Shut the door! How to automate getting the kids to close the door

August 23, 2021
0 comments Family

Like any responsible parent, I get heart palpitations when my kids (and especially their friends) rush through the door, in or out, and just leave the door wide open letting all that sweet sweet air-conditioned coldness rush out like a prison break. My wife gave me these Gibcloser "Safety Door Closer" as a present and we installed them today on all 3 doors (front door, to-basement door, back porch door).

Gibcloser

They're ~$18 on Amazon.com and it appears they come in many different colors. Our doors were white so that that's what we used. It took less than 30 minutes to install on all 3 doors. All you need is a screwdriver and, I would suggest, some thin foam command strips.

Door held at 90° and released.

I know it might sound silly but I've wanted this for so long and it never occurred to me that such a simple solution might exist. Clearly, we've all seen door closers like this before, but almost always bigger. Especially on commercial buildings. But they all seem so complicated and expensive-looking and definitely strike fear in you of: "that'd never work on my home doors". What's neat about these is that they are gentle. It's just a gentle (albeit accelerating) push but if someone/something was to get stuck as it closes, it wouldn't chop off a finger or a foot.

Truth be told, they don't close the door all the way. In the above video, it closes nicely because I held the door open at 90° which is a bit unrealistic angle that someone would forget to close the door. But at least it'll close it enough to stop the flow of cold/warm air going through.

Thuas Trägubbar

January 4, 2007
1 comment Family

Thuas Trägubbar My sister, my mom and I just launched a new website for my mom and her wood carving hobby. It's called Thuas Trägubbar (which literally translates to "Thua's wood figurines". The site it unfortunately only in Swedish but hopefully people will appreciate the pictures anyway. Most of the faces done are of course only local or national celebrities but there are some international ones too.

There's even one of me.

UPDATE

It's now www.thuasgubbar.se

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