As I opened a new box of toothpaste the other day, struggling to get it open because of the glue that held the box flaps sealed, I had to get the scissors to cut the box open. While struggling with this silly contraption, I wondered when the date was that the FDA decided to step in and protect us consumers from ourselves.
I looked it up, on http://uclue.com/?xq=845 , and found that it was back in 1970 when congress passed the Poison Prevention Packaging Act (PPPA) http://www.cpsc.gov/businfo/pppa.pdf requiring that poisons, some house hold chemicals like furniture polish should be sold in child resistant packaging. That was the year Doug and I got married, while we were busy adjusting to marriage, we didn't know that congress had plans to change our lives in other ways. The Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) was established in 1973 and they determine whether a drug or product falls under this act. The first drug which came under this act was aspirin. The CPSC was given the authority to establish child resistant packaging standards. These regulations subsequently required that prescription drugs with some specific exceptions be dispensed in packaging that met the child resistant requirement.
When our daughter ingested the grape flavored benedril medicine in 1977, the bottle had an easy open cap. She just drank it right down, because it was yummy to her. Of course we spent the rest of the afternoon in the ER getting her tummy pumped and she got a taste of the nasty charcoal and 'epecac'. So it must have taken a while to legislate the act. Well in my research I found that by 1982, the CPCS required tamper resistant packaging, on all products, and I guess the rest, as they say, is history.
Packages of chips, crackers, cereals, medicines, and toothpaste all have been made tamper resistant, to the frustration of some senior citizens who then decided they wanted a choice in 'child' safety caps and lids. So now, if we remember to ask the pharmacist, we can get easy open lids. Maybe it was always available, who knew to ask?
Now I want to switch gears for a minute, hang with me. My mother-in-law was a very vibrant, lively, adventuresome woman. After her husband's death (20 years before her own) she took a job in San Antonio, Tex. at the Buckner Home for Teenage UnWed Mothers www.buckner.org/about . She flew to Salt Lake City, Utah to visit us while we lived in Wyoming. She took care of a friends cat because her friend had decided to move to a retirement village and couldn't have animals. That friend didn't sell her house or close it up, so the cat stayed with the house. As my mother-in-law began to age, however, she became fearful, finally afraid to live alone any longer.
I fell down at the grocery store one day awhile back. I stepped off the curb, twisted my ankle in a hole which was the opening to a grease trap next to the curb, and fell. I landed on my knee ripped my pants, skinned my hands catching myself, and bruised my hip. I am fine now, but here's the thing, I was wary if not a little frightened to step out of the front door for about a week after that happened. I didn't like that feeling if fear.
As a 'Boomer' who is entering this life transition and tsunami of change called retirement, I wonder what else the FDA or some other concerned committee, administration, or organization is going to enact to protect us seniors like they did to protect our children. Oh wait! We have AARP for that don't we? http://www.aarp.org .
Saturday, July 16, 2011
Thursday, July 7, 2011
Too Little to keep, too much to throw out, so the happy housewife eats it, and that makes her stout!
I was going to introduce my husband in this my third blog post. Most of my readers know him already, but I have changed my mind, as I reserve the right to do, and will instead talk a little bit more about us, the "Baby Boomers" instead.
That is what I have been blogging about, my goal in starting this blog was to talk myself through a challenging transition of becoming a "retired" baby boomer. My husband, is not a 'boomer', he is just one year shy of our social trend.
I am an Avon Representative, I have enjoyed the role of "small business" woman for a long time. I have not only been in Avon for 15 years, but I have been a Home Interiors Decorator, and a Tupperware Dealer in my efforts to be able to have an outside job, and still be home when the girls got home from school, make dinner and as they say.."bring home the bacon, fry it up in the pan, and never, ever let you forget your a man, 'cause I'm a Woman...W O M A N"...huh! Yes, well, enough of that!
As I was saying, I have tried many different forms of work in an effort to please almost everyone in my family; my Dad, whose philosophy was 'a woman shouldn't work at all outside the home, ever', my Mother, who found the direct sales way of life interesting and rewarding and who also recruited me into the home interiors and Tupperware companies, my children, of course, and my husband. I had a home business because I was trying to help with income taxes and because I was told by well meaning others, that if I were to work and make real money, I would only be placing my husband into a higher income bracket and therefore would make him pay more in taxes.
In my experience with Tupperware Products we were told, "Tupperware seals in the freshness", 2 weeks longer than any other product at the time, which was like, foil over a bowl in the refrigerator, or at best a lid that went over the proctor silex bowl, or the corning ware bowl, what did we ever do without Tupperware! So we thought, and many people still do, that Tupperware was the end all, solve all to our food spoiling problems.
There was the cereal keeper, the lettuce keeper, sandwich keepers, bread keepers, square storers, round storers, oh, and let's not forget the square/rounds, butter keepers, cheese keepers, etc. etc. ad infinitem... My favorite was the pickle keeper/server. It stored and kept the pickles crisp while providing a way to pull the pickles out of the pickle juice so you could remove them to put in your salads, or to eat all by themselves.
Then there were the serving pieces. My husband remarked recently while we were having dinner with one of our daughters, that he was so used to having plastic serving bowls, he didn't know how to use glass ones. We had so many serving pieces, the Cake Taker, the pie Taker, the beautiful colors in the Wonderlier Bowls with the snap on lids that matched and the Servelier Bowls, with matching lids.
Then speaking of the lids or seals, there was a seal for every bowl and every bowl was stamped with a specific letter in the alphabet which coincided with the seal. The cereal bowl was stamped with a big C and the cereal bowl seal was stamped with a corresponding C. Or the small storage bowl was stamped with a S and the seal was also stamped with a S, etc. Don't forget about the "burp", the seal 'burped' out the air to seal in the freshness! I had to explain the Tupperware conundrum to my husband just this week. We were emptying the dishwasher, a chore which he has started helping with now that he is retired.
The old Tupperware circa 1975, I explained, wasn't Microwave safe, nor dishwasher safe. However, the new Tupperware is stamped on the bottom with icons stating whether they are dishwasher safe, or microwave safe. You must know these things, and you would if you had been using Tupperware for over 35 years! If you 'nuke' Tupperware it will cause it to bubble and then it isn't guaranteed. It came with a lifetime guarantee! If you washed it in the dishwasher it would warp. I must confess, I put mine in the dishwasher on the top rack for a long time, but I didn't 'nuke' it because it melted or bubbled in the microwave.
We swallowed the sales pitch hook line and sinker, that food stored in Tupperware would keep fresh for a loooooong time, to the detriment of our health, perhaps. That food that has been in the refrigerator for two weeks sometimes looks like something that has started growing in there and who knows if it will multiply once opened and leap out of that cereal bowl, or storage bowl, or wonderlier bowl!
We sold tons of Tupperware! The parties, ah the parties, you carried this suitcase full of Tupperware products and a table cloth and set the stuff up in your hostesses home. Then you had hostess gifts, games, prizes, and gifts for each guest. Those prizes, some of them were worth more than the party and the Tupperware itself. Like the little bitty tiny bowls with seals, or the towel or recipe hangers, or the orange peeler so many cool prizes.
Then if you were a top sales Dealer, you received lots of incentive gifts. You'd be awarded with lots of Tupperware, cookware, and if you were really great, you recruited and became manager and then you got a car, a Ford Station Wagon. The one my mom got was blue. She sure was proud of that car.
phenomena in America. The fact that Tupperware, their products and all things plastic, was produced from oil and oil byproducts. My husband worked for and retired from a company whose main purpose was to take the gas from the oil, compress it and send it down the line to be used by consumers like you and me.
So Thank you Tupperware for using the oil and byproducts, because in a way Tupperware kept my husband and thousands, maybe millions of other people. employed through the years.
Thanks for listening, ya'll come back now,
A.
That is what I have been blogging about, my goal in starting this blog was to talk myself through a challenging transition of becoming a "retired" baby boomer. My husband, is not a 'boomer', he is just one year shy of our social trend.
I am an Avon Representative, I have enjoyed the role of "small business" woman for a long time. I have not only been in Avon for 15 years, but I have been a Home Interiors Decorator, and a Tupperware Dealer in my efforts to be able to have an outside job, and still be home when the girls got home from school, make dinner and as they say.."bring home the bacon, fry it up in the pan, and never, ever let you forget your a man, 'cause I'm a Woman...W O M A N"...huh! Yes, well, enough of that!
As I was saying, I have tried many different forms of work in an effort to please almost everyone in my family; my Dad, whose philosophy was 'a woman shouldn't work at all outside the home, ever', my Mother, who found the direct sales way of life interesting and rewarding and who also recruited me into the home interiors and Tupperware companies, my children, of course, and my husband. I had a home business because I was trying to help with income taxes and because I was told by well meaning others, that if I were to work and make real money, I would only be placing my husband into a higher income bracket and therefore would make him pay more in taxes.
In my experience with Tupperware Products we were told, "Tupperware seals in the freshness", 2 weeks longer than any other product at the time, which was like, foil over a bowl in the refrigerator, or at best a lid that went over the proctor silex bowl, or the corning ware bowl, what did we ever do without Tupperware! So we thought, and many people still do, that Tupperware was the end all, solve all to our food spoiling problems.
There was the cereal keeper, the lettuce keeper, sandwich keepers, bread keepers, square storers, round storers, oh, and let's not forget the square/rounds, butter keepers, cheese keepers, etc. etc. ad infinitem... My favorite was the pickle keeper/server. It stored and kept the pickles crisp while providing a way to pull the pickles out of the pickle juice so you could remove them to put in your salads, or to eat all by themselves.
Then there were the serving pieces. My husband remarked recently while we were having dinner with one of our daughters, that he was so used to having plastic serving bowls, he didn't know how to use glass ones. We had so many serving pieces, the Cake Taker, the pie Taker, the beautiful colors in the Wonderlier Bowls with the snap on lids that matched and the Servelier Bowls, with matching lids.
Then speaking of the lids or seals, there was a seal for every bowl and every bowl was stamped with a specific letter in the alphabet which coincided with the seal. The cereal bowl was stamped with a big C and the cereal bowl seal was stamped with a corresponding C. Or the small storage bowl was stamped with a S and the seal was also stamped with a S, etc. Don't forget about the "burp", the seal 'burped' out the air to seal in the freshness! I had to explain the Tupperware conundrum to my husband just this week. We were emptying the dishwasher, a chore which he has started helping with now that he is retired.
The old Tupperware circa 1975, I explained, wasn't Microwave safe, nor dishwasher safe. However, the new Tupperware is stamped on the bottom with icons stating whether they are dishwasher safe, or microwave safe. You must know these things, and you would if you had been using Tupperware for over 35 years! If you 'nuke' Tupperware it will cause it to bubble and then it isn't guaranteed. It came with a lifetime guarantee! If you washed it in the dishwasher it would warp. I must confess, I put mine in the dishwasher on the top rack for a long time, but I didn't 'nuke' it because it melted or bubbled in the microwave.
We swallowed the sales pitch hook line and sinker, that food stored in Tupperware would keep fresh for a loooooong time, to the detriment of our health, perhaps. That food that has been in the refrigerator for two weeks sometimes looks like something that has started growing in there and who knows if it will multiply once opened and leap out of that cereal bowl, or storage bowl, or wonderlier bowl!
We sold tons of Tupperware! The parties, ah the parties, you carried this suitcase full of Tupperware products and a table cloth and set the stuff up in your hostesses home. Then you had hostess gifts, games, prizes, and gifts for each guest. Those prizes, some of them were worth more than the party and the Tupperware itself. Like the little bitty tiny bowls with seals, or the towel or recipe hangers, or the orange peeler so many cool prizes.
Then if you were a top sales Dealer, you received lots of incentive gifts. You'd be awarded with lots of Tupperware, cookware, and if you were really great, you recruited and became manager and then you got a car, a Ford Station Wagon. The one my mom got was blue. She sure was proud of that car.
phenomena in America. The fact that Tupperware, their products and all things plastic, was produced from oil and oil byproducts. My husband worked for and retired from a company whose main purpose was to take the gas from the oil, compress it and send it down the line to be used by consumers like you and me.
So Thank you Tupperware for using the oil and byproducts, because in a way Tupperware kept my husband and thousands, maybe millions of other people. employed through the years.
Thanks for listening, ya'll come back now,
A.
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