[hinkley]

I wish I'd been wise enough to see this solution on my own, but in our case what happened is that charging cables kept disappearing, and it came down to the fact that when the kids broke a cable, they would throw it away and take another one without telling anybody. This same pattern was how I ended up having to put stickers on all of my laptop chargers because I had posession of 1-2 despite having 3 laptops and bought 2 extras when I dropped below 3. Shit just walks off.

And the reason the cables broke is that the distance from their bed to the nearest outlet was 2m, and they would lay in bed on their screens, with the cable stretched to its limits.

Eventually you'd reach crisis mode when we simply couldn't find a cable anywhere and someone was trying to call a plumber or talk to grandma with a dying phone. Anker charging stations came to a partial rescue, The Rules were that the cables in that charger should stay there. But kids (and sometimes my partner) rationalize 'needing' things and eventually I had to zip tie a daisy chain across all of the cables to make it easier to ask for a new cable than to try to take one.

It wasn't perfect, but about half of the devices ended up living at that charging station, because spare chargers [were] still in short supply.

[watwut]

I bought 3m and longer cables for myself and kids. Best purchase ever.

One is 6m, but that one is truly excessive.

[mwint]

I did the opposite thing: everyone in my family kept ruining the standard length lightning cables by smashing them against something while using their phone, so I found a 10-pack of literally 4 inch cables on Amazon.

Now their options are to use the phone or let it charge (or squat inches from the outlet). Haven’t had to buy any more cables.

[watwut]

My daughters tablet will go down the battery in like 15min of minecraft or roblox. And I don't mind her using it for longer then that. Plus, especially during covid, I was glad that they occasionally socialized with friends when at home.

I don't want to intentionally cause discomfort to them or me either.

[hinkley]

15 minutes is extreme, but I find for my own time management I really need artificial interruptions to help me check in with myself and others about with what I’m doing is still a good idea. For instance drinking water and coffee all day, my cup empties, I hit a stopping point, I get up, pump the blood a bit on the trio back and forth to the kitchen, come back. And then an hour later it’s off to the bathroom. The only thing I miss about the office is the routines I haven’t been able to recreate, but I’m still trying. For instance I only fill my glass from the kitchen now instead of using the closer faucet to “save time”.

Having a game eat the battery in two hours might be enough gaming for one sitting. I have a couple games that used to eat my laptop battery in a few hours even when plugged in (60W charging off the monitor) but the new monitor has a bigger power supply, and that can almost keep up with the game. I’ve had a few late nights that I didn’t plan because of it.