Wife Approval Factor.
Apparently, in the online circles where people spend entire Saturdays wiring circuit boards into their drywall, this is a recognized technical metric. Right alongside ping rates and voltage drops. The basic philosophy goes like this: if you rewire the hallway switches so the basement light strobes whenever rain is detected, and your partner doesn’t pack a suitcase, congratulations. You achieved a high WAF.
It sounds less like a marriage and more like bribing a municipal building inspector.
Harold had his own brush with this nonsense three Novembers ago. He bought four little white plastic pucks online and stuck them to the doorframes using foam tape that smelled sour, like salt-and-vinegar chips. The goal was hands-free illumination. You walk into the kitchen, the bulbs wake up. You leave, darkness. Clean. Modern.
Except sensors don't have eyes. They have tiny infrared lenses that deeply despise thick wool socks.
I would shuffle into the entryway holding a carton of milk, waving my free arm around like an airport tarmac worker in a blizzard just to coax sixty watts out of the ceiling. Harold would be sitting on the sofa with his phone, squinting at local network logs. "Don't jerk your arm like that, Bren," he’d tell me. "It’s calibrating the polling interval."
Click. Then sudden blackness again.
Approval? I didn't want a dashboard. I wanted to butter rye toast without flapping my elbows like a stranded pelican.
Eventually, gravity settled the debate. One humid Tuesday, the cheap foam tape surrendered. The pucks tumbled onto the linoleum with a hollow plastic clack, landing right beside the dog's water dish. Harold swept them into a drawer and quietly screwed the brass toggle plates back on the wall. Normal switches. Crisp, spring-loaded, mechanical clunks that give you light whether you are stomping, shuffling, or simply trying to find an aspirin at two in the morning.
He claimed the project was being phased out due to hardware obsolescence. I called it a victory for sanity. If a home improvement project requires an acronym to measure whether your spouse will endure it without sighing, the house was probably smart enough to begin with.
Tell me: what is the absolute silliest gadget someone in your house tried to install before cooler heads prevailed?
Originally published on Substack.
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