It was like playing Santa Claus and Where’s Waldo? at the same time.
The scene was last week, McCormick Place, the International Housewares Show, where an estimated 55,000 visitors, 2,000 exhibitors and 70,000 new gadgets, gizmos and appliances got stirred together, better than any Mixmaster could do.
Every year we report on the latest, greatest, most peculiar products shown here. This year, we had another mission: finding products in the sea of stuff that real people really want.
Several weeks ago, we called a handful of readers who responded to the Home section’s Behind Closed Doors survey of last fall. (The survey, which ran in September, asked a variety of questions pertaining to how people actually live in their home, and has been followed up with articles on everything from housecleaning to pet care.)
We posed a single question: What housewares product would you like to see invented–something that you know would sell because it solves a problem that you (and surely lots of other people) have on the home front?
We scoured the show for these “dream” products or something close to them, talked to manufacturers or otherwise tried to track them down.
In last week’s Home section, we introduced the readers on our panel and their ideas. Here’s a recap along with what we found:
Robot chef
“I’m not that creative in the kitchen,” said Melanie Balzer, a homemaker from Bolingbrook who has been cooking for her family for more than 20 years and now has to deal with her husband and daughters’ new demands for low-calorie, low-fat meals.
Balzer said she’d like someone to invent a “robot cook”–or rather, just the tireless mind to help with meal ideas and planning. She envisioned it as some sort of interactive computer program that allows you to enter variables, such as what foods you have in the refrigerator and how many calories you want to consume.
What we found: Bingo.
Micro Cookbook 5.0 is a sophisticated piece of computer software that can take over a lot of mind-work in the kitchen.
From Pinpoint Publishing of Santa Rosa, Calif., the new, updated software has 10,000 recipes in its memory and lets you enter an unlimited number of your own personal favorites.
What to make for dinner tonight?
The software will search for recipes based on what basic ingredients you want to include. You can further qualify the search by entering in variables, such as preparation time, cost per serving, calories and percent calories from fat.
Yes, the computer will even figure out nutrition facts, including those for personal recipes.
There also is a meal-planning function, allowing you to click, drag and drop recipes onto a monthly calendar. And, once you enter a range of days, it will compose a shopping list for you or do a nutritional analysis based on your calendar.
Micro Cookbook 5.0 runs on Windows 3.1 and Windows 95. It requires a 486 or faster computer, and 8 megabytes of RAM is recommended.
Pinpoint also publishes a number of theme-oriented computer cookbooks with additional recipes. They include “30 Minute Low Fat Dinners” and “A Taste of Thai” and can stand alone or be added to the Micro Cookbook.
Micro Cookbook 5.0 sells for about $30, the companion cookbooks for about $10 each, and both are available at major software stores.
Portable crease-maker
Larry Stein of Wilmette wanted a small electric appliance that puts a perfect crease in a pair of pants, quickly and easily, without having to use an ironing board.
He said it should look something like a curling iron with metal flanges that open and close on the pants where the crease would be. You would simply hang up the pants, heat up the presser and then run it down the legs to create a nice sharp fold.
There was something like it on the market “years and years ago,” said Stein, noting that it was “wonderful.”
What we found: None of the iron or curling iron manufacturers that we checked out has such a presser, although representatives from both Black & Decker Inc. and Conair Corp. thought Stein’s idea has potential.
But all was not lost.
Franzus, a Beacon Falls, Conn.-based company that makes travel appliances and accessories, offers a portable Garment Steaming Brush with a “special creaser attachment.” The creaser attachment looks like a wide clip and functions very much like a metal flange on a curling iron.
You simply slide the creaser attachment onto the steamer, slip your pants (or whatever needs creasing) in between the creaser plate and steamer unit, hit the steam button and let the vapor do its stuff before moving the unit down the pant leg and repeating.
The dual-voltage, dual-function appliance sells for about $35 at luggage specialty stores.
Short-handle mop
Marilyn Egan, a homemaker from Chicago, is disabled. She said she could do a whole lot more around the house if there were cleaning supplies that have been sized and scaled for people who are chairbound.
In particular, she wanted a mop with a short handle.
What we found: Professional housecleaner Don Aslett, who has authored 25 books on the subject and has his own multimillion-dollar, multistate cleaning business, is in the process of writing yet another title, “How to Clean When You Can’t Reach the Floor.” (Publication date is undetermined.)
It’s for pregnant women and anyone who has an injury or disability.
In that book and over the phone from Hawaii, where we tracked him down (he’s building a “maintenance-free home” there), Aslett recommends a clever, multipurpose mop/scrubber/duster/waxer for people who are chairbound and/or have limited strength. He calls it the Scrubbee Doo and sells it through his own cleaning business but says the same sort of product is available at janitorial supply stores.
Scrubbee Doo has a few things up on the traditional string and sponge mop, according to Aslett. Scrubbee Doo is small and lightweight, he says. It has a pivoting head so you can clean under and around objects and edges. It is multifunctional, going from a dry mop to a wet mop to a waxer and scrubber with a simple change of “heads.” And it is easy to clean.
Picture it this way: A pole with a pivoting plastic piece on the end. The plastic piece measures just 9 1/2 inches long by 3 1/2 inches wide. Two Velcro strips on that plastic piece allow you to attach whatever head you desire. There’s one for wet mopping, dust mopping, waxing the floor, and three for scrubbing.
“It’s like an extension of your arm,” explains Aslett. “You can sit in a wheelchair and clean at eight or nine different angles–the floor, the walls, the baseboards, the ceiling, the bathtubs, any surface.”
And you can detach the heads from the Velcro and easily wash and wring them out in a small sink.
As for Egan’s request for a shorter handle, Aslett says that’s no problem. Scrubbee Doo and the other mops like it in janitorial supply stores have a threaded connection between handle and mop head. You simply screw in the wood handle of your choice.
Scrubbee Doo’s standard, 54-inch handle can be cut down with a saw, says Aslett. (The mop is scaled small enough so that a shorter handle would not make it awkward.) Or look for a shorter pole handle at a local hardware store. (Most sell a range of broom handles for about $3.)
Aslett’s Scrubbee Doo Complete costs $30. Call: 800-451-2402.
Chandelier-size squeegee
Getting her leaded, beveled glass chandelier in the dining room clean–without streaks–is a “nightmare” for Patricia Paxton Edwards, a group airline reservationist who lives in Gurnee.
Edwards said her dream product would be some sort of tiny squeegee and a streak-free liquid.
What we found: New from Zadro Products of Huntington Beach, Calif., is the hand-held Z’Squeegee with adjustable-width blades that allow you to get that squeegee into a variety of tight or wide spaces.
The squeegee has dual blades that rest in a track. Sitting perfectly parallel, the squeegee measures 7 inches across. Pull out the two blades in opposite directions along the track and it becomes a single-blade squeegee measuring 13 1/2 inches across. To clean a chandelier with small panes of glass, you could slide just one of the blades out only a couple of inches.
“We did market research,” says Thomas Nichols, Zadro’s vice president, marketing. “People have different sizes of areas that need to be cleaned,” from a divided French window to a wide shower stall.
As for the streak-free liquid, cleaning guru Aslett advises using a little bit of ammonia or dish soap (Joy, Ivory) diluted in lots of water. Glass cleaners, he says, don’t cut grease and will cause streaks.
Compactor for recyclables
This idea came from the Home section staff: a single-unit compactor for recyclables, with separate compartments for plastic, glass and metal.
You simply would load your recyclables into the appropriate compartment, push a lever or button and crush those loads of plastic, glass and metal down to a manageable size.
What we heard: “It is a very logical solution,” chuckles Robin Edman, vice president of industrial design for Frigidaire Co., based in Columbus, Ohio. “We have drawings of similar pieces of equipment.”
Frigidaire makes major appliances and, hence, was not an exhibitor at the Housewares Show. In a phone interview, Edman confirms that the company started brainstorming such a product “many years ago” but never went any further than that. Recycling on the home front was too new at that point in time, says Edman.
But now, things are changing. Times are changing.
“If the landfills are closed within 14 years, which is predicted, something is going to happen along the way,” Edman says. “An appliance that recycles is definitely something that will happen in the future.”
That, of course, takes our idea of making recyclables more compact one step further to actual recycling in the home.
Although he says he doesn’t know what Frigidaire might introduce or when (“maybe in the next five to 10 years”), Edman throws out a few ideas for such an appliance: It could be a machine that takes plastic garbage and turns it into paver bricks for your back yard. Or, it might compress newspapers and turn them into burning logs for the fireplace.
Smoke detector
This idea came from the Home office too: A smoke detector that could be turned off (in a false alarm) from ground level, instead of having to drag out a ladder to climb to ceiling height.
What we heard/found: There is a perfectly good reason why such a product does not exist. People may forget to reactivate it, explains Richard Timmons, vice president of marketing for Aurora-based First Alert Inc., which sells more smoke detectors than any other maker.
Over the last couple of years, manufacturers have made one concession to people who have smoky ovens, bad cooking habits or small apartments where a little innocent smoke travels fast–a silencer button that turns the alarm off for just a few minutes before reactivating automatically.
First Alert’s kitchen unit (Model SA88) has one of the best silencer designs. The silencer button is nice and big. You can hit it at ground level with a broom handle. No ladder-climbing is necessary.
Model SA88 sells for about $15 and can be found at many stores, including Target, Kmart and Wal-Mart.
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Next week: Our report on the best new products at the International Housewares Show.
