Friday, September 3, 2010

‘Mini-Me’ Greenie-Me

After snake charming yesterday I had a load of Turbin towels to wash. In doing so I finished off a bottle of laundry detergent – but it left me a tad ‘burpy’ with a blue and filmy yogurt aftertaste. It was one of those ’64 load’ monster jugs that weighs probably almost twice as much as two ’32 wash load’ bottles which I ordinarily use as barbells.

My body type, and primitive sweaty pheromone-laced jungle ardour, is on par with that of a Lowland ‘Silverback Gorilla’. So I often wonder how ordinary petite-people heft these giant vats of laundry liquid into position and uncork just the right amount of ‘goo’ into the washing machine. I am cheap, so typically I buy these freakishly oversized containers since the manufacturer charges ‘LESS’ per wash load when you buy MORE of their product. That makes sense for most things, but detergent is mostly water. Doesn’t it seem dumb to pay more freight to ship added water and packaging and then sell it to the end-user at a better price?

So enter these newer ‘mini-me’ liquid detergent bottles. They still come with the same number of bubbly wash loads, but since the cleaning agent is ‘thicker’, more gelatinous, and highly concentrated with less water - the bottle is smaller. In fact so small that it only takes a single capful of the stuff which is a third of the size of the bigger jugs. Now I was thinking, why stop there, why don’t we concentrate this gunk down further so we can dispense it out of a caulking gun? Or heck, maybe even that is too large - why not miniaturize the detergent into the viscosity of a dehydrated track-team loogie, or a completely water-free Dentyne-sized stick of gum?

Honestly I have not quite embraced these new lightweight bottles and their ultra-viscous contents. Not only am I too impatient to wait for the ‘blue-goo’ to pour out of the cap, I tend to want to overfill the lid and therefore get LESS wash loads per jug. I guess I can get on-board with the lighter, mini laundry bottles though since they are easier on the biceps and at this point, I certainly don’t want to ruin my perfectly honed Yeti-physique with exercise! And yes I do want a better and ‘GREENER’ environment for the world … except for those chewy track-team ‘phlegm-gems’ of course.

4 comments:

  1. I feel your pain. I always overfill, too. Caulking gun.....LOL!!!!!! Now I have that image...and guess what? I'm doing laundry as we speak! Have a fantastic long weekend!

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  2. No, it is not 'dumb' to sell products made larger and costlier by adding water. It's only dumb to BUY them. Tsk Tsk. Poor guy.

    If you overfill the washer with detergent, unless your machine rinses really thoroughly, you might ITCH when you wear the clothes.
    No, Heloise didn't teach me that, my wife and our minimally-rinsing washer taught me.
    'S'cuse me now. I feel an itch coming on.

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  3. I had to switch over to the High Efficiency detergent since new my washer calls for it. Apparently I can wash with bigger loads and less soap!

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  4. Oh, man, you crack me up! I am picturing you lifting weights with the huge bottles of detergent. They are heavy, but luckily I am packing guns just below my shoulders (yeah, right!). Also, I DEFINITELY like the Dentyne Detergent idea. Very nice! They've reduced dishwashing detergent to a little square. How come they couldn't reduce the detergent size further for clothes? Get to workin' on that, WCC!

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