Occasionally I have an idea. When I tell my patient wife, child, or friend the idea, I preface it by saying “I have a million dollar idea”. Then, as I present the idea, the price inevitably starts to drop as the idea does not stand up well to the telling. Sometimes it’s a $100,000 idea; sometimes a $10,000 idea.
Just recently, it was the baguette quiver*, designed to aid market goers in France who are trying to juggle a roasted chicken from the butcher, some fresh meet from the butcher (which needs to be kept separate from the hot chicken), things from the green grocer, a tart packed in a box to be kept dead level or return home with an upset tart — thereby making everyone upset upon the reveal — and, a baguette or two. The baguette quiver is a place to stash the baguette and leave your hands free for other things. (A baguette in your bag will sometimes upset the balance of everything else because it’s…well, a baguette — a stick.)
Most of these ideas go unrecorded; some last in my brain for a very long time (the Pez-style Oreo dispenser).
Hotel rooms are a place full of generally awful ideas. Even when a designer tries hard, they hit all the wrong points, trying to reinvent instead of solving or correcting problems.
So here it is…today’s $1,000,000 idea. A toilet with a toilet paper roll holder built into the base, such that one finds it right between your legs. (Which is, of course, right where toilet paper belongs.) This is perfect for a hotel room as it brings one assured commonality to a design solution which, should the room where one finds a toilet not be of proper proportions, can leave one…wanting.
*The baguette quiver was quickly down-graded to a $10,000 dollar idea.
The Campmobile 