Are there any common household items or products that you think are designed incredibly poorly?
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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
This is how the humidifier I used in the 90s worked. Tub with water, vertical sponge and a fan blowing over the sponge. I'm sure these are still out there but the little misters they call humidifiers now don't work well.
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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?
I have this drive if you look at the image you can see that the rear panel has a little semi circular nib of plastic at the bottom. It serves no purpose, but what it does do is make it nearly impossible to plug the DC connector in. You can't quite tell from the image but it's perfectly places so that you can't fit the requisite number of fingers needed to securely hold the plug and push it in to the cavity where the inputs of the panel are located. It actively encourages the otherwise pretty unlikely scenario of making only partial or near contact with connector and not quite properly plugging it in a dangerous idea from a safety perspective but also a great way to lose a bunch of data by having it lose power or short out during operation. It's one of the most exquisitely designed inconveniences hell's engineering department could have possibly developed.
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Some toilets have a perfectly round bowl so they don't stick out as far and take up bathroom floor space - and they work fine, but only in bathrooms that anticipate the vast majority of its occupants to be equipped with a vagina. For those of us rocking a penis, those fucking toilets are horrible - sitting on that damn thing requires you to contort your junk around like some sausage-Houdini as you're sitting, so that you can guide it through the remaining 2 square inches of open space not occupied by your legs or ass. Then when you're actually seated, you still have to sit there and awkwardly hold the thing so it stays pointed straight down.
Fuck up any part of that, and the tip of your dick hits the seat or the inside of the bowl.
...and they must be like $3 cheaper than an oval toilet or something, cuz 99% of US apartments seem to be equipped with the round, vagina-only toilets.
Oval bowls are the way. No matter what's in your pants, it gets the job done without the significantly increased biohazard risk.
I guess in fairness, the problem isn't with their design, it's with the people who purchase the toilets treating them as sex-neutral when no the fuck they aren't!
I never really considered it was because the toilet might be rounder and less oval but I have definitely noticed those toilets because for some reason they're ALL like that in every workplace and commercial building in this one suburb of my city. I have no idea why just that suburb decided they really enjoyed the idea of everyone having their penis touch the toilet bowl. I work freelance and because of agglomeration, most companies in my industry all set up shop in that particular suburb so I got to experience a wide gamut of different buildings who all made this same bizarre and infuriating choice.
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Zwillings Four star is great!
Zwillings Henkel? I was debating a Henkel, wusthof, or Japanese of some sort.
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Do you have a multi use one? Some can invert the flanges into itself to become sink plungers.
Maybe, all I know is that I haven't had a lot of luck with it.
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It really kind of depends on the type of anchor and the intended use
The most common little plastic ones that you're probably picturing are pretty bad in most cases, but some of the heavier duty ones are pretty damn strong if used properly
As strong as the drywall they're pulling against, at least.
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When your dick hits the bowl and you wonder what STD you just picked up.
lol, facts.
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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.
You’re missing that the wine industry kind of loves traditions. That’s mainly why we still have the bottle design we do.
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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.
Eh, we live in an arid climate and have a whole house humidifier which gets the air from the single digits to the 30s. We have another ultrasonic for the bedroom to keep the bloody noses down. It’s not that hard to find one that is easy to clean (has a large hand sized hole in the reservoir). Also, any spray like Scrubbing bubbles makes it super easy to clean to squeaky every 2 weeks. Who the hell would use vinegar, that would smell awful!
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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.
All of this has been solved in the last 5-10 years honestly. Thermoflask style bottles have gaskets that are easily removable and dishwasher safe. Brumate makes a strawed bottle that is magnetic, comes apart for cleaning, and is dishwasher safe. Yeti style have magnetic closers, are dishwasher safe, and easy to clean. Most of the really good ones are expensive but worth it.
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