Hasta La Ideas

All Unitasker Wednesday posts are jokes — we don’t want you to buy these items, we want you to laugh at their ridiculousness. Enjoy!

Try your best not to think too intently about if this week’s unitasker selection is truly a unitasker. If you do, you’ll realize it’s in the same realm as the stuffed animals in your child’s room, and the utility of those items is either very high or very low based on an exact moment in time. But, these are funny and don’t hold much purpose beyond keeping us all entertained through this post.

Introducing Canned Unicorn Meat:

and Canned Dragon Meat:

You dislodge the bottom of the container to discover a disarticulated stuffed animal inside:

“Magic in every bite!” Heh.

And, speaking of unicorns, this inflatable unicorn horn for your cat is sure to upset your cat for days to come. (The look on the cat’s face in the image at the destination of that link says it all.)

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All Unitasker Wednesday posts are jokes — we don’t want you to buy these items, we want you to laugh at their ridiculousness. Enjoy!

Each business and organization has its own culture — a mix of personalities and traditions and guidelines, which give the work environment a distinct feel. Since not all of the Unclutterer team works out of our main office, our culture is more collegial than authoritarian and we mostly communicate online. And, when I used the word collegial just then, I meant we spend a lot of time talking about kids and board games and furry friends and laundry and cool stuff we find online.

One of my favorite things about the Unclutterer team is that we all seem to have an eye for spotting unitaskers. “I have no idea what this is” is a common subject line on emails I receive. I get a few each week and I’m always giddy to open up the messages. For instance, this week’s selection was in one of these email exchanges, the Flower Pot Bristle Brush:

While people in other jobs are emailing coworkers about memos and reports, here at Unclutterer we’re discussing the difficult topics like Flower Pot Bristle Brushes. Our interactions cover vital topics as:

It’s a special brush to specifically fit inside a 5″-diameter flower pot. And, the fact that it fits inside just one size flower pot is a red flag, but in theory you could use it on larger flower pots instead of buying other brushes for your larger pots. So, it’s not the size that makes it a unitasker, though certainly something to consider.

Next, it was decided a brush to only clean flower pots isn’t what pushes it into the unitasker category, either. Although, you could easily use any other general purpose bristle brush for the same task and other tasks. You could also use a rag. General purpose bristle brushes and rags are multi-tasking wonders in comparison to a brush made just for cleaning flower pots.

Finally, what convinced us that this brush exists in the realm of unitasker-dom is the fact that its entire purpose — cleaning flower pots — is not something most people do. Flower pots, at their very core, should be dirty since they hold dirt. You buy flower pots and put dirt and plants in them and then throw out the pots when they break. If a plant that was in a flower pot dies, you remove the dead plant, add some more dirt, and put in a healthy new plant. Maybe, if the dirt was the wrong kind of dirt (say it was good for ornamental flowers but not for vegetables) you would remove one type of dirt, tap the bottom of the pot to shake out remaining dirt, and then put in a new type of dirt. In this case, you’re just doing a dirt exchange so cleaning isn’t necessary. But, as stated in the previous paragraph, if you do come up with some need to clean a flower pot like you’re worried about fertilizer contamination or something in a terra cotta pot (not an issue with plastic pots), multi-purpose rags or general purpose brushes along with a swirl of vinegar would certainly do the job and you don’t need to own a single-purpose brush for cleaning your flower pots. (But seriously, what weekend gardener cleans flower pots so often as to need such a specific brush?)

Oh how I love the conversations I get to have with the Unclutterer team. I’m so thankful this is as tough as it gets.

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All Unitasker Wednesday posts are jokes — we don’t want you to buy these items, we want you to laugh at their ridiculousness. Enjoy!

Imagine for a moment you’re at a hospital cafeteria having lunch with a friend you haven’t seen in years. This friend is a doctor and currently on call. Your doctor friend sits down at the table with you and asks if she can leave her cell phone on the table, in case an emergency arises and she has to run upstairs to save a patient’s life. You say, “that’s cool,” and don’t mind at all because this friend is responsible for the survival of humans, is on call, you’re at her workplace, and your friend asked you if it was okay.

Now, imagine a second scenario where you are out at dinner with your friends. All of your friends have kids and those kids are currently being supervised by babysitters. You don’t see your friends’ phones, but you’re pretty sure they have them in their pockets with their call notifications set to vibrate. At some point, a friend excuses herself from the table to go to the restroom. You don’t know it, but her phone vibrated in her pocket and so she went to the bathroom to make sure the incoming call from the babysitter wasn’t some kind of emergency. The call wasn’t an emergency, so your friend quickly answered the babysitter’s question, washed her hands, returned to the table, and stuck her phone back in her pocket.

Okay, imagine a third situation where you are alone in your apartment and not doing anything extremely important. Your phone rings, you want to talk to the person on the other end, and you answer the call.

The above scenarios are examples of polite phone etiquette. The example of the doctor shows the rare situation where a cell phone is appropriate to leave out on a table during a meal. The second scenario shows how a phone’s vibrate function silently alerts people they are receiving a call. The third situation explains how a phone’s ringer works and what you do when you have an incoming call you want to answer.

The above scenarios also explain why no one has a need for a call notification Trellie charm for a handbag, necklace, or keychain:

Unless your phone doesn’t ring or vibrate, the Trellie doesn’t do anything your phone doesn’t already do except for deplete your battery power quickly because it operates via Bluetooth. Also, since it flashes a light when you get a call, it alerts everyone near you that you’re getting a phone call, which is just as inconsiderate as your phone ringing in a silent movie theater.

What is so difficult about setting a phone to vibrate and discretely checking it when it vibrates? Nothing is difficult about that. Nothing at all.

I remember a time before cell phones when people could go for hours without knowing if they got a non-emergency phone call — and people SURVIVED! True story.

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All Unitasker Wednesday posts are jokes — we don’t want you to buy these items, we want you to laugh at their ridiculousness. Enjoy!

Earlier this month, our very own Jacki Hollywood Brown traveled to Germany to attend a Star Trek convention. For fans of the franchise (counting the animated series, I think it’s six shows and 12 movies), a Star Trek convention is a good amount of fun. Like most conventions, there are speakers and workshops and an expo center featuring vendors selling anything even remotely Star Trek related.

Jacki and I had a few email exchanges while she was at the convention. I am also a Star Trek fan, preferring the Enterprise-based shows, and have gone to a convention or two in the US. After the general “I’m here and having fun” emails, our messages focused on a device she discovered for sale in the expo hall that we both have deemed a unitasker. The Brainwave Emotion Controlled Cat Ears:

As the name implies, this is a headband with fake cat ears on it and the ears move based on your emotions.

I have to be honest, I think they’re fun. However, beyond giving strangers a reason to talk to you, I’m not really sure what function they have. The whole mind reading thing is also creepy. If a headband is going to have a laser that is connected to your brain, I feel like it should do something beyond moving two little ears — like it should give you telekinetic powers or translate your thoughts into meows. Right? Plus, that giant battery pack on the left side and the laser on your forehead are certainly non-cat like and quite distracting. And, according to the Amazon reviews, they’re extremely delicate and the motors in the ears are quick to stop working (which is a bummer since the ears are $70).

Are they fun? Yes. A conversation starter? Yes. A unitasker? Definitely.

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All Unitasker Wednesday posts are jokes — we don’t want you to buy these items, we want you to laugh at their ridiculousness. Enjoy!

I have to admit, I’m a little nervous about posting this week’s unitasker selection. Last time I mentioned a toast-related unitasker, we got more than 80 comments defending the item. It was then I learned that Unclutterer readers are very serious about their toast.

Today’s selection is such a perfect contender for a unitasker, though, that I have decided to move forward with it. I’ll admit, if I worked in a restaurant that specialized in artisanal toast, this doodad might have a need if I didn’t want to wear sanitary gloves. But, for the daily home toaster, the Toast Tongs are overkill (well, unless you’re using a supervolcano to toast your toast):

If you are worried about your toast being a little toasty, you can let it sit in the toaster for a few seconds to cool before touching it. Five seconds is usually all it takes, though I have been known to grab toast directly from the toaster and live to tell the tale — as I’m sure we all have. Yes, the toast is warm, but it’s not so warm as to need a special device to handle it. Plus, if you wish to spread something on the toast, you’re going to have to use your hands anyway because these tongs won’t be of much use to you during that task. And, if you’re regularly having issue with large items getting stuck in your toaster, it’s time to get rid of the toaster and get a toaster oven. Toaster ovens are beautiful multi-taskers.

Back to the point: Toast Tongs are one more thing to wash, one more thing to store, one more thing to forget you own, and one more thing to eventually put into a yard sale or donate to charity.

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