Toilet Travails

Tom Mottern grew tired of getting yelled at by his wife for that age-old spousal squabble: He leaves the toilet seat up.

So Mottern, owner of Osprey Custom Woodworking, fixed the quarrel the best way he knew how. He built something, an invention he calls LooLifts. It's a flat plastic semi-circle, with a diameter about half the size of a hockey puck that's taped to the underside of a toilet seat. Basically, it's a toilet seat handle, designed to make putting down or up the seat easy and (relatively) germ-free.

“You might remember to put it up,” says Mottern, “but no one puts it down.”