Yes! Yes! CVS! Now, Let's Review Some Of Their Products

I am very happy about the news that CVS will stop selling tobacco products as of October (click here for more info: http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2014/02/05/271906167/cvs-to-stop-selling-tobacco-products). As someone who grew up with two chain-smoking parents, I was aware from a very early age,  that what I was breathing was bad. The smoke coated my throat and stuck in my nose, but I had no choice – I had to breathe. The worst was when my father would blow smoke in my face, presumably because the expression I made was cute, but it was a horrible experience. How many parents blow cancer-causing agents in their own child's face?! What an (&*!


Because of my experiences growing up, I have always HATED tobacco and took a stand against it whenever I could. When I was dating, I would not date a smoker. Sorry, but the pleasure of your company is not worth the health risk from hanging around your smoke. And at my wedding, more than 20 years ago, I ticked plenty of people off when I insisted that we have a non-smoking wedding, something that was unheard of then. I made the catering hall remove all ashtrays from the banquet room and personally printed up signs that said “No Smoking.” My husband's aunt was aghast! “I love you because you're family, but I hate you because you won't let me smoke,” she said. Tough! My husband and I were not spending all that money so that the food could be tainted with carcinogens and my dress made smelly by smoke.


Anyway, I am VERY happy about CVS' decision, even though I'm sure their motives are profit-driven, and in honor of their decision, have decided to review some of the products I've bought there. Note that their decision does not affect my reviews. I just thought it would be nice to evaluate some of their products. Here we go:

1. CVS Baby Wipes – We still use wipes to clean hands, wipe faces, take off make-up, etc. CVS Wipes are great for this and are a fraction of the cost of name-brand wipes. They're not as thick as some other brands, but for what I'm using them for, they're fine. Oh, and do not keep these or any wipes in the car if you live in a cold climate. These suckers freeze, obviously, because there's water in them.
   
   
2. CVS Diapers – When my kids were in diapers, we tried every brand imaginable because the cost of diapers was so high. CVS Diapers cost less than the name brands and did not perform as well. My kids could never make it through the night dry if they were wearing one, although I did keep them in the car for emergencies. My recommendation: go with Pampers or Huggies and skip these.
   
   

3. 

   My favorite thermometer!

   CVS Digital Thermometer – We keep a few thermometers in the house because it seems that whenever I need one, either the battery fails or I can't find the darn device. I've tried various brands and the CVS Digital Thermometer is the most reliable and beeps the fastest. It's great for oral and underarm temps. Love it!
   
   
4. CVS Artificial Tears Lubricant Eye Drops – Both hubby and I suffer from allergies and these drops have been wonderful for relieving itchy, allergic eyes. They're very soothing and work great.
   
   
5. CVS Eyelid Wipes Moist Pads – Hubby bought these to help with his previously-mentioned allergies and I tried them. Yuck! They're so saturated with cleanser that they got into my eyes and I had to wipe them with a tissue. They made my eyes sting and are gross. Skip these and buy Visine Total Eye Soothing Wipes instead.
   
   
6. CVS Gold Emblem Zero Calorie Sweetener – This Maltodextrin-Sucralose concoction sweetens my coffee just as well as Splenda and doesn't cost as much. The only downside is that one packet contains 24 grams of carbs versus Splenda's 0 carbs.
   
   
7. CVS Skin Cleansing Cream – We know that soap dries your skin so you should use a cleansing cream to wash your face. Hubby was buying Cetaphil, but the CVS Skin Cleansing Cream does just as good a job as that, but at a much lower price. Having grown up with Noxema, I like the tingling-feeling I get when I use it and the scent is refreshing.
   
   
8. CVS Gold Emblem Baked Cheese Snack Crackers – If you're looking for something to put in the kids' snack bags, grab these! They're crispy, just salty enough, non-oily and don't leave an aftertaste like some generic cheese crackers do. Keep them in your car for when the kids get hungry on the go.
   
   
9. CVS Flexible Plastic Ear Cleaners – I had heard that you're not supposed to use cotton-tipped swabs in the ears because you can do some real damage to your ears and actually push wax deeper into the canal. So when I saw these, I asked my ear specialist about using them as an alternative to get excess wax out of my ears. She said NOT to use them because the potential for doing damage is great. She suggested using ear cleaning drops or just plain old peroxide-diluted-with water. Nothing against CVS' ear cleaners – you just shouldn't poke ANYTHING in the ear canal EVER.
   
   
10. CVS Gold Emblem Sea Salt & Vinegar Almonds - Scientific evidence suggests that eating nuts, such as almonds, might reduce the risk of heart disease, so we gave these a try. They've got a nice sour-salty taste and a satisfying crunch. As with all nuts, however, you want to watch portion size because they're high in fat. But they are YUMMMY!
    

By the way, I'd heard that CVS has a money-back guarantee on all beauty products, so I tried it out when the pink lipstick I bought turned out to be more neon than rose. CVS took the opened package back, which I brought with my receipt, and they refunded the full price – no questions asked. Sweet!

Many also contain a Minute Clinic staffed by nurse practitioners and physician assistants.  On my insurance, a visit to one is billed at the same rate as a doctor's visit, but you don't need an appointment.  Recently, when my husband got hurt, he went to the nearby Minute Clinic where a PA examined him and advised him to head to an Urgent Care for stitches.  She told him not to go to the Emergency Room because, on average, there's a 2-hour wait there and she knew, for a fact, that the Urgent Care was open and able to do stitches.  She did not charge him for the visit, since she hadn't done anything; other medical professionals would definitely have billed him just for being seen.  My husband respected the PA's thoroughness and integrity. 

Thanks to their no-tobacco policy and our experience with the Minute Clinic, if given the choice of going to CVS over Rite-Aid or Walgreens, I'll be taking my business here. We vote with our dollars, folks! Use your vote wisely!


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Thanks for reading. Please check back in with me over the weekend. After Tuesday's ice storm, we're due for a few more inches of snow here on Sunday and it's funny – whereas we would have been concerned about 3” of precipitation earlier in the season, now it's not even worth a glance. Perspective is an ever-changing thing....

Conquering (Sometimes) The Dishwasher Blues

I thought I had the worst dishwasher in the world.  It was a GE Model-something that came with the house; it belched like a chili-filled trucker and left the dishes looking like a Georges Seurat painting (you know, the artist responsible for "A Sunday On La Grande Jatte").  We had different repair companies come out to the house 15, yes 15,  times.  They looked it over, declared it fit, and gave me tons of advice on how to "optimize the cleaning", pack it properly, and make it do what, apparently, it was incapable of doing:  giving me clean dishes.

Part of the problem is that my town has water so hard it's a wonder it flows out of the pipes.  The high mineral content in our H20 contributes to scaling in any appliances that use it; those devices are our hot water heater, dehumidifier, washing machine, and, of course, the dishwasher.  Hard water also leaves spots and a film on dishes.  The overall solution is to install a water softening system, but that has its own drawbacks including an increase in sodium in foods cooked with water-softened water, the high cost of the system, and that yucky, slippery feel when showing.  Please - it's hard enough to get my kids to shower without them feeling slimy.

Anyway my husband,  Captain Research , ALWAYS researches things thoroughly (that's one of the qualities I love about him).  He spent a copious amount of time online gathering opinions and knowledge before he chose a new machine.    Announcing (trumpets please):  the Bosch EcoSense.

"This thing is amazing!" he said.  "It cleans, sanitizes, has a child lock, and offers a Delay feature where you can set it to wash in 3, 6, or 9 hours!  It can wash a half load of dishes or you can choose from a delicious menu of full load options including Quick Wash, Delicate Wash, Regular Wash, or Power Scrub!  You don't even have to pre-rinse the dishes.  It's THE BEST DISHWASHER ON THE PLANET!"  I hadn't seen him this excited since our last child arrived.

At first, the pricey appliance was the miracle device he promised.  It was so quiet that I had to put my hand on it to feel if it was working.  And each time I used it, my dishes were spotless.  But ... over the course of a few months, I noticed something:  the dishes were coming out dirtier than when I put them in, even after I cleaned the dishwasher and emptied out the filter. 

After calling Bosch repeatedly and nixing the cost of having repair people come to the house, we're stuck until we can justify getting a new one or I win the lottery - whichever comes first.  Until then, I'm coping and sometimes conquering the Battle Of The Dirty Dishes.   Although I'm no expert (thanks Martha Stewart), I've been at war with dishwashers long enough to know a little something about them.  For that reason, I present  my own personal assessments of some dishwasher products, various methods I've culled from around our beloved Web to make my machine perform better, and how I conquer the dishwasher blues:

Some of the products I find useful.

Products To Wash The Dishes

The Finish Line includes dishwasher tabs, gelpacs, powerballs, powders, etc.  I started with Finish because Bosch recommends them.  I've tried the full line and they're probably better than anything on the market, but the dishes don't always get fully clean.   I buy Finish at Costco because they're cheaper there than at my local supermarket.

The Cascade line.  Cascade has some pretty packaging and I found their products to be better than generic brands, but not as good as Finish.  Unless they're on sale dirt-cheap, I stick with Finish.

Seventh Generation & Ajax brands.  Not as good as Finish or Cascade, but better than generic. As much as I would like to be "eco-friendly" with Seventh Generation, I also want to save energy and water by not having to run a wash cycle again to get my dishes clean. 

Kirkland and other generic brands.  In an example of "you get what you pay for," these money-saving brands definitely did not work as well for me as the name-brand products. 

Various homemade potions I found on Pinterest and around the Web.  These usually involve baking soda and/or super washing soda.  I used one mixture which not only did not clean the dishes, but it left a residue in the dishwasher which wound up on the glasses for WEEKS.  I actually had to throw out some glassware because the Drying cycle of the dishwasher baked the residue in. 

Rinsing Agents

I found all of the name brand and generic products to be the same.  Bosch recommends Finish's Jet Dry rinsing agent, but I honestly didn't think it was worth the extra money.  Friends raved about Lemi Shine (see above) and I bought it, although I won't go out of my way to buy it again.  Here's where the generic item performed just as well as the more expensive stuff.

White vinegar, lemon juice, frozen orange juice.  While I love the idea of non-chemical alternatives, my experience is that they don't perform as well as the commercial stuff.  These substances do have their uses in the dishwasher, but I found them useless as rinsing agents.


Here's my current ritual for doing dishes using the dishwasher:

1.  I pre-rinse anything I'm going to put in there, no matter what the manufacturer says.  I've hand-washed enough supposedly clean dishes to know that food particles fly around in there like paper on a windy day and then they stick to the dishes and get baked in during the drying cycle.  Pre-rinsing beats re-washing any day. 
2.  I make sure I don't overload the dishwasher.  The water has to be able to reach all surfaces if they're going to get clean.  If you overload it, know that you will probably be doing the whole thing all over again while wasting electricity and water. 
3.  I inspect the filter AND around the door to the dishwasher before you run it.  As I said, particles get stuck everywhere, including at the hinge where the door closes.  Wipe the hinge down with a paper towel.
4.  Running the hot water before running the dishwasher is also important.  Hot water is our friend and if the temperature is already high, that's one less thing for the appliance to do.
5.  Every 3 cycles, I use a commercial dishwasher cleaner.  I buy whichever one is on sale (see photo).  Follow the directions and use it in an empty appliance.  Some people recommend running the empty dishwasher with a cup of white vinegar or lemon juice; others swear by frozen orange juice.  Supposedly, the citric acid in the juice cleans the machine.  Honestly, I haven't had much success with the home-made concoctions, but will use vinegar every once in a while when I run out of the commercial stuff since I always have vinegar in the house for general cleaning.  Usually, however,  I find that the commercial stuff is worth the money.
6.  I always have a spray bottle of diluted white vinegar, a dish drying rack, and other hand-dishwashing equipment ready.  Some loads are better than others. 
7.  I load up on paper plates.  I know they're not environmentally-friendly, but neither is having to re-wash dishes over and over.  If the kids are just going to put a sandwich down, either a paper plate or even a paper towel does the job. 

If you're in the same boat with an under-performing dishwasher, here are some helpful websites you might want to visit:

http://housekeeping.about.com  - Their page called Choose A Type Of Dishwasher Detergent gives the Pros and Cons of the different types of products available.

www.consumerreports.org - Definitely worth a look to see what they think of the various detergents.  I disagreed with their findings, but maybe you won't. 

http://lifehacker.com  - Their page entitled How To Load And Run A Dishwasher For Efficiency And Ultimate Cleanliness had some nice tips. 

I'm happy that the Bosch doesn't belch like the GE I used to have.  The fact that it's quiet is rather nice.  The reality that I still have to do the equivalent of a tribal dance to get my dishes clean is not.  Each load seems to be like rolling the dice; as I said, sometimes I have to rewash, other times I do not.  Do you have any suggestions or comments that might help?  Please share!

And thank you for reading!