Tag: Home

decorative Wi-Fi access points

I have a business idea that someone needs to run with. This is not one that I plan to pursue, because my plate is full (running over, even), so I’m putting it out here for someone to take. Please do, because I would buy this.

Most houses have Wi-Fi now, and to get good coverage throughout the house you often need either an extender or a mesh network. (I just switched mine to an Amazon Eero mesh network.) The “problem” with all the solutions I’ve seen is that the hardware devices don’t look interesting. They’re plain and utilitarian. That’s not bad, per se, but it could be much better. I don’t care to see them around the house, although it’s not that big a deal to me. However, I’m married, so the WAF does need to be considered. (WAF = Wife Approval Factor.) My wife cares about the house being “presentable” and decorated. (Granted, I do too, but she does even more, so I often defer to her preferences, which seems to be common among men.)

So here’s the idea that improves the situation. Make Wi-Fi hardware points where you can snap decorative outer shells on them, which feature a pleasing design. By doing this, you can cater to multiple markets with the same base product. Here’s some ideas to help get you started:

  • fake plants — This may have the highest general WAF, so it definitely should be an option.
  • book-related — There are a lot of people who enjoy reading, or at least want to enjoy it if they had more free time. This could be a bookshelf insert like the one pictured, which is a street from the Harry Potter universe. You could also make bookends like the Argonath statues that came with the first deluxe DVD set of The Lord of the Rings. (I want that one, and my wife would probably tolerate it outside my home office.) Another idea is the Dr. Who TARDIS phonebooth.
  • movie-related — There are many options here, from figures to vehicles to buildings to logos. Of course there would be licensing to deal with, but a well-made Batman figure and/or the Batmobile would be worth it. Transformers figures (G1 style, preferably) would be awesome, too. (The WAF score sinks considerably with this one, but there’s a large audience of single guys who can decorate how they want. And Transformers figures definitely counted as decoration when I lived in the bachelor pad with college roommates.)
  • decorative frames with pithy inspiring quotes — People already buy this kind of thing. You could make it a frame with changeable inserts, so you could sell packs of more quotes. You might could even include a cheap subscription with new inserts arriving each month that match the season.
  • holiday decorations — You know if there was a way to make your Wi-Fi point look like a Christmas tree or an ornament instead of a chunk of boring plastic, people would buy this. These would sell like hotcakes during the Christmas shopping season (which gets longer every year). These could also have lights on them, since you already have power there.

I could go on, but you get the idea. There are MANY possibilities here for selling more, because if they all fit the same base units, people could buy multiple decorative pieces to change it out throughout the year. And when a new version of Wi-Fi comes out, make the base unit into the same shape so customers can use their current extensions. This encourages brand loyalty.

Hopefully this goes without saying, but make the actual hardware be quality. People will be paying more for this, so there will be expectations that it works well. If it looks impressive and works better than average, people will talk about it, which is free advertising.

To any entrepreneur willing to jump on this, the idea is free. If you’d be willing to send me a copy for review, I’d be glad to check it out. Have your people contact my people.

a cluttered house is now cool

This post may be unusual for the type of content usually shared here, but that just makes it random, which kinda makes it fit. 🙂 Ultimately it’s about enjoying life more, which does fit.

Marie Kondo, of decluttering fame, now has 3 kids, and guess what — her house is now messy. Who could have predicted this? People with young kids understand! You can spend hours cleaning and decluttering, and kids can make it look like tornado came through in 30 minutes or less.

Before children, it’s not that hard to maintain a decluttered home. I mean, it still takes considerable work, but it’s possible. Once you have kids, the dynamic changes. And Marie Kondo learned some things:

1) Kids take up a LOT of your time (as they should).
2) Cleaning takes 10x more time. No, the math doesn’t add up, but some messes cause a disproportionate amount of cleanup, like spilled milk, or those “How did poop get here?” experiences. And just collecting the dirty laundry becomes a scavenger hunt. (The other day we found 7 socks with no match and spent way more time than you would expect looking for a single match.)
3) Keeping your house looking like those in a magazine or TV show becomes less important (as it should).

It’s funny when you have kids and you visit someone who doesn’t have kids, and they say, “Excuse the mess” when you arrive, but you don’t see a mess. 🙂

It’s easy to laugh about how Marie Kondo’s bestselling book was titled, “The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up”, and her motto on her Netflix series was “Tidy house, tidy mind”, and I’m joking about it now, but it shows how priorities change when you have children. One of her iconic phrases was about filling your home with items that “spark joy”, and it’s good to be organized. (I’m not putting that down — most of us could probably do better with that.) Now she has realized, “Up until now, I was a professional tidier, so I did my best to keep my home tidy at all times. I have kind of given up on that in a good way for me. Now I realize what is important to me is enjoying spending time with my children at home. … My home is messy, but the way I am spending my time is the right way for me at this time at this stage of my life.” Good for her!

She now focuses on the Japanese concept of kurashi, which loosely translates as “way of life” or “the ideal way of spending our time”, which now is more about decluttering what’s filling up your time rather than what’s filling up your closet. On her website it says, “The true purpose of tidying is not to cut down on your possessions or declutter your space. The ultimate goal is to spark joy every day and lead a joyful life.” I can relate to that. Life tends to be “too busy” and cluttered, with not enough time to do what’s most important. I push back on the busyness and from trying to keep a perfectly-maintained house (which is near-impossible with kids unless you neglect the kids). Life is too short to get caught up in worrying about what someone else might think. If you see my home, it’ll look like busy people with young kids live there. To me, that’s authentic. (I’m not against picking up when company visits, of course, but is it authentic to present an unrealistic lifestyle?) If they judge me for my house not looking like a house in a magazine photo, that’s on them. I don’t have to lose my peace over their judgmental attitude.

Oh, sorry — I started to rant there. One last thing from the article: Marie Kondo now makes it a point to drink tea three times a day and prioritize spending plenty of time with her kids. Sounds like a plan! Now please excuse me, I must go drink some sweet tea. 🙂

P.S. Apparently the idea of having your house somewhat cluttered has actually become popular and trendy, being called “cluttercore”. (I was unaware of this movement. However, this obviously means that I am trendy, perhaps even a trendsetter because I was living in a cluttered house before cluttered was cool.) 🙂

impressing the repairman

This is not my kitchen. My kitchen is used several times a day and I have better things to do than clean it several times a day.

There’s a repairman coming to my house this week to fix my oven, so he’s going to see my kitchen, living room, and dining room, and I really want to impress him with how clean and organized my house is. Well, except I don’t. But apparently I should. Supposedly. I don’t know. I mean, the house isn’t trashed or filthy — it just looks like a couple of young kids live here with parents who are too busy with life to keep the house spotless. Ironically, that’s true because it’s true. Well, I reckon that’s unironically, since the situation and explanation should be normal and okay. (What is it called when irony is ironic? Or if a lack of irony is actually irony? Are there terms for such confusion? But that’s a rabbit trail for another day… or not.)

Where was I? Oh, yeah, making a good impression with the repairman. I don’t know him. I’ve seen him once before, when he diagnosed the problem with my oven and had to order parts. I think I’d still classify him as a visitor, since I don’t even know his name. Maybe I should get to know him. After all, his opinion of my house is apparently really important and valuable, such that it causes stress and we need to clean a lot. So should I invite him over for dinner sometime? Although, on second thought, that might be awkward. Actually, this whole idea is awkward.

So what’s going on here? Basically, the post is satire but is based on actual events. The confusion is real. The awkwardness is unfortunately real. But here is the dramatic twist in the narrative — you can be the hero! Yes, you! Wait, before you click away, I’m not dragging you into this quagmire. There’s no further need to judge my house or repair my oven. Where you can help is by explaining what’s going on here. Why should I care what the repairman thinks of how clean and organized my house is? Are there legitimate reasons, or is this a load of malarkey? I report, you decide. If you understand, please leave a comment.

odor-absorbing paint

The other day I painted the baby room, and the paint was supposedly odor-free.  That was a lie!  It might be reduced odor, but there was most definitely still a paint smell to it.  At least it was VOC-free, so hopefully it wasn’t harmful.

One nice benefit of the paint is that it’s supposed to absorb odors.  (So shouldn’t it absorb its own odor?  If so, then wouldn’t it not smell when you open the lid?  But it did, so their claim smells fishy, er, well, painty.  Whatever.)  The odor-absorbing feature will be a good thing in a baby room, with all the upcoming diaper changes.  Maybe I should repaint the bathroom while I’m at it…  🙂

BTW, the name of the color is “potentially purple”.  (It’s for a girl’s room, and it’s a nice compromise of not being hardcore pink).  It’s definitely purple, so I don’t know what is “potentially” about it.  It is or it isn’t.  But what do I know about colors — I’m a man.  To men, there are 16 colors, and you can have light or dark variations of those colors.  There’s no need to know the names of 16.7 million colors.