6 stupid yet common designs

#1 Water bottles or travel mugs that don’t go in the dishwasher! Are we meant to wash by hand 1, 2, 3, 4 bottles or mugs for our family? Every single day?!? I personally have something better to do with my life than washing stuff by hand!

#2 Large compartments in the fridge and freezer! You know when you put an items on a shelf, there’s usually so much space above it that you could pile up 2 or 3 more on top of it! And if you think about the ice cube tray, there’s probably space for 10 of them within the compartment! This is such a waste of space! Why don’t we have more shelves, at least twice as much as standard, that are adjustable so we can organise our fridge and freezer to minimise the piles? (Piles are the worst enemy, they are never ever efficient).

#3 Tall bins! If you look at the range of bins you can choose for your kitchen, the vast majority are tall ones (60-70cm), but, unless you are really tall, it’s so hard to pull out the bin bag when it’s full (you are lifting a substantial weight above 120-140cm) and it’s so difficult to clean because your arm doesn’t reach the bottom, or barely! Why don’t we have short and wide bins as an option to buy? Not everyone is tall and strong!

#4 Thermostatic shower taps with no leverage! You know the ones I am talking about: round ones that are impossible to turn open when your hands are covered in soap! Surely, people who designed these things did not test them before selling them! How useful is a tap in the shower if it can’t be opened with soapy hands?!? And we’re talking about equipment that is pricey and hard to install, we don’t want to get that wrong!

#5 Radiators with lots of folds inside that collect decades of dust and dirt!The gadgets bought to clean them can never ever do a full job at cleaning: some parts cannot be reached and dust and dirt will be there forever! Although these types of radiators are not usually recent, they are common and are extremely costly to replace. I understand the goal is to increase the surface exposed to air to make the radiator most efficient but I am sure that an engineer could come up with a design that involves maximised surface exposure with total cleaning access including a large hand!

#6 Skirtings with intricate features! Skirtings with one or multiple grooves that are perfect to attract and retain dust! Some grooves are so thin that a finger cannot clean them! Unless you have a maid whose job it is to clean all day, all skirtings should be a simple angled or rounded trim where dust struggles to stay on and that can be cleaned with one occasional pass of a mop or broom!

Where to find good designs (smart, durable)? How can we be sure the things we buy will do the job that they are meant to?!? For a long long time! It's quite tricky to trust any product, to find the right one, to invest in the right things at the moment. A lot of our bad stuff are not even from decisions we made, it's someone else's decision: the designer that sold a stupid design or the previous house owner that installed major equipment that is really hard and costly to replace! Frustrating world!