Are there any common household items or products that you think are designed incredibly poorly?
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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 ?
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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
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I stick mine to the side of the fridge with old hard drive magnets when not in use.
Don't they fit in a draw?
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NOT FUCKING ACCEPTABLE WE ARE BETTER THAN THIS.
Thankfully, there are some designs that improve on this! Here’s what’s in my kitchen:
The brand is OXO.
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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?
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?
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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?
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.
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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?
No one asked for the spork
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The keyboard I'm currently using has an F-key that's tied to a lock screen. I accidentally hit it several times a day, and end up having to put in the passcode to unlock the computer every time.
I wish I could disable that stupid key. I'm tempted to pop it right out. But I use a shared computer, so I'm limited in options here.
The only thing more poorly designed than a regular keyboard is a keyboard where they try to cram extra functions into the same number of keys with a FN key. Every brand does it differently, no consistency even within the same brand sometimes.
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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'll mention you can get detergent sheets and they work fine. No more messing with powders of liquids for me.
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I'll mention you can get detergent sheets and they work fine. No more messing with powders of liquids for me.
I really like these too, I bought like a multi years supply of them and they fit in a pocket I hang on my laundry door and haven't fucked with liquid detergent or bottles since 2022
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Don't they fit in a draw?
Sure, but my fridge is pretty much right beside the stove so it works out nicely for me.
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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!
In my parent home there's a octagonal toilet badly shaped so is uncomfortable to seat parallel(the same way you seat in a oval one) because the seat is too long and is uncomfortable to seat crossing the seat because is too narrow, you need to seat diagonally but because is octagonal your dick hits the bowl. Extremely annoying design.
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I feel like plastic packaging in general has become much harder to rip open at the seam.
Anyone else notice this, or am I just much weaker now?Some of them are outright ridiculous. Like one of the protein cookie brands I like, 80% of the time I have to hulk out and end up ripping the packaging to shreds. We also see it on chip packages and cereal bags at times too. It's crazy.
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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?
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.
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Protip: Buy the XXXXXL size, throw it over your junk, then shrink-wrap it with a heat gun.
Just don't use ordinary shrink tubing, it doesn't seal properly in the front and may tighten too hard for comfort
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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
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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?
light bulbs that die too often.
those pots and sauce pans that use a screw to connect the handle. the screw head generally places inside the pot and will get to all your food.
chopping boards. plastic chopping boards enhance your meals with microplastic. composite wood enhances your food with bacteria lodged in-between wood pieces. bamboo -- too thin and ends up similar to composite.
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I'll mention you can get detergent sheets and they work fine. No more messing with powders of liquids for me.
I also like powdered detergent. I get mine from the package free store and then add in those scent boosts pellets for our scent only. Work so much better than liquid detergent
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Most clothes, oddly gendered and sexist and it's fucking weird having different clothes for people who identify differently, like clothes are clothes. Make them for everyone. It's fucking wild.
Freesewing.org tries to do that, but just ends up awkwardly referring to "people with/without breasts" instead.
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If they're anything like the pegs I got, vinegar won't help, they basically crumbled to dust!
Microplastics dust
