Really? I’ve got to be the one to think these things up?

I’ve designed a sign holder that is less likely to attract bugs and is less likely to expose the paper inside to rain. My design is very similar to the existing design but it truncates the trough at the bottom, thereby providing less room for any bugs and less of a gutter for rain water to collect.

The For Sale Sign in front of my house (my house is for sale – Home For Sale Alas) is equipped with a box that holds flyers, sheets of paper with the pertinent details of the house sale. The box is slightly wider and taller than the sheets of paper. There is a lid on top that can be lifted to refill the flyer supply. There is a clear plastic front that is used to display one copy of the flyer. The clear plastic front is removable. It slides up and out of a pair of troughs in the side of the box. The front is inserted into the troughs and is restricted from falling through by another trough at the bottom of the box.

The problem is that the bottom trough therefore protrudes in front of the plastic front. As rain hits the front it runs down and collects in the trough thereby soaking into the bottoms of the flyers and wicking up the paper ultimately warping all of the pages. This trough also collects bugs that may linger because of the shelter and ready supply of water.

There are many solutions.

• One simple solution is to make the trough much smaller by having two small troughs, more like tabs, on either end. There is less of a gutter and therefore less rain can collect.
• One solution is to remove the trough and hold the front in place by other tabs, detents, or stops further up the front.
• One solution is to make the bottom of the flyer tray higher than the trough.

I’ve seen many other box designs that solved the problem that usually a variant of totally enclosed boxes. But I am witness to a design that can be improved and therefore decided to take this opportunity to suggest improvements. Why? Because I can.

What am I going to do about it? I’ll probably just drop a little bar of plastic in there to lift the paper out of the water.

Why should I even post this? Because every day every one of us sees things that aren’t well designed. One way to improve the world is to improve those little annoyances in our lives. Some things will require a scrap bit of plastic. Some things will require hundreds of millions of dollars in testing and research. (The world needs better rockets.) Some things need nothing more than our voices and actions. So, while I hadn’t intended in writing myself into the political realm, I guess I’ll take this opportunity to encourage people to vote.

But first I’m going to fix that box.