posted by admin on Dec 11
There are always ways to make something work more ‘lifestyle friendly’ – in tune with the way we use things.
The most obvious one of this type of invention was the ‘snooze’ button on your alarm. Rather than having to manually reset your alarm after it goes off if you want to sleep a bit longer, you just hit snooze and it goes off again in 5 or 10 minutes instead.
There are plenty more opportunities out there that could really save us not only time – but lives too!
Most security or safety appliances and features on the market are there to save lives – but as a result, they make life that little bit more difficult – for example self-closing, heavy fire doors. I’m not denying that they save lives and need to be in place in schools, offices and other large establishments – but when you need to move furniture or whatever, back and forth several times in close succession – there is the temptation to wedge them open instead.
Needless to say this also happens if heating or air-conditioning isn’t working or at it’s best and a variety of other reason no doubt – but it makes having the fire doors totally useless if they are wedged open when there actually is a fire in the building.
What’s The Answer?
The answer is a safety device that allows the fire door to be wedged open securely – but in such a way that if the fire alarms are set off or there are more than so many smoke particles in the air – then they close automatically.
So they are safely wedged open for practicality – but just as safe in the case of their intended use – and thankfully; they are already on the market.
However, I would love to see other ‘temporary’ measures in place on other items that ‘get in peoples way’ or are easier than other current methods.
For example – why can’t you have a 30 minute pause button on your kitchen smoke alarm? When I cook meals, I get so worried that I am going to set off the smoke alarm that I wish there was a way to give me 30 minutes grace rather than have it scare the life out of me and my neighbours – or set off sprinklers in the building!
No doubt many people are tempted to take out the batteries of their smoke alarms if they set them off to often or they are ‘over-sensitive’ to smoke – and just like the fire door example – this is when they put themselves at risk. As we know how easy it is to forget to put the batteries back in as the device is usually high up on the ceiling!
Bearing in mind that you are nearly always in your home cooking the dinner when you burn it – you can see that it is burning and deal with the situation – rather than having to struggle to switch off the alarm as well as move burning hot food from the oven!
After the 30 minutes grace – the smoke alarm becomes active again without you having to do anything. So you are safe again immediately rather than having to remember to put your alarm back together again straight after cooking.
Other Easy Inventions:
I bet you can think of loads of things you can put a ‘pause’ on to make your life easier – like the bedroom/bathroom/other room heater for example if you don’t have central heating.
Rather than have to fiddle around with a socket timer in each room - why can’t there be a 4/6/8 hour ‘on hold’ button on it? When you go to bed, you hit whichever button you need and the heater goes off for that amount of time – hopefully coming back on in time to get the room cosy for when you wake up. I mean, you know how long you are going to sleep for!
I suppose it’s a bit like the old fashioned teas-maid machine that you could set to wake you up to the smell of coffee! But there are no new versions of it? Some washing machines have a pause button on them so you can have your clothes washed in the short lead up time to you coming home – that way your clothes haven’t been sitting in the machine all day wet!
Or what about the opposite inventions for turning stuff off after a length of time. You can already set your TV to go off after a set period of time – if you intend to fall asleep watching it – so why not the same set up on your lamp, your heater, your radio or whatever else you want to stay on for just that bit longer!
What if you just need another 30 minutes to finish running that upgrade on your laptop – but you need to go into a meeting and don’t want to leave your machine on for hours? Or those cakes in the oven still need another 10 minutes but you have to go pick up the kids from school!
Think of the eco friendly potential as well here – it’s not just about making our lives easier in general, we could be saving energy and money all over the place as well as making sure that we stay safe!
Sometimes you just need to freeze time – and this could be the way to do it!
