Here’s an idea: Don’t buy stuff you simply don’t need.
In the UK The Times‘ Caitlin Moran has written an hillarious story A plague on all your houses’ hated kitchen gadgets and I couldn’t agree more. One of the biggest drivers of waste, carbon emissions and pollution in general is this drive we seem to have to fill up our houses with crap we simply do not need.
[T]he electric can-opener is the most loathsome kitchen gadget. That’s just a fact. Watching one in action – a lopsidedly clamped tin being sporadically punctured by something that operates with effortful whirring – is a grievously vexatious act. No one can witness a can-opener in slow, wonky action without murderous black fury raging in their impatient heart. To be near an operating electric can-opener is to clench your fists, grind your teeth and imagine how much quicker and easier it would be to grab the can, scream and smite its top section off with an axe.
What about the other 9,000 wholly loathsome kitchen gadgets, which, even as we speak, are pointlessly filling people’s kitchens and making their lives almost inexpressibly worse?
Even now, just thinking of them makes my blood pressure rise. So many things have been unnecessarily invented. The electric popcorn-maker? You could just USE A PAN WITH A LID! Breville Rice Cooker? USE A PAN WITH A LID! Micromark Ome-lette Express? USE A PAN – WITHOUT A LID! Electric bread-maker? USE THE OVEN! Brita Aqua Filter Water Cooler? USE THE TAP! The Smoothie Maker? Ggnkkkk! Gnaghk! Gnar!
The Smoothie Maker, to be honest, I consider to be the last straw. A Smoothie Maker is just a blender – IT’S JUST A BLENDER! – but with a tap on the bottom. A small, useless tap which will, on the first day of use, become clogged by a single strawberry seed, leaving you flossing the tiny nozzle with a pin until 4am, weeping. A Smoothie Maker basically marks the UNINVENTING of the blender. It is a negation of progress. It’s like having sex with monkeys. It will do humankind no good.
That’s right folks. Most of these electrical gadgets do a worse job than their manual counterparts, are harder to clean, cost much more (both financially and environmentally) and take up space. Spend that extra cash on better pans and lids. — DS
Technorati Tags: business, education, emissions reduction, energy efficiency, housing, shit you don’t need, waste
November 1st, 2007 at 2:14 am
Yes, perhaps we should come up with the list of most ridiculous gadgets…