Excerpts from my invention notebook

I have the spirit of an inventor, and love to come up with ideas for products that should exist. Sadly, I am completely lacking in entrepreneurial spirit. If someone out there has the business side, and wants to team up, I will come up with crazy but occasionally brilliant ideas all day long. As a testament to my lack of business savvy, I will now give away some of my best gems for free.

Stainless steel or otherwise fabulous-looking box wine cozy. Does your red box wine just live on the counter, lending a cluttered appearance to your otherwise sleek array of stainless steel small appliances? Slide this cozy over it, et voila! Classy, huh? Available in Black Box square, Bota rectangle, and new Big House octagon! Modern stainless steel finish or country crackled “hand-painted look” geese with hats.

Antibacterial wipes in refillable canisters. Beautiful refillable canisters. I really don’t need a new (ugly) plastic tub every time I run out of antibacterial wipes. I use those things for everything! Right now, I have one tub sitting out on my kitchen counter and one tub sitting out on my bathroom sink. Maybe you see a theme, but yeah, I leave them out, and I just really wish they were prettier so I could feel better about leaving them out. Clorox went halfway there with the oval decorative canisters, but they’re still disposable, not that cute, and more expensive per wipe than the regular kind. I’d rather buy a refill pack and slide it into a gorgeous raku-glazed ceramic canister. Just me?

Speaking of antibacterial wipes, a mop specifically designed to have an antibacterial wipe inserted into some tabs on the sides of it so you could use it to clean the kitchen floor without bending over. Wait, what do you mean there are other ways to clean one’s kitchen floor without using antibacterial wipes? I remain skeptical.

Kids’ books with plastic pages. Board books are fine, but my kids are completely capable of destroying a board book almost as easily as a paper book. Those plastic playing cards are awesome. Thin. Feel good in your hands. Waterproof (i.e. milk spill-proof). Maybe they would be more expensive than paper books, but you wouldn’t have to replace them nearly as often and they would be suitable for re-sale when you were done with them rather than only being suitable as lining for a hamster cage.

The “no-mow” lawn. Why doesn’t this exist yet? I know that all living things grow, but have you ever seen a 20-foot high strawberry plant? No. Because they grow close to the ground. So why do we all have lawns made of grasses that want to be a foot tall when we want them to be a few inches tall. This seems like more maintenance than is reasonable, time and money expended every single week all over the country. Sunday afternoon noise pollution and marital bickering reign from coast to coast over this issue. It’s crazy! Surely there must be some fabulous moss or something we could plant that would be decorative and sturdy and perfect as a play area without requiring weekly mowing. Get the scientists working on the no-mow lawn.

Whine-canceling earplugs. I don’t want to drown out my kids when they speak in a normal voice, but wouldn’t it be great if you were literally deaf to the particular pitch of your child’s whining?