Somebody's Bright Idea

When I was in Australia, I wrote an entry called "Why Didn't We Think of That?" It was about Australian things that I thought were very clever.

One was a two-button flush mechanism which only used a little water for most things, but for heavy duty stuff, flushed a lot more water.

Then there was the 3-pronged plug, which I think about often around here. When Peggy first arrived here she was amazed at how unsafe she felt our plugs were. Every time I do something here where the plug slips out of the socket, I think about how tightly they fit into the socket in Australia and how it can't fall out. The socket itself can also be turned off and on, which is an additional safety feature.

Then there was money...most paper money in other countries which is either colored or different sized or in some other way made to easily tell which currency you have. People who come here are confused that all our paper currency looks the same, unless you recognize the people printed on them. (In some countries, each denomination is a different SIZE, which helps blind people figure out what they have in their wallets).

Australia continues to provide me with material. One of the things that arrived in my Christmas parcel from Australia was a cutting board. But not just ANY cutting board. Check this out.

It opens flat for chopping, but when you've finished chopping your onions or whatever, the sides fold up and it becomes a handy funnel that easily transfers your chopped food to a pot. As someone who constantly drops bits and pieces of food on the floor when trying to carry them to a pot, I am amazed that nobody thought of this before. Good on ya, Aussies!

But then I found a nice American invention. I went to buy a new broom the other day. We also needed a dustpan, since the one I've been using for the past year has a crack in it. They only had one kind. This one:

It's fantastic. You can easily sweep up all the dust singlehandedly. The pan doesn't move because you step on the bottom of it, and there are no leftover bits when you're finished. I wonder if the inventor was Australian.

Now if someone could put a little strip of velcro on the collar of a snuggy, my life might be complete.

(Oh God...I'm one year closer to death and I'm getting excited about things like dustpans. Groan. Just shoot me!)