We’ve come a long way since Dickensian times but life can still be pretty tough with all these first world problems to contend with.
Take breakfast time, for instance. You stick some toast down only to find, when it pops up, it’s slightly more ‘done’ than you like because your other half got in there first and pre-heated the toaster.
Then, when you open the peanut butter, you discover there’s only a scraping left, which is lodged under that hard-to-reach bit that’s inaccessible by knife (or any other pointy household implement). After eating your inadequate breakfast you go to wash up but the last bit of washing-up liquid simply refuses to squeeze out.
Life officially sucks.
But don’t worry – next time you’re having one of those days, take comfort in the fact that, as we speak, thousands of technologists, scientists, and people with too much time on their hands, are beavering away in their laboratories, studios and garden sheds to find solutions to these devastating everyday dilemmas.
From the toaster that allows you to choose your shade of toast and the double-ended peanut butter jar that gives you access to every last smidgen to the washing-up gloves with their own built in detergent dispenser, life – or breakfast at the very least – could be about to get a whole lot easier. Then there's the 3D-doodle pen and the bin that moves to catch your badly thrown rubbish - and how did we ever live without our vibrating GPS belt?
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The following groundbreaking innovations don’t hold the key to medical advancement or offer a solution to global warming but they might put a little smile on your face on an otherwise boring afternoon in the office.