Last Call: What's Your Million-Dollar Idea?

We all spend enough time in our kitchens to have had the thought, even in passing, Someone could make a lot of money solving that. We might not have the idea for the next big innovation in can opener or corkscrew technology, but still, when it comes to home cooking, tiny inconveniences abound, and our brains are always whirring away, pondering a fix.

For my family, it was always the peanut butter jar: a constant source of ire and an equation that tickled some restless corner of our brains. Once a brand-new jar has been depleted even a little bit, you've got to dig the knife ever farther into the container, and it's almost impossible to come away from any peanut butter application without getting the product all over your hands from where they came too close to the mouth of the jar. What if you could always keep your hand as far away as possible by having perforated jars? You could simply tear away the empty portion of the container and start again from the top! The original lid would still fit, too, because this would be a peanut butter jar shaped sort of like a POM bottle. A peanut butter jar for an unmessy future.

We never quite made it to the R&D stage on this one, but I hold out hope that we'll get a prototype completed someday. As you can see, I don't have the gumption to follow through on these million-dollar ideas from start to finish—which is exactly why you should feel comfortable sharing your own in the comments below, without fear of infringement. Think of it like Shark Tank without the sharks: we just want to know your ideas for pure love of the game. And if anyone has a blueprint for kitchen baseboards that are spring-loaded with stepstools for reaching items on the highest cabinet shelves, I commit to spending every waking moment trying to secure you the funding to launch your business.