A home-made pendant timer-alert

A pendant timer alert which you can easily keep with you, made from a kitchen timer fridge magnet, drilled with holes and threaded with cord. A home-made pendant timer alert made from a mechanical timer available from high street and online stores.

There are all sorts of situations where one wants to keep track of time and be alerted when the time is up. The obvious example is in cookery, but there are numerous others, all of which call for a timer-alert of some sort. Even when one has found a suitable timer - which is not straightforward for a deaf person - it is all too easy to miss its alert if called away for some reason.

Fortunately there was a fashion some time ago for making digital kitchen timer fridge magnets in different coloured shiny plastic cases, shaped like medallions. Fortunately, too, these continued to ring until their stop button was pressed, rather than just giving a single ping. So I hit on the idea of buying some in a colours I liked, drilling two holes in them and threading a cord through. Then I wore one or the other as a pendant to match my clothes. Being close to the body, the pendant could readily be heard.

These coloured timers are hard to find in shops now, although as I write they are still available on the internet. For me, though, when my pendant timers eventually went the way of all good things after some years of good service, my hearing had deteriorated further. So that I now use a stronger alert - see the page on choosing a timer, but I still use it as a pendant.

Incidentally the timer pendant provides a useful strategy when cooking for guests. So often one has to leave the group because the meal needs attention, and yet it feels rude to do so while everyone is talking animatedly about something close to their hearts. The surreptitious ring from the pendant indicates that there is a good reason for making one's exit and so gets round the need to interrupt with explanations or excuses. This strategy is so useful that a number of my hearing friends now also use it, and even their menfolk can be seen wearing the timer around the house to help them keep track of time.

The pendant timer also has the advantage that it stays with you if you are called away for any reason. Even people with normal hearing report that they burnt some cooking because they were called away from the kitchen and missed the timer alert.