Congrats to student designer Meghan McNeil, who won a $5,000 scholarship for her Dirty Dish Mat design (a dish drying mat/organizer with a built-in drain stopper in the middle) in this year's Simplehuman Simple Solutions Design Competition, beating out the runners up winners that included the sculptural Legada Fruit Spire, the Grocery Bag Bin, and the mess controlling scoop + serve dog dish all shown above...
"The dish mat makes it easy to organize and rinse your dishes in the sink, which prevents standing water from accumulating and breakage from over stacking. It also has a built-in drain stopper so that the sink can be drained with the dishes and mat still sitting in the basin."[via Mocoloco]
Comments (7)
Nifty solutions for problems I don't have. Is Simple Human going to produce the winning idea and sell it? I didn't see anything about that in the press release.
The dog bowl is a rip off of Wetnoz's bowl and Gaia and Gino's set of twins dog bowls.
I think anyone who actually owns a dog and has a scoop for their dog food can tell you that this scoop dish is actually *poor* design. When you reach inside with a scoop, the bottom of it gets dirty too, with food crumbs/dust clinging to it and forming a thin film over time. With this bowl, I would be scooping the food and getting those crumbs on the kitchen floor.
i seriously do not get it. Are you meant to wash the dishes in the sink with the "organizer" in there at the same time? what does the drain stopper do? Wouldn't you want the water to run down the drain as it falls off your dishes rather than forming a small puddle? Someone help!
(btw, i believe the best designs are the simplest and give you the sense of "why didnt' i think of that" -- this clearly does not qualify)
I don't see what the dish drainer does that most in-sink dish drainers don't already do.
I am liking the shape of that fruit bowl though.
Agreed - I'd much rather have the fruit bowl or the bin as winners.
That organizer would get on my nerves. For one thing, I have way too many dishes to wash. They wouldn't all fit. Second, the handles would get in the way of washing. Third, I'm likely to add more dishes to the sink later, since I usually wash my dishes after supper, but I might have a snack later on. Plus I don't washes my dishes every day (don't have time or just dont' feel like it).