Icons of Juvenile Product Design: 01.

After a somewhat lengthy hiatus due to work, holidays and buying-housey kind of commitments, I am returning to this bloggery for more reflections on our state of management. Like I said before ... ummm.

Today is the first instalment of what should be an ongoing series on Icons of Juvenile Product Design with observations and comments about the iconic baby and kids products that are omnipresent in the lives of all parents, so much so that you can almost walk into any family home and get a sense that you are in your own … until the somewhat bemused family living there asks you to leave.

There is already have an extensive shortlist of products for the series, but I am also open to additional suggestions, so send them in.

To kick things off we have the following little gem:

01. Ikea KALAS plastic cutlery, plates, bowls and cups.

(Seving suggestion)

Thank you Monika Mulder for designing this globally omnipresent set of plastickery.

These KALAS products are comforting in the sense that you can just as likely encounter them out the backside of middle-America as in the poshest of apartments in inner-city London.

They are fantastic from multiple perspectives of their affordability, durability and conspicuous lack of cross-promotional branding. Indeed because of all of these, one will forgive the fact that it is next to impossible to efficiently stack the bowls in a dishwasher.

And by the way, is it just me, or has anyone else noticed that the end of the spoon looks remarkably like a pair of testicles?

Ritual Remnants

This is the result of one of the most interesting rituals that occurs when a tribe of infants gather together in a typically debased, unruly celebration of the birthday of one of their own.

At the epicentre of any of these celebrations is the sacrificial ritual.

In the lead up to unveiling of the symbolic, sacrificial beast, the excitement is often palpable, with tensions rising as party members become irritable at the prospect that perhaps the event might end with no such feverish dismemberment, or that they alone might miss out. This excitement continually grows, before rising to a peak as the revelation of the plated sacrifice heralds the awesome moment.

Then, once the sacrificial object has been revealed and the formal preliminary rites and fire ceremony have been conducted, the tribe fall upon the baked beast, gorging themselves in a messy, bloodless frenzy.

Observations have revealed that the sacrifice can assume many forms, depending on the cultural origins and ideology of the tribe, yet it almost always is enveloped in an embalming, sickly sweet substance, often embellished with innumerable gaudy, edible objects.

Surprisingly, more often than not, the frenzied ritual is over in moments with the majority of the sacrifice intact, having been plucked and sucked clean with the tribe members having moved onwards in their sugar-induced delirium. No one quite understands why, but perhaps they leave this as a residual offering to appease the gods of excess. Another interesting theory is that the residual material is retained, re-embalmed and re-presented at the next tribal celebration. Indeed some have suggested that the core of the sacrifice is not edible at all, being merely a vehicle on which to present the embalming substance and decorations. I, for one think that this makes perfect sense as it conserves the tribe’s valuable resources.

The poignant irony of it all is that, no matter what the configuration of the sacrifice, generally the sole part whose consumption is guaranteed is the very same part that was the recipient of no less than 123 ml of the celebrator’s saliva during the culmination of the fire ceremony.

Interestingly, zoologists have recently argued that this feature of the ritual has its own important role in the development of shared viral immunity amongst tribe members, highlighting the fascinating interconnection between ceremonial and survival-based behavioural patterns within the tribe.

From “My Year as a Stuffed Toy: Insights from Within” by Thomas Kinder.

Family Home Styling Tips #23: The Low-down on Sofas

In your new life, when considering a new couch, in addition to the criteria of colour, comfort, length, material texture and durability, it is critical that one also assesses the cushions’ structural integrity as a building material.

Soft floppy cushions are out. Water repellence and stain resistance are in. Buy a couch with both seat and back cushions to increase the number of available structural elements.

And most importantly, remove all the cushions and ensure that you are comfortable sitting on the frame, as that is all that your children will leave you.

Mothballed

Oh well … perhaps … next year?

It's a fine line

We can all appreciate the thought processes and intentions behind this image, but there is a fine line between creating an adorably cute piece of dry, witty live art satire and a two-and-a-half-foot tall bogan slogan.

Where does that fine line lie?

I have no idea, however I suspect that its location depends partially on whether your child has the poise, attitude and flair to carry the look off and whether you live in a trailer park.

Ironically, although the t-shirt in this image was artificially created some time ago for the express purpose of this tongue–in-cheek photo, we continued to dress our first, and now second child in this exact T-shirt long after the need for modelling had passed.

Can someone pass me that bourbon please?

Even more ironically, the concept has now been commercialised by Cotton On Kids, amidst some controversy. Now I can’t really put my finger on exactly why that doesn’t sit well with me, as I actually have no problem trampling on the supposed sanctity of pregnancy and parenthood and I also like the odd dose of shock therapy. But I think it has something to do with the commercialisation aspect (and the fact that I didn’t do it first).

Accepting that there is an undeniable element of sleaziness to these t-shirts, I might venture that if one personally, and lovingly, crafted a piece of risqué fashion for their infant, the sleaziness is somehow diminished. However when a big label begins acting as a purveyor of that sleaziness to others, it is akin to pimping.

Yet we really should put aside our objections, as these T-shirts could be of benefit to society as an effective means of identifying insidious outbreaks of redneckery within the community, something that makes easier the job of the burly mercenaries hired to enforce the National Redneck Relocation Program.

I’m sorry, in what universe …

… is 7:30 am considered a sleep-in?

Um … this one.

Contributions ... please?

Oh. By the way … in my intro I neglected to mention one very important role that you out there can play in the life of this blog.

That of a surrogate parent.

If you come across scenes in your daily life that capture the pure essence of what it means to live life as a parent, then I’d love for you to tell me about it. Better still, snap an image of it and send it in. You know, it’s not as if you aren’t already taking a gazillion photos of anything remotely related to your children.

And before you accuse me of some kind of creepy impropriety, I don’t want pictures of your kids! The stuff of this blog is not your children, it’s what’s around them, and more importantly you.

Send contributions (after reading the legal stuff at the bottom of the page) to:


If submitting photos, please ensure they are as high a quality as possible. And submissions from the latter years of parenting are also welcomed, as it always helps to know not just what is around the corner, but also 10 miles down the road.

So please, go forth, capture, document and submit to the blog. Together we can nurture it from infancy to adulthood, like some kind of bastard child of ill-defined origins raised in a commune.


Oh. I’ve just realised that I am talking as if all of you have, or are about to have kids. Well, I think that’s a pretty reasonable assumption – why else would you be here?

If you don’t, or aren’t, then what are you doing here? Gloating?

Please. Get a life.

Hang on. You probably still have one…


*Legal stuff:

By submitting to "under-nu-management”, you grant Ross de Kretser the non-exclusive right to publish your photo or story on the blog or in any other publication, commercial or otherwise, without compensation. Unless you explicitly state otherwise, your submission implies that the photo is yours, and that you are qualified to give this permission. You accept responsibility for any laws broken in the act of taking the submitted photograph or publishing it.

It’s the little things that make a difference

Old Life:

New Life:

You know at first I used to revel in the absolute essence of diminution embodied in the tiny garb of an infant. Those socks seem impossibly small and their miniature party attire insufferably cute.

But every pleasure has its dark side.

And it becomes apparent when you calculate the result of the exponential formula that has the variables of age and filth generating capacity as inputs and laundering work as the output.

An end result of which the clothes line in the second photo is symptomatic.

Close observers might also notice the different ambience the two images and may be drawn to conclude that I was making a symbolic statement regarding the unbridled bliss of parenthood. Perhaps there was a hidden implication that the life of a parent is filled with radiance and joy, whilst that of the non-breeder is unfulfilled and overcast. Or perhaps it means that lemons are very good for bleaching vomit stains out of whites.

Or perhaps it simply means that the weather was crap in one photo and nice in the other.

Welcome ... to your new life

Well here we are ... finally.

It has now been some time since the arrival of our first child when I thought to myself:

"Wouldn’t it be interesting to put together a tongue-in-cheek observational diary of the ways which our lives have changed now that we are grappling with being new parents?”

Well may that have been an interesting idea at the time, but since that then, one child has become two and, whilst I have made notes and taken photos of many of the little things that epitomise the ways in which everything in our world has been irreversibly altered, I have pretty much done nothing.

And that’s because it was all to be done in my spare time …

… enough said.

Actually that pretty much sums up what this blog will be about… the realities, both big and small of this new life and how it is a universe away from the old one.

We’re under new management now and the way of doing everything around here has changed.

This will be a blog of images and random observations. It will most definitely be in no particular chronological order, as why would it be, when nothing within my life currently is either. In actual fact, expect it to start … and stop … get interrupted and then forget where it was … run off and wipe a bottom … and then perhaps not come back at all.

But don’t take this personally, because it is all part of the realisation and acceptance that we will now come in second place … always.

Finally, comments from the gallery will especially be welcomed, as it is important to reassure ourselves that this is all normal. And if you do comment, make sure to do it in your outside voice, otherwise I might not hear.