23. Let Me Sell You On: Shower Crayons, Citric Acid, Wizard Hats
Y’all like slightly weird life interventions that bring substantial gains on the margin, right? Especially when they’re pretty cheap to try? Right. So I have a few possibilities squarely in that reference class that you might find useful or pleasant. Let me sell you on three of them today. Wait no where are you going come back -
SHOWER CRAYONS:
Shower crayons are great. You know how you have shower thoughts sometimes? Little stray ideas or thoughts that you want to keep track of while showering, where maybe you wish you could avoid the legitimate minor inconvenience of drying yourself off and going looking for a pad of paper and pencil in order to go record them properly? Those thoughts are real, and they are valuable, and you do yourself a disservice both by dismissing and forgotten them, and also by neglecting to use every practicably writable/erasable surface in your house for offloading working memory. I have a solution for that. For ~$14, you can pick up a pack of 12 crayons, or ~$8 for 6 of them; Trustic is my recommended brand as of late 2025, as I’ve had good experiences with them in the past and they offer variety color packs. You can mark up any non-porous surface - like the ceramic tile or plastic walls of a shower stall or bathroom, or the glass of a bathroom mirror - in a variety of colors, and then use a melamine foam eraser - ~$3 for a 3-pack; Magic Eraser is the best-known example - to wipe it totally clean, regardless of how long the crayon has remained there. To that end, you can leave notes for others, like shower operation instructions or marking hazards; you can also write up fairly persistent notes and checklists for yourself. As a warning, it’s quite hard to get the marks off of anything porous, like drywall or wood - this is probably downstream of their actual intended use in workshops, construction, and lumbering - so it’s best to avoid writing on anything made of similar materials that you plan to leave in place. The palest ink exceeds the strongest memory. Pick up a pack of workshop crayons, write all over your shower wall, and thank me later.
CITRIC ACID:
Citric acid is great. It’s a very safe acid, the same that shows up in citrus fruits, which is why it has the precise kind of edible sourness it has; as a tricarboxylic acid, it’s ridiculously soluble in water, even after having complexed metal ions; and unlike vinegar, it has no smell, which makes it more suited to applications where you care about scent. For ~$13 you can buy a pound of it, and for ~$7 you can buy 4 ounces, which is my recommended size; Milliard is the gold-standard brand. The fact that metal citrate salts form readily and are extremely water soluble means that cleaning off rust from anything ferrous is shockingly easy - it’s an active ingredient in CLR - and cleaning limescale from kettles is just as simple; just ask RS at Mox. As a food additive, it substitutes well for lemon juice in applications where all you want is the sourness; for example, making fine adjustments to a dish that needs some brightening, or addition to a water bottle to make the water more interesting without the worry of mold growth from the sugar in lemon juice. As a warning, you might want to avoid using citric acid if you have a bad mold allergy; the major industrial process for making citric acid routes through feeding sugary crop waste to a specially engineered Aspergillus mold. As one last application, citric acid makes a good rinse aid for dishwashers and an excellent additive to laundry rinses; in stripping away grease and neutralizing leftover soap, it functions vastly better than conventional fabric softener, which merely applies a thin layer of wax to clothing. In all cases, it vastly outstrips vinegar in effect, cost, and logistical burden - it comes as a powder, not a heavy liquid. Get yourself a small bag of citric acid, make your home life more comfortable, and thank me later.
WIZARD HATS: (Admittedly the hardest sell of this post)
Wizard hats are great. Let’s leave aside the part where they look cool as hell, because not everyone thinks so. Too often people forget that the whole reason wizards and witches of myth are depicted wearing them is the fact that they’re immensely practical hats with very simple assembly patterns. They keep the mist that passes for rain on the west coast off of you and protect you from sun exposure even better. The brim covers the back of your neck and your ears excellently, protecting both from the sun, unlike ballcaps. Boonie hats do almost as well to ward off sun exhaustion, but they fail at preventing the next problem, which is heat exhaustion and getting glued to your head. Properly-made wizard hats also allow air through, such that the top of the hat not only doesn’t get glued to your head, but even contains a dead-air zone that collects moisture from your head and allows any passing breeze to carry it away, being cooled from lack of sun exposure the whole time. BecsIndustryShop on Etsy in particular sells the excellent one pictured here for $25, and it’s made from a pleasantly soft polyester felt which is also stiff enough to allow you to tinker with the brim shape to precisely block that sun and rain even better. I’ve done so at speed during near-dawn highway driving and a sports competition without problems; if anything, it was safer and more convenient than using sunglasses. The fabric comes in numerous colors and is indeed also breathable enough to permit passive cooling as mentioned earlier. The only warning is that people might look at you slightly weirdly or ask if you’re a wizard. I recommend ignoring the fools with their stares, and settling on a good response to the question, like “Yes” or “No” or “Only in my free time”. Buy a mage hat, dodge sunstroke in style, and thank me later.
27820/32768
Shower crayons are great. You know how you have shower thoughts sometimes? Little stray ideas or thoughts that you want to keep track of while showering, where maybe you wish you could avoid the legitimate minor inconvenience of drying yourself off and going looking for a pad of paper and pencil in order to go record them properly? Those thoughts are real, and they are valuable, and you do yourself a disservice both by dismissing and forgotten them, and also by neglecting to use every practicably writable/erasable surface in your house for offloading working memory. I have a solution for that. For ~$14, you can pick up a pack of 12 crayons, or ~$8 for 6 of them; Trustic is my recommended brand as of late 2025, as I’ve had good experiences with them in the past and they offer variety color packs. You can mark up any non-porous surface - like the ceramic tile or plastic walls of a shower stall or bathroom, or the glass of a bathroom mirror - in a variety of colors, and then use a melamine foam eraser - ~$3 for a 3-pack; Magic Eraser is the best-known example - to wipe it totally clean, regardless of how long the crayon has remained there. To that end, you can leave notes for others, like shower operation instructions or marking hazards; you can also write up fairly persistent notes and checklists for yourself. As a warning, it’s quite hard to get the marks off of anything porous, like drywall or wood - this is probably downstream of their actual intended use in workshops, construction, and lumbering - so it’s best to avoid writing on anything made of similar materials that you plan to leave in place. The palest ink exceeds the strongest memory. Pick up a pack of workshop crayons, write all over your shower wall, and thank me later.
Citric acid is great. It’s a very safe acid, the same that shows up in citrus fruits, which is why it has the precise kind of edible sourness it has; as a tricarboxylic acid, it’s ridiculously soluble in water, even after having complexed metal ions; and unlike vinegar, it has no smell, which makes it more suited to applications where you care about scent. For ~$13 you can buy a pound of it, and for ~$7 you can buy 4 ounces, which is my recommended size; Milliard is the gold-standard brand. The fact that metal citrate salts form readily and are extremely water soluble means that cleaning off rust from anything ferrous is shockingly easy - it’s an active ingredient in CLR - and cleaning limescale from kettles is just as simple; just ask RS at Mox. As a food additive, it substitutes well for lemon juice in applications where all you want is the sourness; for example, making fine adjustments to a dish that needs some brightening, or addition to a water bottle to make the water more interesting without the worry of mold growth from the sugar in lemon juice. As a warning, you might want to avoid using citric acid if you have a bad mold allergy; the major industrial process for making citric acid routes through feeding sugary crop waste to a specially engineered Aspergillus mold. As one last application, citric acid makes a good rinse aid for dishwashers and an excellent additive to laundry rinses; in stripping away grease and neutralizing leftover soap, it functions vastly better than conventional fabric softener, which merely applies a thin layer of wax to clothing. In all cases, it vastly outstrips vinegar in effect, cost, and logistical burden - it comes as a powder, not a heavy liquid. Get yourself a small bag of citric acid, make your home life more comfortable, and thank me later.
Wizard hats are great. Let’s leave aside the part where they look cool as hell, because not everyone thinks so. Too often people forget that the whole reason wizards and witches of myth are depicted wearing them is the fact that they’re immensely practical hats with very simple assembly patterns. They keep the mist that passes for rain on the west coast off of you and protect you from sun exposure even better. The brim covers the back of your neck and your ears excellently, protecting both from the sun, unlike ballcaps. Boonie hats do almost as well to ward off sun exhaustion, but they fail at preventing the next problem, which is heat exhaustion and getting glued to your head. Properly-made wizard hats also allow air through, such that the top of the hat not only doesn’t get glued to your head, but even contains a dead-air zone that collects moisture from your head and allows any passing breeze to carry it away, being cooled from lack of sun exposure the whole time. BecsIndustryShop on Etsy in particular sells the excellent one pictured here for $25, and it’s made from a pleasantly soft polyester felt which is also stiff enough to allow you to tinker with the brim shape to precisely block that sun and rain even better. I’ve done so at speed during near-dawn highway driving and a sports competition without problems; if anything, it was safer and more convenient than using sunglasses. The fabric comes in numerous colors and is indeed also breathable enough to permit passive cooling as mentioned earlier. The only warning is that people might look at you slightly weirdly or ask if you’re a wizard. I recommend ignoring the fools with their stares, and settling on a good response to the question, like “Yes” or “No” or “Only in my free time”. Buy a mage hat, dodge sunstroke in style, and thank me later.
27820/32768
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