To wish certain things were redesigned?

[Dieu]

Some things just aren't fit for purpose in their current state, and would benefit from being redesigned.

I've always thought this about the tiny tubes of super strong glue (didn't want to mention any names!), for example. I'm dyspraxic and quite often end up with stuck together fingers, due to how it gushes out
And then the lid gets stuck to the tube, and you get about 2 uses out of it max. I did see one advertised on TV the other day, that comes with a brush, so this seems like a more sensible design.
There will no doubt be plenty of better examples than the above, but what products do you use that you feel would be/work better, if only tweaked a little?

Spice jars you can get a teaspoon in. Just that really. (Sainsbury's, this is one thing you have got right).

My bugbear is print on packaging that's poor colour contrast and minute so I can't read it even with my glasses on.
And shampoo and conditioner bottles that are identical and with small print saying "shampoo" or "conditioner" that I can't read in the shower without my glasses.

@Eliza9917 you can get squeezy condiments

Yes I know but that gets the last bits out.

I bought some special narrow spice jar spoons. Changed my life.

But yeah, toilets. Why do they even need a hinged lidded seat? Why not just a smooth easily cleanable bowl you can sit on.

Because you need to close the lid!

Why do yo need to close the lid though? Genuine question.

Because when you flush, tiny particles of the toilet's contents are released into the air. In our house we shut the lid before flushing, every time!

Hmm, public toilets often don’t have lids though.

Not convinced by the tiny particles. What about bidets? What about men weeing into the toilet?

To the person complaining about seat belts. It seems teh world is designed to suit men, hence belts are often too high. Also voice recognition, women often need to lower their voice as it is set at the ave level for men. Was discussed on Womens Hour this week.

The style of packaging with a film lid (ham, olives). They never peel open so need cutting. The film curls and exposes the food once it's back in the fridge and the food spoils early.

Those toilet roll dispensers that have a tiny hole in the middle that breaks the paper one sheet at a time so you have to pull far more off per wipe than you would with a longer length folded appropriately. Woe betide you if the paper breaks prematurely and can no longer be accessed. Clearly not designed by a woman. Bonus points today for the one mounted behind the toilet above head height so that many women can't reach it from a seated position.

Probably over 90% of the UK housing stock.

Why have steps up or down to the front doors when slopes would be perfectly reasonable and make them accessible to people who are disabled, the elderly or using pushchairs?

Why have doors too narrow to get through when using walking aids or a wheelchair? Or too heavy to open?

Why have powerpoints low down when they could be three foot up where they can be reached without bending down?

I must have gone through viewing or taking one look and walking away where it wasn't clear on Google Streetview 50 places before I found this one.

I definitely think that toilets need to be made without loads of nooks and crannies to trap filth and dust, toilet seats are stupid and vile with their shitty (literally in some cases) fixings, washing machine dispenser drawers are fucking atrocious and why on earth are most appliances made in a way that means you have to go round the edges with a fucking cocktail stick to get the crud out of them?

I also detest oven doors, fridge seals and anything that has a filter. make it easy to get at a clean, don't make me crawl around on the kitchen floor, put down five towels, find a 2p piece to open the compartment and then shove my hand into the depths of the equipment to find the errant underwire or 5p piece.

And, at work - photocopiers/printers. Why the fuck are they made to run off bulk jobs, but not strong enough to withstand the technical imbecile whose one response to running out of paper is to slam the fucking tray so hard, it snaps off a minuscule bit of plastic that renders the entire thing inoperable? And why make them so that there are places paper gets jammed that it's physically impossible to reach? Make the fucking things more robust, less arsey about whether the paper has been stropped/is in a warm room/is in a cold room and easy to clear. They'd be less likely to get broken that way.

tinkly Google “toilet plumes”🤢

@SpringForEver

Morrisons have a started to use basically velcro on the their cheese packets. It's fab.

Why aren't shower caddies made of rustproof material? All the nice shiny metal ones I've had rusted and looked awful.

And radiators rust too

Hardly ever have them (honest guv’) but microwave meals where the glue they’ve used to stick the film to the tray is far stronger than the film itself, so you end up pulling off little strips round the edge and it JUST WON’T OPEN

Agree with @Bagpuss about the problem of everyday items being designed for men. This was the great article that sparked discussion. amp.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/feb/23/truth-world-built-for-men-car-crashes
Everything from bricks and personal protective equipment, to public toilets and crash testing dummies, are designed as “one size fits all”, with size begin based on what works for men...

"Public toilets in general. There needs to be way more female toilets and why are they always up a flight of stairs when the men's aren't?!" OMG yes!

Disclaimer - I do have contamination OCD so I'm FAR more aware of these issues than most everyone but WHY do they never have proper lids? Seriously, look up what happens when you flush a toilet without the lid down and where all the (literal) crap goes!

Also when the loo roll isn't easily reachable while seated 😡 or worse especially for me when there aren't decent handwashing facilities, seriously is it really that hard to provide hot water and soap?! Especially in food places - puts me right off them!

Size of cubicles too, at first I thought it was me being a fatty but dd (size 8) agrees! They should be large enough to be able to use without banging my elbow or worse funny bone, without sanitary bins digging into my thigh and put a bloody hook on the door for bags! I don't want to put my bag on a minging toilet floor! So I end up hanging it round my neck and nearly decapitating myself!

Don't even get me started on those stupid stingy loo roll dispensers that only let you get 2 sheets at a time and you nearly lose your arm inside trying to find the sodding end each time!

On them being upstairs - my mum and I have bemoaned this AND women's and children's clothing and shoe depts in multi level shops being ALWAYS upstairs for years! Why?! Women are the ones most likely trailing children possibly with buggies etc along with them so put these on the bloody ground floor!

Agree on the shower gel/shampoo/conditioner bottles lid should be on the bottom. The shower gel I use has a flat lid so I can turn in upside down but not always stable. Shampoo and conditioner can't do this, the waste really pisses me off!

Ditto certain food packaging. I too where possible will break the packaging open to get all the product out.

"My bugbear is print on packaging that's poor colour contrast and minute so I can't read it even with my glasses on." Omg yes! My eyesight isn't the best anyway but I'm finding I increasingly need to photograph print so I can zoom in and read it! And yes that's WITH my glasses on!

"And shampoo and conditioner bottles that are identical and with small print saying "shampoo" or "conditioner" that I can't read in the shower without my glasses." Yep I have to get ones that are completely different colours

"Probably over 90% of the UK housing stock." Fuck yes!

My current flat the bathroom is right in view of the front door! Why?! The living room is MASSIVE but the kitchen is TINY a "half galley" that only 1 person can fit in at a time and that's WITH the door wedged open! With the door closed its seriously claustrophobic! There's only one full counter approx .75m X .75m to prep on, the other side of the kitchen is a HALF size breakfast bar thingy only just wide enough for a toaster! I like cooking I am not doing much cooking in this flat! My room is too small for any kind of wardrobe without it feeling claustrophobic. Who the hell designs these places? It's an old building, Victorian possibly so the current rooms aren't what would have been the original layout, eg there likely wouldn't have been an indoor bathroom initially so the layout has definitely been decided by someone more recently, clearly a man given the bathroom is also tiny!

But it's not just this flat, when I was looking at ads before getting this place of properties of all ages and sizes (curious as to if bigger properties had bigger bathrooms and kitchens) - nope - even 5 BEDROOM properties with stupid galley kitchens! Wtf! How are you supposed to cook for 6 people every night in such a tiny kitchen!

Don't get me started on how many bathrooms have the toilet right next to the bath/shower yeugh (and yes OCD again but still)

"Why have powerpoints low down when they could be three foot up where they can be reached without bending down?" Yep! Seems to be a British thing as I've lived overseas and the power points were

A higher up and
B more of them! We also seem reluctant to have them in British houses why? And this was BEFORE the tech/smart phone explosion!

How many of us need to use extensions & multiway adaptators where the tv/phone is?

ARCHITECTS AND CONSTRUCTION INDUSTRY PEOPLE TAKE NOTE!

Mitzik totally agree on the door widths, unnecessary steps etc. I'm not yet in a wheelchair but will be eventually. Dd might too. I've been on crutches though at various points and of course had dd in a buggy or pram. But also doors too narrow to get STANDARD sized furniture in! Wtf!

Re stuff not being designed to be easy to clean - the obvious answer is of course because they're designed by men who rarely DO the fucking cleaning!

The world IS designed for men! Even sodding supermarkets. I'm 5'2" I can't reach the sodding high shelves ever! Also put heavy items at waist to shoulder height ffs! And WOMEN'S waist to shoulder height!

@QuestionableMouse, thank you, I will look at Morrisons cheese, however I have never found a cheddar as good as Cathedral City so may have to continue the fight to get it out of the packet.

Will also add swing top kitchen bins. Why would anyone want to have to push their hand into the lid of a bin along with the rubbish, leaving crud all round the hole and on the lid? Why is it so difficult to buy a bin that is not 50L or more with a flip top lid? Go back to the old design, it worked.

Food that is intended to be put in the oven in the black plastic container, the instructions say 'remove outer packaging and film and place on a tray in the oven....' so why does the container melt into a wrinkled heap?

When we redid our bathroom I chose a toilet that is smooth sided specifically because I was sick of the awkward cleaning. It's fab.

Graphista- I once winged about the children’s dept of a shop being upstairs, and was told by the manager that it was because if a small child did a runner while parent was distracted looking at things, it would be relatively contained, rather than being able to dash out into the street. Annoying as I banged my pushchair back downstairs, but made sense to me.

Cheese graters that take off a layer of skin when you clean them

Yes, to problems with reading labels.
I need reading glasses now and spread canestan on my toothbrush (true I was in a hurry) as at a glance the back of the tube looked like toothpaste.
Shampoo and conditioner. Please somewhere on the front of the bottle put in big clear writing which it is. Often it is in some wafty script a similar colour to the bottle. Have used conditioner to wash before now.
And washing labels --- tiny writing, actually use a magnifying glass sometimes. They could put big 40 and O for wash temp and yes to dryer and put the detail which is always ignored below.
Maybe they could put wine glass level measures down the side of the bottle so you can't kid yourself your giant wine glass holds one measure should be popular

Packets of cheese those ones with the opening along the long edge that you tear off then they have a re-sealable edge.

It needs to be on the short edge, the one you cut/ grate. You could then just push the cheese out as much as you want it then pop it back in.

My gripe with public toilets is the sanitary towel bin. I am not huge (size 12 so quite average) but the side of my thighs always seem to touch the side. Can't they hang the bin on the back of the door or side wall?

I’ve always wondered why toilets are centred within the cubicles. Surely offsetting then would be a better arrangement and allow space for the sanity bin at the side with the bigger gap.

Of course the answer is men’s toilets don’t have sanitary bins.