want to be drinking gin the majority of the time. Well, I do want to, I just can’t.
Twist them round half a turn (after loosening) one of the two plastic straps will break off and you have more maneuvering space to screw the cap back on. Twist and tear again to get the entire cap off and fasten the old fashioned way.
My expierence is that most (european) bottles this helps.
I’ve no problem with breaking them off, I just think they’re a foolish idea that doesn’t solve a problem. They just make life more difficult (my kids and wife can’t close them tightly enough, and half of each bottle goes flat).
I agree on the dumbness of the design.
The half twist does solve the problem of getting it back on, give it a try!
Yeah it definitely took some getting used to. Very annoying. I usually always keep the cap with the bottle anyways, so it’s not helping me. But I suppose some people would just yeet those caps everywhere
I had some plastic clothes-pins that became severely degraded from uv sunlight.
UV light breaks the polymer bonds. You now have monomer dust.
Wait until you hear about PEX piping.
Soak them in vinegar for 15 minutes
If they’re anything like the pegs I got, vinegar won’t help, they basically crumbled to dust!
Stainless steel ones are the way to go
I prefer wooden pegs with a stainless spring, but plastic has to be pretty much the worst choice.
I found the wooden one degrade after a while and break, yer 100% agree plastic is rubbish
Microplastics dust
Overtime, our kitchen knives. Knives need to be thin, as thinner knives cut through ingredients more easily. Today’s knives are designed instead to be marketed. Something incredibly thick, and sturdy, to make it feel “premium”, when all its doing is tiring you out, since using a heavy knife gets exhausting, especially when its so thick it wedges in ingredients.
Vintage European knives are slim, and almost petite, because they knew how to make a good knife, in the same manner japanese knives are ground extremely thin, sometimes thinner than a postcard.
Anyone got good knife recommendations I’m in the market right now??
General purpose for meats and veggie cutting.
I’m currently using a victorinox fibrox. It’s great but loses edge rather quickly requiring honing each meal and sometimes during cutting of ingredients.
Zwillings Four star is great!
Does victorinox offer sharpening services? Some knife manufacturers have programs where you can either send your knife in or take it in to a store and have it professionally sharpened.
If your blade is losing its edge quickly, it probably needs to have a new edge put on it with an actual sharpening, v rather than just the touch up it gets from a honing rod.
I actually do sharpen it with a kitchen sharpener and when it’s needed sharpening blocks. It’s an excellent knife large useful handle and thin slimmer blade it’s a major improvement from any stores chef knife. I considered shopping their other knives as well. But I wanted to branch out a bit too.
Thicker helps with balance in the hand. Cheap knives usually are too light in the handle or the blade is so thin it flexes. A sharp knife is what helps cut and you shouldn’t work with dull knives.
Yeah good point I recently got a serrated utility knife and while it’s decently sharp, the profile is annoyingly wedge shaped so while cutting something soft like an orange is fine, anything hard like an apple will split before you can get a clean cut. Seems like it should have a more even, thinner side profile imo. Otherwise decent knife tho three stars.
There’s a balance that needs to be maintained. A general purpose knife like a chef’s knife needs some thickness to it, otherwise it can’t effectively chop through tougher things. It’s also not a knife you are supposed to hold the full weight of when cutting most things. Thin knives are awful for things like cutting a cabbage in half or cutting chicken bones.
Yeah it’s a difference when it’s a cleaver, something meant to apply raw force, and hence needs a certain weight to be usable.
But a knife?!
Humidifiers.
It’s just a pool of water with a little nebulizer and a fan to blow the mist out a chimney.
Trouble is, they’re all made by the fucking plague demon Nurgle with the sole purpose of aerosolizing mold and bacteria by having the tiniest nooks and crannies than cannot be reached to be physically cleaned.
And before I get the “you gotta clean it with vinegar every week” comment, two points:
- You don’t soak your hands in soap and rinse them off and call them clean. You gotta scrub them.
- Am I supposed to fill a 5 gallon bucket with vinegar to soak the whole water tank every week? Because the chimney goes right through that bitch.
You literally just use a sponge and some bleach spray and like a minute of your time. If you replenish it daily your normal water chlorine should keep most of the bad shit at bay.
You better start showing Plague Daddy, Prince of Decay, God of Chaos Nurgle some goddamn respect
Don’t use a mist humidifier. They suck. Use an evaporative one and add bacteriostat to the water.
Mine is a tub of water with a wick in it. It has a fan that blows air across the wick. That’s it.
i have a venta lw45. same principle, but instead of a wick, it has these rotating disks that the water sticks to (with a little soap in the water). Works incredibly well, still uses next to no energy (<8W) and the disks are super easy to clean. It’s a beast, goes through 9 liters of water in a bit over a day. All the parts are easily accessible for maintenance and there’s replacement parts if anything ever were to break (though i havent needed those yet).
the disks are especially nice when you have hard water, the calcium can be a pain to remove from a wick, but you can put the venta plastic disks (and lower housing, if you can fit it) in the dishwasher to get them good as new. And calcium does not stick to them weld, so a quick rinse under a strong showerhead is usually enough to clean the disks. Definitely one of the best appliance purchases i ever made.
I’ve taken to using an old cake pan, a desk fan, and a towel. Fill up the pan with water, stick one end of the towel in the water, drape and clip the other end to the fan and let it sit running for a few days. Before the towel gets gross, toss it in the laundry when it’s dry and grab another towel
It works so well I’m completely confused as to how/why there isn’t a commercialized product like that, it completely solves the cleaning/highschool biology experiments problem
That’s pretty much a swamp cooler
Lol yup, got the idea from a Technology Connections video on how one of the common humidifier designs are literally just large swamp coolers
