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Comment by logifail | Hacker News Reader

> Before people realize that they can't really make a 3-layer cake in a toaster

Our 12-year-old recently tried to make himself "cheese on toast" by putting both cheese and uncooked bread into the (almost brand new, upright) toaster. Aaargh!

Cue the house full of smoke, a stern reprimand, then a couple of hours of my time wasted on removing every last piece of burnt greasy cheese from inside the toaster, followed by several empty runs with it outside to let it get properly hot and burn off the last of the fatty residues.

He was, at least, quite sheepish about his learning experience.

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At the risk of sounding like a salesperson, I'd like to mention a feature of basic/classic Dualit toasters - namely, the optional and elegantly simple sandwich cage. [1] The cage is designed to take two slices of bread with a filling (in my usage, always heavy on the cheese). You put this into the toaster slot, which is vertical, and safely make cheese/whatever toasties. So, your 12-year-old had the right idea, but not the right toaster.

FWIW, and now going full salesperson, Dualit toasters are low-tech and minimalist. The timer is clockwork. There is no automatic pop-up function; you can depress a lever to raise the toast during cooking to check its colour, if you like. All parts are serviceable/replaceable. I've had my bog-standard Dualit (plus two cages) for 20+ years, and so far I've not had to replace even a heating element; and this with usage at least five days a week.

[1] https://www.dualit.com/products/original-sandwich-cage

Generally I'm salty at people going full sales mode. But this time? I'm not even mad

Sandwich cages are the kind technological solution people in general just have something of a blind spot against. Made myself a note if I decide to buy a toaster when I move next year

Ah, the wonders of technology and engineering :)

How do you deal with the dripping cheese part? I’m guessing a tray at the bottom you need to clean?

Removable stainless steel tray at the bottom of the toaster. The metal panels that the toaster rests on are easily accessible too. It doesn't have a spring-loaded "pop", but rather there's a lever on the side of the toaster to lift or lower the toast.

It’s explained on the website.

it is closer to a panini maker that you'd think... lets call it a poor mans panini even if it isn't very cheap.

The cage is very stiff and squeezes the slices very tightly together. So get the bread thickness and filling right, and it doesn't drip much/at all, and the slices will stick together. Crusts help. So it's not unlike a dedicated panini/sandwich toaster.

It's not perfect, a dedicated device is worth it if you're going to use it a lot and/or you have the counter space.

When I was reading the GP comment, I immediately thought of the Dualit toaster. I'm not at all affiliated with them, but I own the classic as well as this sandwich cage and I cannot recommend it enough. They are expensive, but user-serviceable parts means that everything broken can be easily replaced from the logic board to the heating elements.

I think we should support companies that not only support right to repair, but look towards quality and longevity of their products. Dualit makes the case. Bonus points that their classic series are hand built in-house!

I would note the parent comment appeared to have been talking about an open faced sandwich, i.e. cheese topping on a slice of toast.

Even if I'm incorrect and a closed grilled cheese sandwich was the culprit, a toaster oven would still be a better suggestion in my opinion!

A toaster oven, or even a conventional oven with a broiler setting.

Using a real oven for this is kind of a massive waste of energy. I got a smallish countertop convection oven and it's basically replaced nearly all uses I previously had for a small toaster oven and our proper mounted oven that takes 8 million years to preheat, along with a good chunk of microwave uses. The big one only gets used for really big stuff now, maybe once every few months at most.

Dunno man, mine takes less then 5 minutes to get to about 150°c. I never measured it but just activating it before I take a pizza from the freezer is enough time to get it fully preheated. It really depends on the quality of the oven i think. There isn't that much more Air to heat so the wasted energy is less then you'd intuitively expect. And regular sandwich irons take at least as much energy, because it's not an enclosed space, consequently bleeding a lot of energy into the room

Toaster ovens and toasters are at most 1800W appliances. Typical electric oven elements are in the 3000-3500W range. If you're broiling, toaster ovens are much more efficient.

Ovens I've used take roughly 15minutes to warm to 400F (200C), regardless of if they are electric or gas.

How many times can you run that oven before you spent the energy required to produce the toaster oven? I'd bet it's in the thousands.

If you apply the same anti-consumption calculation to everything in life I applaud you wholeheartedly.

That said, you can buy a toaster oven for $30 from Walmart, and that cost covers the energy, material, transportation, and labour, plus markups at each stage. If you assume a $0.10/kWh energy cost, you might have at absolute most 100kWh of energy used in manufacture. That puts the oven/toasteroven breakeven point from an energy perspective at no more than about 60 hours of heating element usage.

Your oven is miraculous compared to every fixed oven I've ever had access to.

At any rate we're talking about toast here and an oven broiler only has one setting (usually): all the way on, so you're using as much energy as it takes to brown a steak just to crisp up a bit of bread.

It's not really about heating up the air, anyways, toasters and broilers mostly directly heat things. A toaster (or toaster oven or countertop convection) just has the elements closer so can direct more energy into the bread and less to.. everything else.

Ha. I knew the influencers would eventually make their way to Hacker News.

But seriously won't the cheese drip out the bottom?

The cage holds the bread slices together, creating more friction for the cheese to counter the gravitational force. So somewhat surprisingly, little if any cheese drips out.

But DOES IT MAKE FRACTAL PATTERNS ON THE TOAST?!?

If it doesn’t, all it takes is a microwave transformer. EASY!

Oh look, my channel now has 200k subs! Cool.

There's no electrocution risk with that?

Yeah. Using literally any other normal method seems much safer and cleaner than that idea.

No.

Also it's incredible difficult to touch the elements even if you wanted to: there is a mylar sheet covering them (and they are behind a cage...).

See:

https://assets.dualit.com/images/landscapehalf/50027-classic...

> There is no automatic pop-up function

That's a bit too low tech for me, but otherwise looks like a solid device :D

Presumably it does turn off on it's own.

Yes, when the clockwork timer runs down.

It's a fun idea, but I must say I have discovered quite by chance that an inexpensive toaster oven is the tool for this job - as well as countless other jobs.

Not just toasting bruschetta - it's secretly a $60 patio oven, opening the door to things like baking fish mid-July without heating or smelling up the house.

This is my take. Mid 40s and I’ve never owned a toaster in my adult life, but the toaster oven gets frequent use. However I don’t make plain toast ever. I suppose if I did, especially in the AM, I’d see the appeal.

I still don't see the appeal, what's the advantage of the non-oven toaster? Maybe it is quicker or something? But the toaster oven is a timed device anyway, just run it while the water is boiling for coffee...

Toaster's smaller and easier to clean. Quicker to start, if only slightly. Probably faster. Wouldn't be surprised if they're more power efficient per slice of finished toast. Toaster oven, being large and having so much functionality overlap with a normal stove (and microwave, to some extent), is far less common (at least in the US) than the smaller and more focused toaster. Most two-slice toasters you can easily stuff in a drawer or cabinet. Toaster ovens demand permanent counter space.

Takes up way less space!

Has way less utility! Jk, this is a valid point, I just happen to have plenty of space so this isn't a factor for me

Upright toaster is very quick and low risk of burning even when left unattended. I my experience, that timed example falls apart unless you're right there to take it out of the oven. I don't drink coffee so have no reason to hang out in the kitchen. I'd start it then go to my room and get dressed and return to my toast on my own time. However, my toaster oven behaves like a real oven and holds heat even when the elements turn off, I'd have to do a lot of experimentation to figure out the right time/temp setting. Figuring out the desired setting on a upright is incredibly easy. Once set, it's set and forget. You just push the button, walk away, return when you want to eat your toast.

Non-oven toaster is better at making toast. They do a more even job on both sides. Toaster ovens never quite get it right and bread placement is finicky, too close to the door and it often doesn't brown well especially in cheap models. I still use a toaster oven because it's more versatile but it IS worse at making toast.

Never owned a toaster. If I want toast I just do it in a pan. It surprises me how many people don't realize you can just use a pan.

I think it’s likely those people just don’t want toast bad enough that they’d be willing to cook it that way. Juice isn’t worth the squeeze type thing.

Meanwhile if you’re in the cohort that enjoys homemade toast, enough very infrequently, you almost immediately find value in owning even a $10 toaster.

Yeah I'm pretty confused as to why people are suggesting all toasters with super-dupe sandwich cage thingies. Why care about the orientation of your food while it is toasting?

It's easier to evenly heat a vertical slice of bread, for one. Most times I've used a toaster oven I've ended up with one side cooked much more than the other. Plus a horizontal toaster oven takes up a lot more counter/cabinet space, which is at a premium in a lot of kitchens. (I don't have a fancy toaster or fancy sandwich accessories, but I do really like the idea of multiple-use appliances.)

I've been looking for a toaster that works as well as the ones made 60 years ago. And for once, a marketing page has me convinced to pry open my wallet.

But there is no link or button anywhere on the page that tells me how to buy one. :(

In the UK, you can find Dualit stuff in stores that have a kitchen appliance section (John Lewis, say). I've seen them in shops in Germany and the Czech Republic, too. Not sure where you're based, though. Mind you, there is a little shopping trolley icon at the top right corner of the page ...

Or the site map has "shop" listed:

https://www.dualit.com/products

Don't know if that's international or just UK. A basic search shows Dualit stuff at Target and Home Depot, though. Amazon, too.

While a nice looking toaster, and supposedly good, I could buy 10 cheap toasters, each lasting up to 10 years, for the same price as one of these.

It is at this point I realised my toaster oven is fine, for that once a week serving of toast.

Now, if they had a 30 yr parts warranty, or some such, at least I'd feel semi-secure..

They're engineered for restaurants so they're absolute overkill for any home use. Your home toaster isn't going to successfully pump out 400 slices of toast per hour.

They're engineered for home use, that's why they are sold at home depot, on amazon, and in retail outlets.

Restaurants buy proper commercial gear, from hospitality supply depots. You don't buy restaurant ovens, and gear, from amazon or home depot. A strong tell is, restaurants aren't looking for candy red, enamel coated stuff. They want stainless, and their gear is hidden away in the kitchen, and they don't want to pay a penny more for trend.

Honestly, why would you say that? There is nothing about this that is commercial.

A 30 yr parts warranty is what tells people it's actually well engineered.

Maybe not for 400 slices an hour but Dualit toasters are stainless and pretty standard issue at cafes and bed and breakfasts in the UK.

They may have a commercial line, but that's not what you get on Amazon, or Home Depot, with its 15 candy colors and consumer facing build.

If cafes are buying a toaster at home depot, they're doing it wrong. Most retail equipment even specifies warranty is void for commercial use.

Searching for "Dualit toaster" on Amazon brings up their classic line as the first result. While available in a range of colours both the four and six slice versions are advertised as "Built for commercial use." https://www.dualit.com/products/original-toasters

My aunt had the six slice version rated for 240 slices an hour when she ran a bed and breakfast. I've also seen the four slice one in smaller cafes. All in the polished stainless steel finish of course.

Why can’t you buy industrial appliances from amazon? They sell some of the same items (I didn’t go through everything) that restaurant supply does.

https://a.co/dHB5rSm

The clockwork timer on mine broke, so I bought a replacement and repaired it.

I bought it in Europe so it was 220v. When I moved to the US I purchased 110v heater elements and swapped them out.

It's metal, held together with screws, and toasts bread. It's perfect.

They sell uncaged vertical toasters?!?!?

I want to give a shoutout to a similar but much nerdier design, which is no longer sold. Kenmore (rebadged as De'Longhi) used to make a single long-slot toaster with an adjustable width all the way out to about 2 inches. I have one. The heat element isn't amazing, and it, like the Dualit, is manual lift with a timer. But critically, you can move the toaster elements manually together or away from one another with a lever on the top of the toaster. In other toasters, the elements are fixed in position regardless of the bread width. As a result, this toaster is amazing for big thick hand-cut slices of bread. And no need for a sandwich cage at all: you can put entire hoagies in there.

A picture: https://www.lowes.com/pd/De-Longhi-2-Slice-Aluminum-Toaster/...

This morning I was making toast in my cheapo toaster and was reminded of the Dualit a customer brought in last year for me to repair. The date code was 1997 and it sounded like it was the first heating element replacement it had needed in that time. I thought the one side/two side heating element switch was particularly clever.

Honestly I was just impressed that the parts were available. Most consumer-grade toasters use nearly-identical mechanisms, with zero available replacement parts (maybe a crumb tray if you're lucky).

Conventional toasters are so cheap it makes no sense to try to repair them. Plus they aren't built to be repaired at all. When my last one died I tried taking it apart to see what went wrong (element burned through as it turned out) and see if I could fix it, but the whole mechanism was basically as single piece put together with spot welds and rivets, and with part markup being at least 2x or 3x initial cost there would be no way repairing it would make sense. I could gripe about it being cheap junk designed to fail, but it lasted over 20 years and browned thousands of slices of bread.

If some well built toaster that won't fail costs more than 4 times what the cheap toaster does, then it probably doesn't make sense to buy it. Especially if you can't guarantee that the well built toaster will actually last a lifetime.

In theory you want anything with a finite lifespan to not need any repairs or maintenance during its lifespan and only fail once its lifespan has been exceeded.

Repairing isn't supposed to make sense, you get the next, better iteration of the product.

In practice, products fail way too early and for easily avoidable reasons justifying the need for repairs.

If it cost only 4 times as much I'd probably consider it, but 10+ is just a really hard sell unfortunately. I had to scrap a perfectly good toaster because I couldn't find a replacement for a cracked plastic part that is supposed to make or break contact in a switch and engage the electromagnet. It would still toast fine if you held down the lever, and it pained me to toss it, but I couldn't source or fabricate a safe replacement part.

I'm sure the manufacturer(s) don't want to worry about self-service causing house fires though, and it costs a lot to create, maintain, and distribute a stock of replacement parts for what ultimately is a disposable appliance. I just wish I could find a solid basic consumer/prosumer toaster in the sub-$100 range.

Replacing tiny broken plastic parts is the main reason I now own a 3D printer. Granted, a toaster is one of those places where the relatively low melting point of PLA or PETG might be an issue, but it is still very useful to be able to fabricate replacement parts that are otherwise impossible to find.

Even better is how I can redesign the replacement part so it doesn't fail in the same way next time.

Considering their two-slice toaster I just looked up is $300, it better have repair parts available for the next, IDK, 50 years at least, not to be a complete rip-off. I expect I'll go through a half-dozen toasters in my life, and probably won't spend that much total (inflation adjusted).

That was the same conclusion I came to. I replaced my $20 toaster from 2015 with nearly-identical $30 toaster in 2020. I had looked into a lot of options to avoid the unified toaster box mechanism, including building my own, and eventually decided that the value proposition just wasn't there (especially considering how infrequently I make toast).

Right, I'm sure it's worth it for someone who's really into toast, and I get the whole buy-it-for-life thing, but I try to be a little selective about what I go that hardcore with, and a toaster doesn't pass that test for me. Shit, that's almost a quarter of what I recently paid for an entire stove, or about half the price of the cheapest stove that store had.

Even with the cage I'd be worried that the content could still slip into the toaster.

I'll keep using my toaster-oven for that.

A story from an academic summer camp where I used to work:

In the dining hall one morning, a teacher sees three kids putting ice cubes into the toaster. The teacher walks up to them. Two of the kids dash away, leaving the third to fend for herself.

Teacher: "What are you doing?"

Student: "Putting ice cubes into the toaster."

Teacher: "Why would you do that?"

Student: "To see what would happen."

Teacher: "Okay. Let's think about this. What happens to ice when it gets hot?"

Student: "It melts?"

Teacher: "Yes, it melts into water. And what happens when you put water into an electronic device like a toaster?"

Student: "...it goes boom?"

Teacher: "So should you put ice into the toaster?"

Student: "No."

Teacher: "Thank you."

This is a camp explicitly for gifted & talented students, by the way. They are exceptionally talented in many ways, but they're still 11 years old.

> This was a camp explicitly for gifted & talented students, I might add

Believe me, they're the worst ;)

My son recently got on the wrong train to get home from school, it was one that was "fast" that is it doesn't stop in the place where we live, his train sailed straight through our station and the next several stations, before it finally stopped somewhere and he got off.

At this point he (rightly) whipped out his phone and called me for help/advice. I checked the train timetables, figured out that although I could have gone and picked him up in the car, it would actually be quicker - and perhaps a learning experience - for him to get the train back.

So, I told him "go to platform X and get the train at HH:MM and it will bring you home".

He went to platform X, but unwisely got on the first train which arrived, which unfortunately was a delayed - fast(!) - service. So, he ended up going in the other direction on a fast train - and (again) not stopping - straight through our station, until his train eventually reached somewhere it did stop at.

At this point he phoned me in tears. I got in the car and drove there to pick him up.

We filed that under "learning experience". We seem to be having plenty of them...

When I was 10 or 11 on a camping trip I watched an adult make sopaipillas, on a propane camp stove no less. So the morning after I get home I get up at 6AM and try to recreate the recipe from memory. My mom is a bit a of health nut, so for flour I used the whole-wheat we had available and instead of a frying oil I used olive oil. I turned on the gas stove and smoked the entire 2000sqft two story house out with a grease and burning dough fire.

Even if a video I could watch online was available in the 1990s, the recipe would still fail no matter how safe the instructions were because I misunderstood the base concepts. My mom taught me safety in the kitchen afterwards.

I was that 12-year-old. My brain still works this way when tackling novel problems.

If I may suggest, instead of reprimands (I'd imagine your kid knows they'd messed up and won't try this experiment again), use these situations to teach your child about forming hypotheses, questioning assumptions and doing reality checks before starting an experiment.

Waffle iron. It's a horizontal toaster and applies enough pressure to cook faster. Leaves cool marks.

Just don't burn yourself! (Technically applies to the toaster as well though)

Horizontal sandwich toasters are the popular kind of toasters around my parts. It can make from plain toasts to fully stuffed sandwiches and are not that hard to clean either. I guess Americans will consider them more as a grill though.

In North America you would be more likely to encounter a panini press.

I have seen that fancy horizontal mitsubishi toaster on youtube but never one in store.

Panini presses are less common here only* because they take up more kitchen real estate than a smaller upright appliance and can be reasonably replaced by a skillet. "George Foreman grills" were in vogue for a few years in the 2000s, but I rarely ever see them now.

*Probably also because American bread is awful.

> Probably also because American bread is awful.

Except grilling it is the best thing you can do to oversugared white bread.

I disagree. Throwing them away is the best thing you can do. These things are nasty.

You can buy proper bread here, you just need to stop shopping at the cheapo grocery stores.

We have one too. It's great. You can put anything in them. Super simple, though I suppose it lacks a timer.

Yup. And we put 2 slices of bread with some cheese in between into them all the time. Easy to clean too.

The only thing that seems weird to me is "uncooked bread" reference by GGP - did their 12year old put a dough in the toaster?

Same as a panini press. We've never owned a toaster, which seem weird to some. We use our panini press instead. It's a flat model without any grill marks. Easy to clean and makes perfectly even toast.

Tbf the texture and mouth feel is completely different. I prefer toasted as the bread dries out a bit and gets crispy in the process.

The bread dries out in our press also. You can see steam being released before it gets hot enough to smoke.

One bonus way I like to make it for myself is keep the lid open and only cook one side. This leaves one side moist and other crispy. Downside to toasting one side is it's slower due to no pressure.

Cooking both sides with lid down is quicker, but you have to be careful with the height setting you use. We know how to make it perfectly now, but when we first got it we were making squished cracker-like toast.

It's still different though, enough for me to have a preference. Maybe I didn't or can't articulate that difference or you find it a close enough substitute (or outright preference). Moisture content aside, toasting by warm air and radiant heat and toasting by direct contact with hot metal plates creates enough of a difference for me to have a preference. Minor differences in cooking methodologies can make significant changes to mouth feel and other aspects that factor into taste/flavor.

> Our 12-year-old recently tried to make himself "cheese on toast" by putting both cheese and uncooked bread into the (almost brand new, upright) toaster. Aaargh!

I know it's tempting to blame modern technological monstrosities for this nonsense, but kids were lighting toasters on fire before the internet.

Source: lit a toaster on fire, prior to the January 1983 IPv4 migration on the ARPANET (and long before I knew what any of that meant).

I don't think anyone was blaming modern technology, or anything specific, for this nonsense?

The "cheese on toast" anecdote was told in response to someone blaming modern technology for "outright faking craft and cooking tips". Contextually I gathered that modern technology might be part of the conversation.

That's one way to read it, but it might just be a related anecdote that the poster wanted to share. Without any explicit mention of blaming modern technology I don't think it's fair to make the assumption that the text is doing that.

Just because you respond to something doesn't mean you are either refuting it or agreeing with it.

I've been putting cheese in the vertical toaster my whole life… he just did it wrong.

You have to put 2 slices of bread, cheese in between, and of course take it out before it all starts burning.

You are not alone. Moreover, I was honestly thinking that was the way _everybody_ did it.

Would never have occured to me try and make cheese and toast in a toaster, although the cage someone mentioned is something I need to check out!

I make my cheese and toast in a frying pan (I honestly thought this was way _everybody_ did it :D )

I make grilled cheese that way. If you want a toasted/baked option instead, toaster ovens exist and are fabulous for this sort of thing.

Pro tip: position your cheese slice as per leaving some margin at the bottom of the toast and press that zone.

Toaster pockets! A whole new world of bread-related experiments awaits.

We had an employee who once tried cooking bacon in a toaster oven and it caught on fire. Filled the office with smoke, so it happens.

Well then this employee must've done it wrong, because I cook bacon in my toaster over (and now an air fryer) all the time.

However, you do need a tray on which the bacon sits, which was perhaps your employee's mistake.

Are people using the word toaster to refer to two different appliances in this thread? In American English a toaster is a device that holds bread vertically between heating elements. There's a similarly named device called a toaster oven which is essentially a standard electric oven that's been shrunk down to countertop size.

Both the parent and grandparent to your comment were referring to a toaster oven.

Hey now, I envision a device which slides into a vertical toaster slot, and toasts bacon, whist catching the grease.

Anyone want to coin in?

Well that sounds like a jolly good idea! What, you suggest a kickstarter?

Go for it!

> a couple of hours of my time wasted on removing every last piece of burnt greasy cheese from inside the toaster

I'm not (currently) a parent, so this may be off base, but I am currently in the crunch part of the process so looking to learn:

Is there not a better opportunity for this to be a learning experience by making it a couple of hours of your kid's time to do that cleaning? I know my adult life has benefited from my parents' insistence that I clean up my own messes, and 12-year-olds are certainly capable of generating elbow grease.

As cleaning a toaster most likely involves sticking things into it (like a brush, maybe even a knife to scrape off the burnt stuff) and you also don't want your kids to stick stuff (especially metal) into a toaster, I'd say it's safer to skip the "elbow grease" lesson in this special case.

Yes and no. Punishing your kid for some dumb but innocent action has the potential to make them too cautious. Additionally, they might damage the toaster because they have no experience on how to properly open and clean it and that would make things much worse. That's especially true if your kid might be neuro-divergent - e.g. kids with ADHD tend to be clumsy but cannot help it, they might be 30% behind in motor coordination. So your 12yo might have the eye-hand coordination of a 7-8yo, and I would not let a kid that age clean a toaster on their own.

IMO, the best course of action would be to not ridicule or reprimand them but explain how this wasn't the best course of action and then clean the toaster together with the kid - that way they learn how to do it and don't feel like an idiot. And you don't have to fume over what your kid did wrong but spend some time together.

Obviously, if your kid actually IS dumb and reckless, things would be different.

I certainly agree that modulating the level of supervision of the cleaning to the kid's abilities is warranted, but I still think they should be involved to the end.

I don't see it as a punishment to make the kid stick around and help with the cleanup to the extent they can; rather, it's an attempt to practice conscientious habits (if you make a mess, you stick around to see it cleaned up even if you need help to do so), in addition to the specific learning experience that some things are really hard to clean, so we should be careful in our experiments with those things.

No, no I wouldn't disagree they should be involved, I maybe misunderstood and believed you'd make the kid do the whole cleaning as a lesson.

Kudos for not just throwing away the toaster. Will have benefited the learning experience.

About ten years ago, I bought one of those small countertop toaster ovens that is roughly big enough for four pieces of bread to lie flat in it. It became the best $100 I've ever spent. We cook everything small enough to fit in it, including toast with cheese :) . We've since only used our regular full-size oven maybe half as often, because this small countertop one is so much faster and more convenient

No need for an actual toaster, although this one takes a minute or two longer. As an added bonus, my mother-in-law hates waiting that extra minute or two, so that's a big win in my book.

> then a couple of hours of my time wasted on removing every last piece of burnt greasy cheese from inside the toaster

Do you have a fancy toaster? I wouldve just replaced mine, although mine is pretty basic

That's a super wasteful solution to this. The toaster is perfectly salvageable.

So drop it off at a salvage location. OP was complaining about salvaging it, like it was necessary. If you want to do is as a fun personal project, go for it, but it is wasteful of human time to salvage something that cheap rather than add it to a scrap pile for a professional salvage company to process in bulk.

As a bonus, the kid learns that if you arent careful with your items they may break and be gone. you dont waste hours of your time on something that should cost about 1 hour of your time at work max.

Edit: Agree to disagree, but my post is still a valid position to hold and im open to conversation. but sure use downvote as a dislike button - we are all familiar with where that gets us.

okay guess im an asshole. go use a salvaged toaster in your kitchen. for $20, id rather not risk burning my house down or teaching my kids to put their hands inside the toaster but to each their own

Seems better to teach the children to value their possessions.

What better way to teach that than have them understand if they dont respect the way something is supposed to be used, they might break it?

Could be fun to sit with them and take apart the toaster and assess it together and see if its worth cleaning or replacing and explaining why. But I wouldnt spend 2+ hours cleaning it by myself and then complaining about it

I’m not American so I will never understand the dusposable-everything mindset.

I will happily spend hours repairing something that costs 15 minutes of my time to buy.

Throwing away salvageable things is just wrong, it’s not an economic question for me.

there's a lot of relevant things i could get into on it. in short though, disposable items are cheaper and despite what a lot people think - most of us are broke.

after you adjust to dealing with disposable items a lot.. you kind of grow out of the feeling that every item is special and needs to be repaired to max extent and kept for as long as it can. It feels anthropomorphic / overly sentimental to do that. the moral argument gets the curtain pulled back and there's very little substantiating it. imo, at least. Curious if you can shed better light on your moral stance here tbh. im not die-hard on this subject and would happily update my views if convinced otherwise

I respect that you have a productive hobby interest in repairing items, and for the most part I share that. But I dont see anything wrong with throwing something away that could be salvageable. Once it stops working, it is just parts and material and I now become part of the demand for toasters. What's wrong with letting toaster specialists handle toaster demand? In the time it takes me to repair a toaster, the specialists can produce 100 of them. and thanks to people like me buying from them rather than doing it myself, they remain productive members of society and get to feed themselves. And I get a couple hours back to do something else to potentially improve society or my personal life.

All that said, I do think there is a lot more we can do with waste management to better deal with disposed parts and materials, though. A lot of how we handle disposed goods is definitely wrong. we mix materials with food waste and it makes everything gross and expensive to work with. food waste really should be a hard split from everything else but maybe one day

Replacing it teaches the kid that if you break something, it magically comes back like a respawn in a video game.

I'd be very tempted to work with him to help clean it; let him do much of the grunt work whilst I helped and supervised (though to be honest I wouldn't be that hard on my kid for doing this unless he had been told don't do it beforehand. I've done enough boneheaded things in my day!).

the point is that OP was complaining about the time he didnt need to spend cleaning it

>I'd be very tempted to work with him to help clean it;

how is this being hard on your kid, but you doing it by yourself is totally normal and replacing it a total economic waste? Is it easy to fix or not?

It's also wasteful of energy and materials to scrap and replace something that's still perfectly functional.

except it isnt functional. it is covered in burnt cheese that will take hours to fix. it's a huge waste of time to clean off burnt cheese from such a tiny piece of material.

collect a bunch of similar materials from the dump and bulk clean them all into workable materials again with a pressure washer in the same amount of time.

Work an extra 2 hours, use the money to buy a new toaster, and spend the rest on food for the homeless.

the moral argument is bullshit. it's a waste of your time, and the only reason you dont think so is because you get personal enjoyment out of fixing things (i do too)

It's only monetarily cheap because it's been built, like most modern things, with a massive externalization of its waste-cost.

Same for toilet paper but we flush it anyway. Everyone in this thread is suddenly zero-waste zealots.

Presumably until it comes to incremental updates to a phone, laptop, video game system, etc

It's totally reasonable for an individual to say "it's not worth my time and effort to fix this, I'll just replace it." Taking a moral stand against repair-and-reuse in general is weird. Some people are on a budget where replacing even a $25 toaster is not a painless expense. Some people don't like producing unnecessary waste.

And throwing it away without replacing it punishes everyone in the house for the kid's mistake.

>Taking a moral stand against repair-and-reuse in general is weird

Nowhere did I do this, and the claim is confusing because I am a supporter of repair-and-reuse in general. People are extrapolating from me saying specifically that a toaster is not worth it. Toasters cause house fires. I would always sooner replace it for $25 than salvage one.

>And throwing it away without replacing it punishes everyone in the house for the kid's mistake.

A lack of a toaster for a day or two hardly punishes anyone, and the child sees that other people can be impacted by their recklessness.

> Some people are on a budget where replacing even a $25 toaster is not a painless expense

Yeah, I am one of those people actually. I have an emergency fund that I would happily use for this 1-off incident.

The salvaging actually helped the learning experience immensely - shows the kid that carelessness can have lasting consequences.

Replacing the toaster and yelling 'We had to spend $X to get a new one now!' will be forgotten by the end of the day.

>The salvaging actually helped the learning experience immensely - shows the kid that carelessness can have lasting consequences.

If the kid was present for it. Otherwise, its very much just another "oopsie" they did that mom and dad clean up behind the scenes and they have no idea what the difference is between ruining a toaster and spilling a glass of milk.

>We had to spend $X to get a new one now!

I would never say this to my kids.

> I would never say this to my kids.

So what would the learning experience consist of then?

> If the kid was present for it.

OP mentioned several hours of work + dry runs in the garden. Pretty hard to miss that, unless they're perpetually glued to their screens (which would be the bigger concern). PS: Also, unless you take your kid to a physical store, the new toaster will pop up even more magically than the cleaned one.

the learning experience is that the toaster they were familiar with is gone because of what they did. very simple. I guess I am the only one here that doesnt want to fuck with toaster repair. they arent worth it. they can cause fires and give electrical shocks.

honestly, the last thing i want my kid to think in that situation is that it is okay for them to put their hands in the toaster. Which they might do if they see me do it while cleaning

>> can cause fires and give electrical shocks.

which is why you unplug it before working on it and make a BIG point to the kid of both hazards, and how essential it is to remove power before working on something, AND to do test runs in a safer area like outside, etc.

>>the last thing i want my kid to think in that situation is that it is okay for them to put their hands in the toaster

I'd say that you don't want them putting their hands in WHILE IT IS POWERED or HOT. Important distinction, and best started early and often. They'll see it sometime, better to have them have a context so they can tell the difference between doing the same thing when it is smart (powered down and repairing), vs Darwin Award candidate level stupid (when powered); then they can evaluate other's actions and draw the right conclusions.

If you are confident enough in your ability to convey the entire full safety message to your kid and take full responsibility for anything they do as a result of that information, then go for it. I'm just saying for $20 it isnt really worth it. I dont want my kid fucking with electronics outside the designated use-cases it was built for, period. Cheese in the toaster? item needs to be cleared by a professional again. I dont care if I feel personally competent enough to clear it myself. I have very easy and safe alternatives.

Odds are the toaster company doesnt want you mess with it either. This isnt the old days where you can just use some elbow grease and fix everything on your property. Liabilities need to be managed. Electrical items need certifications. Doing it yourself takes hours. It's just a lot of things that are unnecessary to deal with over a toaster.

If I am going to teach my kid anything about fixing electrical items it's that if it isnt working then he (or she) should unplug them and then he shouldnt touch them until certified to do so. It'll encourage them to look at the bigger picture of the problem.

Sure, as an adult we can see through red tape and feel cool about it and want to teach the same to our kid.. but it's really not worth it. Kids that are smart enough to learn the will likely experiment with new things they learn. Just because they safely unplug the item before working on it doesnt mean it's safe to plug back in afterwards.

I would have made the kid do it

Ahhh, yea did that as a kid too. Although, I tipped it on its side. The trick was to make toast then microwave the cheese :)

But seriously, my mom was furious. No YouTube required.

Same ... but for me it was plastic sleeves in a laser printer ...

Or the other trick is to microwave the uncooked sandwich slightly (10-20 seconds) so that the cheese starts to melt and then toast it so bread and cheese both get toasty without burning.

> The trick was to make toast then microwave the cheese

Just use a toaster oven. They're horizontal.

Far more versatile.

“Just” procure a new kitchen appliance as a child

> then a couple of hours of my time wasted on removing every last piece of burnt greasy cheese from inside the toaster

Should have been a couple of hours of his time

As annoying as that is, these kinds of events are very helpful for young folks.

That's how we learn.

I still do dumb stuff all the time, it's just more complicated dumb stuff :D

But at least it is complicated and -novel- dumb stuff.

If you lie the toaster on it's side it works.

You can buy reusable toaster bags that make this possible.

All sorts of crumbly, melty things can go in a standard upright toaster.

Did he learn it from YouTube or some other social media?

If so, why is he on there unsupervised?

Do you remember being a kid? It's not feasible nor desirable to monitor your children 24/7

Kids that age shouldn't be on YouTube at all. And there are parental controls.

Here is a hack for extremely fast grilled cheese.

Basic idea is to make the components separately:

1) toast two pieces of bread until they are dry and quite brown, this is important (to remove the water ) so that the bread does not heat up in the microwave

2) while it is toasting, cut up cheese for each slice, I use quarter inch thick 1“ x 2“ pieces, usually four per slice

3) after the bread is toasted, put them on a glass plate and butter them, then cover each with the slices of cheese

4) microwave 30s until the onset of melting

5) optional to add cold deli meat the sandwich after microwaving and combining

6) cut into fours and serve with optional dipping sauce

The dry toast and the melted cheese have a very good texture and taste and it takes about 3 minutes to make.

I make this for children often and add a bunch more cheese and meat so that four pieces of toast can be the main part of a simple lunch for 8 kids (each cut into quadrants).

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