Whoa – Oh, It’s Magic!

Ever go into a public restroom, and hold your hand under the sink for about 5 minutes until you figure out that you actually have to turn the water on manually, or start walking away from the toilet only to realize it’s not actually flushing by itself? Yeah, me neither, nope, never happens. It’s so common for public restrooms to have automatic sinks and toilets that when we encounter ones that aren’t, it kinda throws us for a loop.

Once upon a time, when I was a young kid, we would lay down right in front of the TV with our foot up on the dial to change the channel, so that we wouldn’t have to a) get up to change the channel and b) not have to watch something that was lame due to lack of wanting to do “a”. Then a magical thing was invented called a remote control. Now our kids don’t even know how to turn a TV on without a remote. “Hey mom, where’s the remote??” “I guess it’s lost, no TV for today!” (I swear I’ve never lost the remote on purpose either, nope, never happens).

So in this magical world where things happen automatically and we don’t have to turn the TV channels with our feet, some may say that we are getting a tad lazy? I just think we are getting more efficient and sanitary. It’s only a matter of time before public restroom doors are also automatic so you don’t have to touch anything in there at all!

Where am I going with this? Sensor technology! Simple Human products have really nailed sensor technology products for the home.

First, we have the soap dispensers. I have one in my bathroom downstairs, and one at my kitchen sink.

The bathroom dispenser actually has different needs than the kitchen dispenser. Mainly because my children are soap fanatics, but luckily there are ways to adjust these products so that it can work in both locations. In the bathroom I have turned the amount of soap it dispenses in a single “squirt” waaaayyyyyyyy down. Like I mean barely any soap comes out. Again, this is absolutely necessary, as my children would use the entire thing of soap in a day if it dispensed even a teeny bit more. Not only does it dispense exactly the right amount for my kids crazy soap loving ways, the sensor is really the star of the show. I may have mentioned this before, but Simple Human even researched Olympic Sprinter’s reaction times to get the sensor to react as quickly as possible. This was a bit of an issue for me in the kitchen, which I’ll explain in a second. In the bathroom though, you want the soap to come out so fast so you can get your hands clean and get on with your day in record time. When I visited the Simple Human offices several months ago, and the other bloggers would use the restroom there, everyone would come back saying that the soap dispenser in the bathroom was like magic! It truly feels that way when you use it. The soap comes out exactly at the right time so you don’t have to hold your hand under there forever. It’s such a fluid motion that you barely even notice what is going on.

In the kitchen however, I have dish soap in there. Here is where the issue of how quickly the reaction time of the dispenser got me into trouble. I’d have a dish, since it was a black pan or something like that, it would not trigger the sensor. So I’d need to use my hand to trigger the sensor to dispense the soap. I couldn’t move my hand away fast enough so that the soap ALWAYS ended up on my hand instead of in the dish. Seriously, I tried so hard and I could not beat the dispenser! I have now figured out that I can move my finger in the sensor area and immediately just place it along the front of the dispenser. If I try to move my finger back away it will get “soaped”. So I just hold my finger to the dispenser for a second so that the soap hits the dish and we are back in business. This also makes dishwashing go so much faster, because I don’t have to constantly pick up a bottle of soap and squeeze it into the dishes while I’m cleaning them.

My next little bit of sensor technology is my new trashcan! If you’ve heard of the Simple Human brand before, no doubt it’s been in relation to “oh that’s the company that makes trash cans”. The step can I talked about here, and now we’ve upgraded to the sensor can! Often, while cooking a meal your hands are full, or “goopy”, or stirring, and you don’t have the ability to open the trash can, the sensor can is amazing. Just a simple wave of the arm, or elbow or whatever limb you have available, and your trash can opens up saying “Hello Sarah, what can I dispose of for you today?” OK, maybe it doesn’t talk to me, but that’s what I imagine it saying.

Again, at Simple Human, they have researched and studied exactly how people move when they throw things away, and have built products to optimize the way you move and the way you work. The way these products anticipate exactly what you are going to do and help you accomplish these tasks in record time is just the next step in our home evolution. Pretty soon I’m going to be standing at a trash can at a restaurant or a friends house, waiting for it to open automatically, and it won’t, and I’ll be embarrassed, again. Wait, no, that never happens, nope, not at all.

Disclosure: I was given Simple Human products to help write the review of the sensor technology.

This post may contain affiliate links, which means I receive compensation if you make a purchase using the links.

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