Journal: News & Comment

Permalinks to this entry: individual page or in monthly context. For more material from my journal, visit my home page or the archive.

Detergents, wind-ups, and tubs

A mixed bag today, a little on the ranty side:

• In our kitchen we have a tubby little bottle of one of those concentrated "ultra" dish detergents. Yesterday, as I watched an ad for a different one (I've probably seen thousands), it occurred to me -- does any consumer actually want "ultra" detergents? Before they existed, did anyone look at a regular-sized bottle of quality dish soap, such as Joy, and think, "Man, that's just too big," "You know, one or two squirts of that in the sink is just too much -- I wish I could do it with half a squirt"? If it's a packaging and environmental matter, then why not simply put ultra detergent into the same size bottles of old, so we need to buy fewer bottles and use less detergent? The only people the smaller bottles benefit are the detergent companies, who can ship more dollars' worth of soap in the same trucks.
  
  
• It's about time.
  
  
• Now that I'm all worked up, I should report that, ever since puberty, I've been a showerer, not a bather. But my wife, who has a bath every night, has shown me the restorative and calming powers of a nice hot tub full of water before bedtime. Now, fairly often, I have a bath before bed, which helps get me all nice and sleepy, especially on a chilly night like tonight. I still need a shower to wake up in the morning, however.

 |