Are there any common household items or products that you think are designed incredibly poorly?
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Most of my tongs have a metal square that slides down the length to keep them closed, is that not normal?
My parents had one where it slid down, and my grandfather had one where it slid up. They looked otherwise identical.
Some thanksgivings we'd have both at the same table and it drove me up the fucking wall.
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I just replaced my windshield wipers last night and it was a nightmare. The wipers I got are supposed to be universal, which means the little plastic bit that connects to the wiper arms has a bunch of little sub parts that you're supposed to remove based on what wiper arm connection your car uses. Well, considering I'm not well versed in modern wiper arm connection standards, and I'm also stubborn and don't think you should need to dig out your car manual just to change your fucking wipers, coupled with the fact that the instructions that came with the wipers are just 6 wordless diagrams vaguely showing you what bits to remove based on which esoteric wiper style your car uses, I struggled with those sons of bitches for like 20 minutes in below freezing weather.
I don't believe in anything supernatural, but I'm pretty sure wiper blade attachment designs were somehow still born in the deepest fires of hell.
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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.
That's why you should just drink it straight from the bottle.
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Keyboards are the obvious one.
The standard keyboard layout is designed to slow down typing, because typing too fast lead to the arms of a typewriter hitting each other.
And why is one of the most accessible large keys fucking Capslock?
And why is there empty space around the cursor keys, so you have to use WASD as a workaround in games?
I'm not even talking about the menu key, Windows key and Copilot key.You could try the Dvorak layout? It's optimized for fast typing. The most commonly used letters are on the home row. I've always wanted to try it
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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?
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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?
Our president
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I just replaced my windshield wipers last night and it was a nightmare. The wipers I got are supposed to be universal, which means the little plastic bit that connects to the wiper arms has a bunch of little sub parts that you're supposed to remove based on what wiper arm connection your car uses. Well, considering I'm not well versed in modern wiper arm connection standards, and I'm also stubborn and don't think you should need to dig out your car manual just to change your fucking wipers, coupled with the fact that the instructions that came with the wipers are just 6 wordless diagrams vaguely showing you what bits to remove based on which esoteric wiper style your car uses, I struggled with those sons of bitches for like 20 minutes in below freezing weather.
Not even just that, but modern vehicles make it a pain in the ass to just put your wipers up before a snow storm. Used to be you just lift them up and they're done. Now you have to get in the car, hold the wiper stalk up to the manual wipe mode and let them go up before you can get back out and lift them. I know it's for aerodynamics hiding them under the cowel but it's still a pain in the ass. My last 2 cars have had this feature.
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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?
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.
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A person of culture I see
I just came over here from reddit. I’ve got some things to learn. Cut me some slack.
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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?
Garlic crushers. All of them suck.
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Garlic crushers. All of them suck.
You need to look harder. Source: I went down this road. Find one with a solid stainless steel construction.
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When I was a kid cereal didn't have no zippers! We rolled up the one end and watched it partially unfurl when we let go, and we were satisfied with that.
Roll the bag. Flip the box upside down. Put it in going up. Hold it in place and flip the box back over. Gravity holds the bag closed. This is a bad idea if anyone else accesses the box and isn't on the same page as you.
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To be fair, most are. At the end of the day, today's economy makes it far more profitable to choose either extremely cheap or extremely expensive, making good, lasting, but not perfect products is just not what consumers seem to want. People eother want something cheap that works okay, or something really well made that justifies the price.
I feel like 99% of products I interact with get me frustrated with their simple-to-fix design flaws.
But as for your question: fucking toothpaste containers! Could you make a more frustrating and intentionally bad design?? Why is it that if I cut them open I can get like another few days to a week of brushing? Why not put tooth paste in a jar with a little spoon? Or an opening that is small so that the amount that is left after squeezing your best, is truly insignificant? Why. Must. I. Suffer?
I think if they just designed the tubes conically, with no rigid end besides the male part of the cap, you'd have barely any waste.
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I've always thought that most toilet paper holders are over engineered. You don't need a little springy rod between 2 posts, you just need an L-shaped bar with the short end screwed to the wall and maybe a little knob on the end of the long side to keep the roll from sliding off. And it's not that the spring style is especially difficult to use or prone to failure or anything, it just seems like a no-brainer to me to use a one-piece holder with no moving parts instead of one that has at least 4 parts (the base, 2 halves of the roller, and a spring) I'm seeing more of that style around these days, which I appreciate.
Stove vent hoods that don't actually vent outside are fucking stupid. My over the range microwave basically just takes smoke from my stove and blows it back out over my head almost directly at the smoke detector.
I've frequently run into shelves, mounting brackets, etc. that seem to totally disregard stud spacing. We got one of those fancy Samsung frame TV's a while back, to get it to sit so flush to the wall it has its own special mounting brackets, 2 little plates with sort of a modified keyhole slot that you slot 2 little knobs on the back of the TV into. It's actually not a half bad way to mount a TV, probably one of the easier TV wall mounts I've ever personally used, the tv itself is actually pretty damn lightweight (because they moved all the heavy electronics into a separate box you need to hide somewhere) but still I wanted to make sure my fancy TV wouldn't fall off the wall, so I wanted to mount it to the studs, but of course the spacing of the brackets doesn't allow that option. I was able to bolt one side a stud but I had to get some toggle bolts for the other side. I'm pretty sure the whole TV is well within the rated weight capacity of one of those toggle bolts in drywall, let alone 2 in drywall and 2 in a stud, but still, it feels like a dumb design choice. (It's possible that other sizes or newer models do allow for mounting entirely to studs, the size and model I got didn't)
I helped a friend replace the wax ring on his toilet recently with one of the newer style rubber gaskets, which as it turns out made the toilet sit imperceptibly higher, which meant that the bolts holding it down were no longer quite long enough to screw the nut onto to tighten it down. With a quick trip to ace hardware and a minute perusing my options, I settled on some Danco zero cut bolts, and I definitely think that is a far superior design to the standard bolts that are probably holding down damn-near every toilet you've ever used.
On the subject of toilets, I can't think of any particularly good reason for the tank to be a separate piece from the rest of the throne like on most toilets. The gasket and bolts there just add more places for something to start leaking. It's probably an ease of manufacturing thing, but we have the technology to make one piece toilets now, the two piece style should be obsolete.
A lot of toilet paper holders are secured to the wall with drywall hangers. An L-shaped one-piece one is basically asking to be torqued right out of the wall.
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I had some plastic clothes-pins that became severely degraded from uv sunlight.
Wait until you hear about PEX piping.
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Wide foot owner here - can confirm shoe and sock should come in multiple widths not just lengths
Shoe sizes need to go too. Just measure it in centimeters.
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I’m incredibly confused about how you’re supposedly to measure liquid laundry detergent with the cap.
You just gave me a stupid idea. First measure out the exact volume of detergent you need for one load - eyeballing it I'd guess 20mL (I'm notoriously terrible at eyeballing volume, so, grain of salt) - then get a 20mL syringe and some IV tubing (it's got one-way valves, so when you connect a syringe to it and draw up, it pulls from on side of the line; then when you depress the syringe back down, it goes out the other side). Tie something heavy to the intake side of the line and throw it in the bucket of detergent. Run the other side of the line to just above the detergent receptacle if your machine has one; or near the door for you to just aim it.
Load clothes; pull syringe, push syringe, close the door, run the machine. No detergent dripping all over the place!
...detergent is probably too viscous as-is to go through IV tubing at an acceptable rate, so you'd probably have to dilute it with water first to thin it out, then adjust the amount you pull accordingly.
The pumps they sell for coffee syrup dispensers maybe.
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Why would a permanent lamp be socketed at all? If it's permanent wire that shit properly.
Indeed! In my example, I have this IKEA LED Strip above my kitchen working area, and the power supply is integrated with the plug. There are multiple choices for power supply, but to my knowledge all of them are socketed.
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Why the hell do i have to know which way to put the batteries in at this point ?
Batteries have a plus and a minus, the spring is generally the flatter end which is generally negative, they’re designed that way to be stackable, although we could probably come up with a slightly more intuitive design.
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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!
