Showing posts with label product. Show all posts
Showing posts with label product. Show all posts

Tuesday, July 19, 2011

Things That Make My Life Easier: Gold Violin

So, I stumbled across the web site Gold Violin recently. Once I got past the fact that most of the pictures for their living aid devices involve old white people, I found a lot of useful stuff.

As with all reviews, unless otherwise stated I bought the items in review myself. As a guard against being unduly biases – I will always let you know if I receive an item at a discount or free to review!

Agenda Pill Box – This is on sale for $8 from $40 – I think part of that is that the calendar inside is old. That did not bother me, I do not need another calendar, and I bought a small flat notebook to slide into that section in case I do need to write something down while I am taking my pills and do not have anything else near by. Here is the description from their site:” Closed, it looks like a handsome appointment book.  Opened, it's both your calendar and 7-day pill organizer.  Each daily compartment holds up to 4 doses, keeps your medication secure and slides open easily when it's time to take your pills. 8 x 5 1/2 x 1 1/2.”

I really like this pill carrier. Now I only have to organize my pill dosages once a week instead of every day. I can remember to add the over the counter stuff I need to take daily with ease. The daily containers have four slots, and my only gripe is that in order to make sure the top does not slide off – the opening is restricted to three compartments on one side, and one on the other. This means that I have to open, close and open each one in the process of filling them. Okay, and I wish I could have gotten it in black.

My Meds Ledger: “My Meds Ledger keeps prescription information organized and at hand in case of an emergency, with room for up to 12 medicines. Both fold to the size of a credit card. Magnetic closure. 3¼”Wx2¼”H.” They also make a Login Lockers, with the same format – for keeping track of web sites with log-ins and passwords. Normally $5, as of my writing it is $4 on sale.

I like this item, but care should be taken when storing magnets in your wallet or purse. As with all small record keeping items it may be tough to record your information legibly, but that goes with the territory.

Up next are the Walking Stick Accessories - Corded Wrist Strap.I bought two of these, gold for my clear Lucite cane and black for my black fold up cane. These are also available in red. They are damn useful for when you need your cane hand for getting into your wallet or whatever. I wish they were just a tad longer, though, for when you need to slide it a little further up your wrist, or get it off your wrist faster. After a while, the elastic wrap around the cord stretches out a bit, but for now, mine is still okay. About $7.

I bought two types of sunscreen:  Sun Protection in Spray-on and Insect-Repelling Styles. “Waterproof Topcoat covers the areas most exposed and most often ignore - your scalp. Non-greasy, protein-rich formula is SPF 20+. Sunscreen with Insect Repellent Lotion combines SPF 25 with all natural insect repellent. Safe and effective, it’s enriched with soothing aloe and Vitamin E. Both formulas withstand salt water, swimming pools and sweat up to 80 minutes.” Regular price was $10.00, as of writing these are now sold for $5.99.

I bought both of these, and am very pleased with them. They do not wear or sweat off quickly. Now, you hair looks a little greasy where you use the scalp spray – but that is a hell of a lot better than the painful red peeling you would get with a bare scalp. The bug repellant is effective and the scent is not as people-repellant as most insect sprays/wipes can be. It also seemed to be well-tolerated by my DEET allergic friend.

For my husband, I bought Foot Crème: Heel Rescue. “Thick, luxurious cream penetrates, moisturizes and repairs dry, cracked skin, leaving your heels feeling soft, smooth and revitalized. Contains CoEnzyme Q10 that boosts the body’s natural ability to renew itself. Non-greasy formula. 16 oz. jar with pump dispenser.” The regular price is $9.95; the sale price is $5.99.

I bought the Heel Rescue for my husband, and he appears to be very happy with it. He suffers from bad feet, and has for years – but they seem to be getting better now: more smooth, less calloused, more appealing. I have used it on occasion, it seems to do a decent job.

Delivery was quick, e-mails kept me on top of the status of my orders with little effort on my part. One negative thing is that the web site is not always user friendly. A solid example is this: the site allows you to build a wish list, but finding it later is not intuitive. In general, my experience with Gold Violin has been very positive. I have placed other orders since my first one and remain well pleased.

Thursday, June 16, 2011

ProTips: Skimping Without Going Without

Times are hard all over (mostly, and if you are part of the USian 1% that is getting richer, you probably are not reading here). Everyone tries to save money. Here is some (sometimes hard earned) advice for skimping without going without. Feel free to add your tips in the comments!

If your income is desperately low, look for help. There are programs out there specifically designed to help you, including help with heat, electricity, prescription meds and health insurance. Do not be ashamed to make use of the tools available to you. This is their purpose! If you are doing okay, donate some money, resources, or effort to the same.

Now on to the tips. Your mileage may vary. Pick what works for you and disregard what does not – that is what this is for!

Never go cheap on feminine hygiene products. Never go cheap on diapers. Exception: advice from a trusted source. Not only do you spend more money when you have to go out and get the good stuff due to product failure, but you usually find out via embarrassment and ruined clothes and more expense.

Some generic products are differently packaged products from brand name production lines. Do your research and find where you are spending more for nothing.

Consider growing your own food when and where you can. Even though my garden cost a couple of hundred dollars to put together initially (including fencing – ouch!), we still saved almost $400 dollars in grocery bills that year. With the initial set-up out of the way, we save much more. Try to grow from seeds or the smaller starter plants – these get more expensive the more developed they are when sold. Consider potted plants or Topsy Turvy tomato planters for apartments.

Look into local garden/DIY collectives. Not only can you save time, money, and effort collaborating with nearby folks, but it is good to have connections with people that have the same concerns as you.

Make your own sex toys! Use your common sense, research and think - particularly with insertable toys. Floggers, clamps, paddles, a lot of these can be made on the cheap side, and you can make them exactly the way you want them. DO NOT MAKE YOUR OWN BIRTH CONTROL OR SKIMP ON BC. Read review sites like BDSMLab to make sure you are getting what you want for your dollar.

Trade favors with your family and neighbors. Some folks in our neighborhood trade garden goods. Others trade babysitting for lawn care. Find out what other folks need and if they can help with your needs. Make sure everyone feels treated fairly. It is better to agree that a deal cannot be made than to make a bad connection.

Become familiar with Lifehacker, WikiHow, and other DIY (Do It Yourself) sites. Also look into home-brewed shampoos, beauty products, cleaning products. Green environment sites often have cost saving benefits too.

Weigh what you are spending and where you can cut. For example, we thought we could save money by taking our recycling to a drop off point verses paying to have it picked up. This was true until gas prices started to rise. Now the cost of curb pick up seems blissfully cheap compared to taking it ourselves. Plus we no longer have to store it longer than two weeks at a time.

Save up your errands to run all together. Or, alternatively, run them on the way to or from work or school. For one item stops, pass your cash to someone else that is going if they will pick up that one thing for you.

Be careful buying in bulk. Many manufacturers have caught on to the bulk craze and you may not be saving as much as you think. The same is true for some thrift stores. Tip: thrift stores in upscale strip malls are often more expensive than the same store and item in a more economically stressed neighborhood.

Sign up for e-mail lists from your favorite retailers. Decide if handfuls of useless e-mails are worth the occasional one with that can’t-pass-it-up bargain. Your time is valuable; you could be doing something else with it – so choose wisely.

Check out consumer web sites, particularly big ticket items like appliances, vehicles, etc… In a pinch, look at Amazon.com for the product and read the reviews.  Consumer Reports is the gold standard, but is subscription based, with annual and monthly options. There are plenty of free review sites out there. Read the threads, if there is a Stan or sock puppet in there, usually they will get found out.


Look for alternatives that generate equal results. For some pants, blouses and sweaters I will use Dryel, but winter coats and such need to be dry cleaned to keep them in good shape and decrease the chance that they will need to be replaced.


Learn how to mend! Basic sewing kids cost very little, and being able to replace a button, darn a small hole, or repair a loose hem can save you a lot of money, particularly if you are part of a family. (Kids clothes are particularly prone to mending needs.)

Invest in a good stain remover – it is much less expensive than replacing clothes.

Do not throw away the circulars you get in the mail. Sometimes you can find good bargains on big ticket items like HVAC maintenance and roof repair. On the other end of the budget, $1 off of brand name cereal may not seem like a lot, but if you use one every week, that can add up quick. I also advise planning grocery shopping around store sales.

Put some of your saved money away for something fun, even if you feel like you cannot afford it. Even if it is a DVD for the family to enjoy, or dinner out, find something that pays you back in enjoyment for your time and effort. Being “poor” does not equal not having modern human needs. Recreation is a part of sanity maintenance!

Now you can share your favorite tips below!

Tuesday, June 7, 2011

Things that Make My Life Easier: Pill Card

I bought the Pill Card on Amazon, but it was sold and fulfilled by SplaceCo. I paid a total of $2.99 ($1.99 + very reasonable shipping).

The Pill Card is exactly what it says on the tin. Actually, it didn’t come in a box, but you know what I mean (or at least TV Tropes does!). Delivery was timely. While it seems that the Pill Card comes in several colors, there is no option to choose color when ordering. Mine is brown.

Sticker says:
Re-Pillable Card
A Wallet Pill Card
Place over the top
Credit Card, it fits!
Pills are a wallet reach away.
Read and remove.

Note: I can’t see a reason to remove the sticker, which is a good thing, since it is a really stuck on there sort of arrangement.


At 2.25 inches tall, 2.25 inches wide, the card is flat, and the compartment sticks out about .25 inch. Most OTC NSAIDs I tried worked fine. An 800mg ibuprophen is a tight squeeze, and a CitriCal Petite (which must be named ironically, I think) does not fit. There is a divider inside the compartment, so you could store, say, aspirin on one side and your Rx med on the other.

This product is useful, but I use a bifold, zippered wallet rather than a male marketed bi- or tri-fold – and the Pill Card works much better in a tri-fold wallet. So I gave it to my step-dad to use.


This is a solid product. My only concern is whether the plastic would grow brittle over time, or the compartment hinges might give, but at the price you can probably keep a spare handy if either of those items becomes an issue.

More information can be found at Repillable.com.

Friday, April 8, 2011

SmartAss Review: Pill Glide

Just recently I had to go pick up my prescriptions, and while I was waiting around, I saw this: Pill Glide. It was in my local CVS, available in strawberry and grape flavors. This company also produces FLAVORx Pediatric Flavoring – for making your kids’ prescription liquid medications more bearable. Pill Glide comes in a one ounce spray bottle, which advertises as being 200+ sprays (each use is two to four sprays).

This essentially functions as a flavored, sweetened pill lubricant. My theory is that you might also be distracted from the discomfort of swallowing a pill (if that does, indeed, bother you) by the terrible flavor or artificial sweetener. I have no trouble taking pills most of the time (if you do not count the simmering resentment that I must do so), but I thought this might prove of some value – to recommend to folks that do have trouble, or to have handy when I have some plague with sinus drainage.

The directions are fairly simple: “Coat with Pill Glide (2-4 sprays). Place tablet or capsule on tongue. Swallow immediately with water.”  This is not supposed to be a substitute for having a drink handy. A lot of us dry swallow when convenient, or when we either have to or go without our meds, I know. I also know that this is not a good thing, as most pills are designed to be taken with fluid. I do not know if this would help with that, but my guess would be that it would. However, if you were stuck with Pill Glide and no drink, I suspect that it would work.

Pill Glide ingredients include the following: purified water, glycerin, sorbitol, xanthan gum, neotame, natural and artificial flavors. Buffered with: sodium citrate and citric acid. Preserved with: potassium sorbate, sodium benzoate, and propylene glycol. Yes, this has caused my spell check to tremble with rage! It is a selling point that the product contains no sugar, no dyes and no drugs in and of itself.

I think that it tastes terrible, but I hate artificial flavors and sweeteners, so I can hardly be fair. Honestly, it does taste far better than some pills I have gotten stuck in my throat, or pills I had to cut and therefore tasted when taking. So you will not catching me just spraying this on my tongue for the taste of it, but if I have to cut pills up, or my throat is already sore, I may very well use Pill Glide to make up the difference.

Surprisingly, I did not feel the edges of the pill as I swallowed, which I usually do. So this throat lube may have actually made it a little easier to do. Now, this was a large ibuprofen, 800 mg. I figured that was the largest I had right now, and probably one of the more commonly used prescriptions and therefore a good landmark. And I could use it right then.

My youngest daughter, 11 years old, said that although she could still take the half pill she takes at night, it was not as bad. The next two days she asked to use it with her nightly half-pill – so I call that a thumbs up. Our 14 year old young lady said she would use it if she felt the need and she does not mind the taste. The D man said that “it tastes like strawberry Jolly Rancher,” but did not notice a difference in the actual act of pill swallowing (only very large pills bug him). Last, but not least (I think he thought he would get out of it!), my G man said that it was indeed slick, with a sickly artificial taste to it, saw no difference (and usually has no difficulty).

Considering the entire house – only one person liked the taste, but we all saw how Pill Glide could be handy if one was having difficulty swallowing pills. So our final verdict is useful, not very tasty, but still better tasting than the tastes it can cover up. So thumbs up for Pill Glide.


Pill Glide’s contact information:
FLAVORx, Inc, MD 21046
http://www.pillglide.com
http://www.facebook.com/pillglide
1.866.370.2337
support@pillglide.com

Pill Glide’s FAQ is here. I bought mine for $5.99 (I think) at CVS. I bought strawberry, but they also had grape. It is also available at Amazon, in a handful of other flavors (strawberry, orange, peach, and bubblegum). Oh, and their homepage has a “live chat” option if you have any questions, but I cannot vouch for that because I did not use it. It did pop up and beep at me, though, so I assume someone was available if I wanted to chat.

Blog note

Haha! I have broken the “Upcoming” curse. Previously, almost every time I have posted about what I have in the pipe for this blog, I end up not posting for a while. So I was nervous about doing so yesterday. And yes, I did get a car, and I am very happy about that.