The "go fix a minor annoyance" togetherness topic
There's something small that you've been meaning to do but, for whatever reason, you haven't done it. Rather than just forgetting about it, however, your brain has decided to make it take up a minor amount of space in your awareness -- not enough to make it an immediate concern or something you plan to act on, but still just enough to be annoying.
Well, this is your call to address the issue head on! Pull that mental splinter out and get rid of it for good!
Maybe you need to...
- change an air filter
- tighten your showerhead
- go through that stack of mail
- box up a return
- put more air in your bike tires
- rearrange a bookshelf
- throw out some expired cans
- vacuum behind the couch
- clean the dust out of your computer fan
- etc.
Whatever it is, this topic is your call to GO DO THE THING.
And then, come back here and tell us what you did.
One minor annoyance solved for only one person? Not a big deal.
LOTS of minor annoyances solved for LOTS of different people? GIGANTIC DEAL!
This topic is our space to communally revel in the glorious shared feeling of being slightly more annoyance-free, together.
IMPORTANT: Clearing up multiple annoyances is explicitly allowed!
Nothing I have to do right now, but I recently went to the doctor about a medical issue that's been annoying me for almost 5 years, but not enough to do something about it. Well, of course, after a 10 minute examination, it turned out to be a tiny problem that went away within a week with medication. Could've made the past few years of my life a tiny bit better if I went to the doctor earlier, but I'm glad to have it resolved now.
By the way, the issue you're describing in your post is something that the Getting Things Done task management system made much better for me. I highly recommend you try it if you haven't.
Hopefully this is not too off topic.
I become a smoker after being interned in a mental hospital where smoking was nearly impossible to avoid under an otherwise tedious and oppressive environment.
I would like a way to not annoy my wife by smell of tobacco in my body.
I never smoke at home.
Yes I'm going to stop but even the doctors agre that we have other very serious things to fix right now and stop smoking would only cause unnecessary stress at this point.
I've had several co-workers who smoked. While they never completely eliminated the smell, a few of them took care to reduce it as much as possible. It's all about preventing smoke from settling on you and cleaning off any that does.
One guy did all of this every smoke break and unless you saw him or were right near the door when he returned, it was hard to notice that he was a smoker at all.
Asking for help is completely in scope for the topic, and I think that it's very kind of you to want to solve an annoyance for someone else.
I'm hopeful that you get some good tips.
Thanks!
Could you switch to a non-smoking form of nicotine (i.e. gum, patches)? That would let you satisfy the nicotine addiction without the smoke, though it obviously wouldn't replace any of the other aspects of smoking. At least in the US, both gum and patches are available over-the-counter.
Maybe transition to vaping? Healthiness aside, it's a way to inhale and ingest nicotine without dealing with the smoke issue.
Thus far I have:
Cleared out dust from under my bed. Was it part of what was aggravating my allergies, or is copious spring/summer pollen what's destroying me? I have no way of knowing, but I figured it can't hurt.
Refilled the hand soap next to my kitchen sink. I mean, I could certainly just keep using the dish soap for handwashing like I have been ever since that hand soap ran out, but if I've got the two containers already, why not refill them?
Changed the batteries on my air quality meter. One of those minor things that's super easy to do, but I always forget to bring the batteries down whenever I'm in my basement, and going down JUST to replace the batteries feels like a bigger task than it actually is for some reason?
Funnily enough I also need to refill the hand soap next to my kitchen sink. Started using the dish soap like 2 days ago as a replacement and am a little glad it's not just me that thought to do this. I'll grab a soap refill on the way back home from work later I guess.
This is not quite what you're describing, because it is something I simply keep forgetting about, but thanks to this thread I finally ordered a different type of dog poop bag. Hopefully these ones won't keep driving me batty as I stand by the side of the road for two minutes trying to get the damn thing open.
I canceled my car insurance after a bad wreck but forgot to make the last small payment. I just made that last payment. Thank you for posting this thread.
We had a power flicker but avoided an outage a couple of days ago. This tripped the breaker for the main bathroom but I just hadn't messed with it. So I finally went to go do that.
Of course when I reset the breakers the lights still didn't work. So I tried to reset the outlet and it wouldn't. The other bathroom's lights worked so I was stumped.
Until I realized the other bathroom's outlet tripped, reset that one, then reset the main bathroom outlet and tada lights.
I credit this post and every video game that ever taught me circuits.
Next up is replacing the light switch in my ceiling fan.
Somehow the outside light for the back door is wired into the GFM breaker for the upstairs bathroom. So everything else in the house is working perfectly, you don't notice that your toothbrush isn't charging, and yet nothing you change or do can fix the patio light ....
Yeah at my place, both bathrooms are wired to the same GFCI, so if one trips the other does. These are also tied to an outdoor outlet that has a weatherproof cover. That outdoor outlet's silicone seal was deteriorating and tripping when it rained which would then trip both of my bathrooms' outlets. That is now fixed and no more tripping.
My assumption is this is done just as a simple way to tie more things into GFCI that need them (wet locations, etc), which would also explain why in some cases an outdoor light is tied into these?
That is a weird one. I have several switches that do nothing - don't turn off an outlet, a light, a fan... And that's not even counting the one that is for the sink disposal that we don't have.
We had to make them add a smoke detector and the GFI outlets by the sink before we bought the house and all of the electric is dumb.
I can't undo the nut on the bolt that holds the switch without a wrench and couldn't find one. Ugh
This is tomorrow's task now
Did this Sunday, it became a very big annoyance, but some Tildenizens helped me get it squared away
I've been making all kinds of dad excuses for why I haven't had the time to refine a costume concept and go shopping at thrift stores.
Festival season is coming up and my friends have some especially stupid things in the works and so far, I'm just going to be trotting out the old hits.
I need all the motivation I can get!
Well I for one really want to know what the costume is now!
Lol, well so do I! My friend fabricated a 1/4 scale toilet covered in disco ball mirrors with a blinking "deposit here" sign.
All I have so far are some cool tights. Pretty poor effort.
I just tightened the screws on the bedroom door handle. I have no idea why those loosen up
I removed the shower door so I could take it outside and strip the water spots off of the glass. This turned in to me wondering why the shower door frame was loose, which turned into me finding out that water was getting into the wood framing around the shower.
Fixing a minor inconvenience turned in to probably needing some bathroom renovation. Oh well.
Oof, that's tough to discover. But silver lining: better now than realizing later with more damage.
Hey, so, I loved this topic. Would you be okay if I credited you but made a similar post over in the fediverse?
Of course!
And no need to credit me. Take the idea and run with it however you want.
Just refilled the salt tank for our water filtration system. It wasn't out, but a couple more weeks and it would have been more than minor issue.
I (finally!) de-rusted and repainted the mailbox. Thank you!
I feel like this year has been the year of tackling things I've been putting off. In the 'small annoyance' front:
I've relatively recently fixed a few little things in my car after the weather got nice. I recently did spark plugs, and replaced a couple other smaller things.
This thread helped inspire me to spend a few hours removing invasive buckthorn from my yard. Is that too huge an annoyance? I've been working to get rid of for the past few years, but have been putting off handling this year.
Edit: Annnnnd I finally finished a project and filled a hole in my yard that I've been procrastinating doing for a year now. Such a relief to be done!
Thanks for the nudge,
fixed the toilet flush system which would get stuck leaking into the bowl ( very easy, just remove all the limescale deposits ) which had a very high wife approval factor!
Well done :) I also had a toilet problem I fixed last week that required descaling! My issue was poor flush power rather than leaking, though.
I changed my password & pin to the library and also renewed a few books while I was on the website anyway :)
Did a bunch of post-mice cleanup and sanitation after multiple rounds of disinfection and time for extra safety. Have a bit more to finish up today, and going to 3D print a shield/cover to block the one remaining spot i think they're still getting in from. If they still find a way in after that then they're squeezing incredibly tight. I think I have nearly fully mice-proofed the cabinets at this point
Update: The spot I thought I needed to block actually didn't exist. However, I did find a couple of spots I missed the last time, and also still 3D printed a cover/surround to go around the drain pipe and sit atop the steel wool below it, then weighted that down, that way it looks clean and is a couple layers of protection around the biggest gap.
Next, I decided to buy some caulk and I'm going to caulk all the seams where the cabinet floor meets the house's wall in the back and the sides where it meets the walls of the cabinets, because the seams have a bit of a gap that a young mouse might be able to get through. It's overkill, but worth it. I just want to be 99.9% sure a mouse is impossible because I want to be able to put stuff back in the cabinets and drawers worry-free that they're not going to get massively contaminated again like last time