Following on from last weekend’s question, about unnecessary human inventions, let’s talk about the flip side:
What ordinary household objects or everyday inventions are more awesome than most people realize?
Mine are Ziploc bags… all sizes are great, but the best are the freezer bags, because they’re heavier and more durable, in the gallon size, which is the most versatile and useful size. I use them for everything, from keeping stuff fresh in the kitchen to organizing computer cables to traveling with toiletries (spills stay contained in the bag and don’t mess up my clothes) and much more. In fact, I’d venture to guess that Ziploc freezer gallon bags are much more essential to the galactic hitchhiker than a towel.
Your turn…
(If you have a suggestion for a QOTD/QOTW, feel free to email me. Responses to this QOTW sent by email will be ignored; please post your responses here.)
As a teacher of small children for nearly 30 years, I don’t know how I managed before Ziplock bags. At the beginning of the school year I buy the Costco sized boxes of the freezer gallon and quart bags.
I use them for just about anything that needs to be kept safe and not become lost in a child’s backpack – pierced earrings that have come out, broken necklaces, the wiggly tooth that finally fell out, loose buttons, etc.
Every child has a gallon sized bag of books at his or her own reading level in their desks. I store all the pieces for math games, etc along with any worksheets that go with them in the gallon bags so I have everything in one place and don’t need to hunt down the parts the next time I want to use them.
I recently made a quilt for our school auction. Every child designed a square that went into the quilt. I put the parts for each child’s square in quart sized Ziplock bag until the pieces were sewn together and I could take a photo of each child holding their square. These bags were then reused for the 100th day of school. The kids had to bring 100 small items to school in the bag to use for Math on that special day.
I could go on but I’m sure you get the idea.
Baking seems to me a kind of alchemy, all those gooey things go out and cakes and bread comes out.
Keurig, you magnificent drug-dealing bastard.
I’ve been thinking the same thing all week! ZIplocs are terrific. I use them for cereal containers (since the companies make the boxes too big to go in cupboards) and stash everything else in them too – parts, electronic gizmos, food occasionally. I even use one to protect my iPad while I’m in the bath and want to read.
Definitely with you on Ziplock bags, and I’ll add this to the list:
Cast iron skillet. Treated properly, they last forever and and you can cook almost anything in them, from bread to steak to risotto to whatever. You can saute, fry, bake, broil, sear, and boil. You can use it on any kind of cooktop, in the oven, and they even work great over an open fire. If you take decent care of it and follow the most basic procedure for cleaning, it will develop a non-stick surface that rivals any Teflon pan. And by cooking in one you actually get additional dietary iron.
And they are friggin’ cheap. I’ve had my 12-inch skillet for over a decade and I use it almost every day. I think I paid $24 for it.
Clean running water, in my sink. It is amazing. Try living w/o it. Don’t even need a hot spigot. I can heat water on a stove or fire, but clean running water is civilization.
Indeed. Every year I travel to a location where many people don’t have that and it really opens your eyes to what we often take for granted.
Aerosol can and stapler. (And, though it’s not ordinary because it’s quite rare, the stapleless stapler is pretty darn awesome.)
I actually get non-brand name bags for that so the writing doesn’t block the screen.
The toilet, with its running water, comes to mind as an unglamorous, though life-altering invention.
And along the lines of running water, let’s give it up for salt. Salt was the earliest form of food preservation and continues to serve an essential property in pretty much all consumable food to this day.
And while an overly salty diet is dangerous, we literally cannot live without salt in our general diets.