When I was searching for a new kitchen faucet, I had one must-have feature: the ability to set it to spray mode, turn the water off, turn the water on again, and have it stay in spray mode. This was surprisingly hard to find. Most faucets with a spray mode have a button that only functions with the water running at a high volume, and then when the water shuts off, the faucet goes back into stream mode. Or some have a button that you have to constantly hold in order to keep spray mode on.
What I took away from this experience is that most people probably have a different workflow than I do for washing dishes, or at least faucet manufacturers think so. What they seem to optimize for is:
- Scrub a whole batch of dishes
- Set the soapy dishes back in the sink
- Rinse the whole batch of dishes and put them in a drying rack one by one
The way I do it is:
- Scrub a single dish
- Rinse that dish
- Put that dish in the drying rack
- Shut off the water
- Repeat
So it’s really annoying for me to have to re-set the faucet to spray mode with every dish.
Here’s the solution I came up with: a spring clamp that fits around the head of the faucet. It’s a hack of my real world environment. My homage to Jane Fulton Suri’s Thoughtless acts.
