Wednesday, January 11, 2012
New Purex UltraPacks
The fine folks at Purex gave me the following info:
"What are Purex® UltraPacks™?
• New Purex UltraPacks are convenient pre-dosed liquid
detergent packs that make doing laundry easier than ever.
• Purex UltraPacks manage to squeeze all the performance
of our new Triple Action liquid formula into just one
powerful pack.
• Finally…No more mess. No more spills. No more heavy
jugs. It’s Laundry Simplified.®
• Each Purex UltraPack contains powerful 2x concentrated
liquid detergent, giving each UltraPack double
the cleaning power in every drop*.
• Purex UltraPacks dissolve quickly once the washer is
started—even in cold water.
• Purex UltraPacks are formulated and safe for all
machines, including high-efficiency (HE)."
They also sent me a free package of UltraPacks to try out myself. I found them to be a clever innovation; it saves time because you just toss it in, and there's nothing you can spill (the latter is especially important for when my husband does laundry). As always with Purex, you get clean clothes even though you don't pay a high price. If your life is as hectic as mine, give them a shot; you can learn more about this new laundry detergent here
New Purex UltraPacks
"What are Purex® UltraPacks™?
• New Purex UltraPacks are convenient pre-dosed liquid
detergent packs that make doing laundry easier than ever.
• Purex UltraPacks manage to squeeze all the performance
of our new Triple Action liquid formula into just one
powerful pack.
• Finally…No more mess. No more spills. No more heavy
jugs. It’s Laundry Simplified.®
• Each Purex UltraPack contains powerful 2x concentrated
liquid detergent, giving each UltraPack double
the cleaning power in every drop*.
• Purex UltraPacks dissolve quickly once the washer is
started—even in cold water.
• Purex UltraPacks are formulated and safe for all
machines, including high-efficiency (HE)."
They also sent me a free package of UltraPacks to try out myself. I found them to be a clever innovation; it saves time because you just toss it in, and there's nothing you can spill (the latter is especially important for when my husband does laundry). As always with Purex, you get clean clothes even though you don't pay a high price. If your life is as hectic as mine, give them a shot; you can learn more about this new laundry detergent here
New Purex UltraPacks
Sunday, January 08, 2012
Chore Chart at Goalforit.com
(NB: I am receiving compensation for my review of this service... but they haven't put any words in my mouth.)
The fine folks at BSM Media on behalf of Goalforit.com asked me to review the FREE Chore Chart service offered here
Chore Chart
The concept is a familiar one; make a chart to keep track of your child's chores. You create the chart online, and you can use it there (which is the greener option) or you can print the chart out if having it visible on the wall would help your child stay focused, which you'd probably need for a younger child... and for yourself as well, since YOU have to have the discipline to keep using the chart or you won't accomplish anything but causing battles over whether the child made her bed 3 days ago or not, and having it hitting you in the eye makes it harder to forget to do it.
There are many options for what your chart could look like... so many that it can be confusing to sort through, and someone who isn't tech-savvy might have a hard time. I'm a pretty serious geek and even *I* had some trouble; there are just too many settings and choices for a newbie user to have to sort through and no way that I could find to just generate a basic chart without all the extras or to use some sort of logical standard settings for your first attempt at a chart. I spent far too much time floundering around, not knowing where I was in the process or what that screen was that just popped up because there are too many things crowded close together and while trying to click away from one thing I accidentally clicked something else (at least that's what I assume happened-I'm honestly not even sure); had I been on the site to just try it out rather than to review it I would've given up in frustration before I got a usable chart created.
Be that as it may, if you can figure it out you certainly have a wide variety of chart options; you pick theme, color, what to name it, the chores, when they need to be done, point values and so on. On the down side, the setup includes requiring you to put in unnecessary info like the child's age and gender EVERY SINGLE TIME, even though these things have no possible impact on the design of the chart; hopefully they'll fix that. (And btw, I didn't appreciate having to enter my equally unnecessary birth date while registering for the site; I dislike having to enter more personal info than I need to on general principles, and REALLY dislike having a task take longer because they went overboard with the # of fields they require to be filled in to do anything.)
Once you have a chart created, you can click on its title to view it... except the entire month doesn't come up, just the line(s) for the week you're on, and presumably previous weeks, which is confusing because the chart has the name of the month on it and you expect to see a chart showing an entire month... or maybe that's just me, but I had another struggle while thinking that my entire chart wasn't loading before figuring out that that's what (again, presumably) was going on.
The system allows you to assign points for chore completion (aka "Moolah") that can then be redeemed for rewards of your choosing; this is a good idea in general, but there doesn't appear to be a way to subtract points for failure to comply, and I think kids need to see a penalty for disobedience rather than just not getting rewarded. I don't know about you, but when *I* was a kid if there weren't penalties for not doing what I was supposed to do I'd never have done a single task, and not getting a mark on a chart wouldn't have motivated me in the slightest, lol. Now, you could of course still penalize a child for not doing their chores, but that'd mean you're still battling over chores with them directly and then what has the chart accomplished?
Overall, I'd say that for those that want or need more structure in how they deal with their kids' chores, and have the time and patience to master the system, this site would be a valuable resource; once you have it set up correctly you could save a great deal of time compared to making physical charts by hand, and you can also edit the charts at will which would be clumsy to do with a handmade chart. Since the folks running the site have asked for this feedback, I'm guessing that they'll be streamlining and otherwise improving the creation process so that eventually there won't be such a sharp learning curve involved; they have a good basic premise and will very likely end up being a go-to site for plenty of stressed parents.
The fine folks at BSM Media on behalf of Goalforit.com asked me to review the FREE Chore Chart service offered here
Chore Chart
The concept is a familiar one; make a chart to keep track of your child's chores. You create the chart online, and you can use it there (which is the greener option) or you can print the chart out if having it visible on the wall would help your child stay focused, which you'd probably need for a younger child... and for yourself as well, since YOU have to have the discipline to keep using the chart or you won't accomplish anything but causing battles over whether the child made her bed 3 days ago or not, and having it hitting you in the eye makes it harder to forget to do it.
There are many options for what your chart could look like... so many that it can be confusing to sort through, and someone who isn't tech-savvy might have a hard time. I'm a pretty serious geek and even *I* had some trouble; there are just too many settings and choices for a newbie user to have to sort through and no way that I could find to just generate a basic chart without all the extras or to use some sort of logical standard settings for your first attempt at a chart. I spent far too much time floundering around, not knowing where I was in the process or what that screen was that just popped up because there are too many things crowded close together and while trying to click away from one thing I accidentally clicked something else (at least that's what I assume happened-I'm honestly not even sure); had I been on the site to just try it out rather than to review it I would've given up in frustration before I got a usable chart created.
Be that as it may, if you can figure it out you certainly have a wide variety of chart options; you pick theme, color, what to name it, the chores, when they need to be done, point values and so on. On the down side, the setup includes requiring you to put in unnecessary info like the child's age and gender EVERY SINGLE TIME, even though these things have no possible impact on the design of the chart; hopefully they'll fix that. (And btw, I didn't appreciate having to enter my equally unnecessary birth date while registering for the site; I dislike having to enter more personal info than I need to on general principles, and REALLY dislike having a task take longer because they went overboard with the # of fields they require to be filled in to do anything.)
Once you have a chart created, you can click on its title to view it... except the entire month doesn't come up, just the line(s) for the week you're on, and presumably previous weeks, which is confusing because the chart has the name of the month on it and you expect to see a chart showing an entire month... or maybe that's just me, but I had another struggle while thinking that my entire chart wasn't loading before figuring out that that's what (again, presumably) was going on.
The system allows you to assign points for chore completion (aka "Moolah") that can then be redeemed for rewards of your choosing; this is a good idea in general, but there doesn't appear to be a way to subtract points for failure to comply, and I think kids need to see a penalty for disobedience rather than just not getting rewarded. I don't know about you, but when *I* was a kid if there weren't penalties for not doing what I was supposed to do I'd never have done a single task, and not getting a mark on a chart wouldn't have motivated me in the slightest, lol. Now, you could of course still penalize a child for not doing their chores, but that'd mean you're still battling over chores with them directly and then what has the chart accomplished?
Overall, I'd say that for those that want or need more structure in how they deal with their kids' chores, and have the time and patience to master the system, this site would be a valuable resource; once you have it set up correctly you could save a great deal of time compared to making physical charts by hand, and you can also edit the charts at will which would be clumsy to do with a handmade chart. Since the folks running the site have asked for this feedback, I'm guessing that they'll be streamlining and otherwise improving the creation process so that eventually there won't be such a sharp learning curve involved; they have a good basic premise and will very likely end up being a go-to site for plenty of stressed parents.
