Are there any common household items or products that you think are designed incredibly poorly?
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You can get tooth powder in jars.
Wow, did not know about that!
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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.Recumbent bicycles are better in almost every way
No thanks. Might be nice for some long trips but for my daily use, I need something a little bit more compact and easy to load up with stuff and a kid.
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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'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.
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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.
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
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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.
Stove vent hoods that don’t actually vent outside are fucking stupid
Some places you can’t (for whatever reason) install a proper ventilator. Then these with carbon filter will remove some things. But yes, they are far inferior to the full blow vents.
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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?
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Uhhhh what?
My gas oven has vents like this. So when it’s actively burning to get it up to temp, that’s where the exhaust comes out.
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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.
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I always run into the common problems with my plumbus, no further explanations needed it think.
As a Roman Legionary. I have multiple plumbata, but one plumbus gives me troubles. I i feel like I can relate
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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.
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Any mug that has a really hemispherical, smooth handle. You put a hot beverage in there, and the weight is enough to make your fingers slide down the handle, and then you burn yourself on the main body of the mug unless you really squeeze.
Any faucet that just barely sticks out over the sink, so you have to touch the back of the sink to wash your hands (british sinks are even worse, though).
I've had these dual wall glass mugs at home for a few years. So civilised.
https://www.house.com.au/products/baccarat-barista-cafe-double-wall-thermal-glass-mug-2-pack
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In general, I wish more things would have a common design that manufacturers get to reuse and incrementally improve upon. Take, for example, plastic chairs and office chairs. There's probably million variations in existence and someone had to model, prototype, and make tooling for each and every one of them. Sure, there's varying price points, design languages, and use cases. But even for the same price point there's at least several thousand chairs with the same overall look and feel. All of that duplicated work and effort, only to make several thousand variations, none of which have a distinct advantage, and each with their own completely solvable problems. Why don't they just pool their efforts and design one example with as few flaws as possible for that overall design and price?
I agree with you, but I'm not sure how great it would actually be.
I don't know much about it and I suspect others will be along to correct me in a moment, but wasn't this a feature of soviet era communism?
As in, capitalists all compete in a free market to produce the best chair for the lowest price. Communism is more efficient because we just direct a factory to make 2 types of chair, standard and deluxe.
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Countertops should be just a couple of inches higher, they are calibrated for a 1930s housewife but most of us aren't 5'2" and it's easier to stand on a stool if it's too high than to stoop because it's too low.
OP I hate those low ziploc bag openings too, they are so stupid.
Weird take on counter tops.
Things designed for many people to use need to be the best height for most people. I feel confident that most countertops are the best height for most people.
I acknowledge that they are too low for a tall person, and that they're too high for a short person.
You're pretty much just saying you want things to be designed for you and that everyone else should adapt to you, rather than you having to make concessions for others like everybody does.
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Everyone seems to have a cup plunger for sinksnext to their toilet instead of a toilet plunger near their toilet.
A toilet plunger has flanges:
I have seen this plunger close to zero times when visiting people and using their bathroom.
I don't think I've ever seen a plunger of any kind kept in someone's toilet.
Is this an American thing?
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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.
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.
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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?
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.
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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
That's pretty much a swamp cooler
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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?
Shower curtains
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Weird take on counter tops.
Things designed for many people to use need to be the best height for most people. I feel confident that most countertops are the best height for most people.
I acknowledge that they are too low for a tall person, and that they're too high for a short person.
You're pretty much just saying you want things to be designed for you and that everyone else should adapt to you, rather than you having to make concessions for others like everybody does.
I am tallish for a woman, at least where I live, but not for a person. Countertops are too low for the average height person, they are still built at the 36" height that was in my old house, built in the 1920s. We are taller on average now, and both men and women use the kitchen now.
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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.
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.
