I had a pair of things to fix around the house recently, and I noticed a theme with both of them – that sometimes a simpler solution is the best one – despite the challenge that there might be in finding that simplicity. Perhaps that’s a version of “if I’d have had more time I would have written a shorter letter“, and it’s expected that something simple might be harder to come up with. Regardless of that, I wanted to collect and share those two stories here:
First, was the key for my 2013 Corolla. It’s the kind with both an old-fashioned metal key, and a built-in fob, or remote-control buttons on the base of the key. The problem was, that the plastic loop that allows the key to go onto a key ring had broken, so the key would fall off my key chain. I won’t go into details on my first attempted fix, other to say “zip ties and electrical tape”. Of course, I could have gotten a replacement, but doing that with the dealership, I assumed, would be at least a few hundred bucks, so I wanted to find a cheaper solution. I was able to find blank replacement keys on Amazon, but then there was the challenge of how to (1) get it cut, and (2) get the electronics reprogrammed. I reached out to a handful of locksmiths in the area, but not a single one gave a reasonable response to my inquiry. So I felt a little stuck.
Until I spent some time looking at the key and taking it apart. What I eventually realized was, that the base of they key is essentially a two-piece shell – one which has the key embedded into it, but the other, the back, is just a simple plastic case – and both pieces of the shell have a loop on them. So the simple solution I came up with was, to order a blank replacement, then take it apart and use its simple back to replace the back from my original. So I could keep using my original, and just have a working loop again, via the loop on the back case from the replacement. No locksmith or dealer needed. Simple.
My second story is about my wife’s iron. She has a very specific one that she likes, but a few months ago, the lid on its water tank broke, so she couldn’t use it, without water leaking out of the tank. Apparently this iron is discontinued, and after much searching, I was able to find just one site that still had it in stock – so I ordered a replacement. But, after just a few weeks of use, it started “shorting out”. I’m not sure if that’s the proper electrical term – but essentially it would start working fine, however, when moving the cord (which is inevitable when using the device) it would loose power and turn off. It was basically unusable.
At this point, I thought I might be able to disassemble the new iron, find the bad electrical connection, and fix it. I wasn’t sure if I could find it, and even if I did, if it would be safe to use after the repair. Regardless of my doubts, I started taking it apart and looking closely at all of its component parts. After several minutes of fiddling with it and thinking about it all, eventually I noticed that the water tank itself was a component part that could be removed. That’s when I remembered that we still had the old iron with the broken water tank lid, and then the solution was obvious: I just moved the tank from the new iron (with a good lid) to the original iron (with working electronics), and voila, we have a Frankenstein’s iron, but 100% functional, and totally safe, because it isn’t based on me fixing any wiring 🙂
Having both of these stories come up within about a week of each other struck the same chord in my brain, about how I was originally looking for some kind of bigger or more complicated solution to a problem, but in the end, simpler solutions were available to me. I feel like there’s some lesson to take from this, though I don’t quite see that bigger picture yet.
