So the other day I went to open a bottle of cheap wine, the type with the screw-on cap. Naturally, I reached into the kitchen drawer — premium real estate in this house — and quite naturally pulled out a wrench.
Yeah. There’s a wrench in the kitchen drawer, something no woman in my mother’s generation (or in mine, until rather recently) would EVER have allowed to take up space there.
This led me to reflect on the the ubiquity of consumer-proof packaging — almost everything you buy is hermetically sealed in layers of plastic (much of it hard as a football helmet) and cardboard — and how much I hate that kind of waste. And how much I hate the ways it has to be dealt with.
In addition to a wrench, my kitchen drawer contains a pair of pliers (good for pulling off the hated inner paper seals of paper and tinfoil, among other things), a heavy-duty pair of scissors, and an extra-sharp ultra-cheap grocery-store knife that I don’t mind denting or bending. The tin snips won’t fit in there — have to walk out to the garage to get those, whenever I need to hack into one of Costco’s accursed heavy plastic clamshells.
Costco isn’t the only offender. You get impermeable packaging from Fry’s Electronics, Target, Walmart, and even sometimes from Amazon, despite the latter’s policy designed to discourage it.
Also needed:
• A screwdriver and a hammer to break into the adult-proof pill and cleanser bottles
• A package of thumbtacks to render the adult-proof bottles openable
• A hacksaw, for worst-case scenarios
How can I say how much I resent having to own a tool chest devoted to opening containers? And how can I say how much I hate the amount of useless plastic and cardboard that goes straight to the city landfill, often tainted with a few drops of blood from my fingers?
Am I the only person who is made crazy by the crazy packaging? What tools do you keep in your kitchen drawers these days?
I hate the plastic packaging that is sealed tight and requires you to cut into it, often leaving sharp points that scratch me. Very irritating indeed.
But I would add that more than being a personal irritant, they’re a social and environmental problem. The junk — all that unnecessary packaging — is submerging our landfills, consuming VAST amounts of energy to manufacture and transport, and indeed causing unnecessary injuries. The AMA reports THOUSANDS of injuries from the stuff every year: http://www.totalinjury.com/news/articles/consumer-awareness/wrap-rage.aspx
In fact, it’s so much an issue that there’s even a term for it, recognized by Wikipedia: “Wrap Rage.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wrap_rage
This is the result that comes from years of shop lifting. And all this packaging doesn’t stop it. Such a sad world we live in. But maybe the merchants think it will slow it down.
I have an extra pair of utility scissors just to cut open those type of packages.
A chain-saw is useful, too…
I am curious about the method for using the thumbtacks.
Do you think the over zealous use of packaging is an offshoot of the new need for sanitation of everything? It seems that it has increased as I’ve watched people sanitize their children’s lives. Our granddaughter is not allowed to play on the floor at her home because there are dog hairs. My kids grew up playing on the floor with dog and cat hair, and played in the outdoor, uncovered sand box eating their sandwiches. How times have changed.
To a large extent it’s a device to prevent theft. It’s a lot harder to stash a big, clumsy plastic packet in your underwear than it is, say, a nekkid flash drive.
The inner plastic/paper/tinfoil lids underneath the adult-proof lids are there in some cases out of paranoia, after the lunatic poisoned the Tylenol (remember that?) and in some cases to prevent liquid contents from leaking in transport.
But about 99% of it is unnecessary. Most shoplifting is employee theft — cameras would do the job on that. And we can’t go forever making our lives more and more difficult and complicated out of fear. As for the rest of it: cost of doing business.
I completely forgot about the inner covers! I use my tweezers if I find them when I’m in the bathroom, and just grab a sharp knife in the kitchen. Need the knife for my peanut butter too LOL.
Like others here I have used vice grips, pliers, or wrenches, so much better than the old way of using my teeth [too scared to now that I am older!].
And the thumbtacks: One type of child-proof (read “adult-proof”) cap has two parts: a regular screw-on plastic lid, located underneath a larger, loose plastic lid that spins freely unless it’s squeezed together at the right spots.
You can either take a hammer and break off the exterior lid, or you take a thumbtack and press it down THROUGH the top of that exterior lid, so that it penetrates the top of the real, screw-on lid. Be sure the thumbtack isn’t inserted at the center of the lid — it needs to be between the center and the lid’s circumference. This will cause it to grip the inner lid, so that the outside lid can no longer spin. And presto-changeo! Now you can unscrew the whole arrangement, just like a regular lid.
I understand you can accomplish the same thing by jamming a toothpick between the inner and outer lids.
LOL, adult proof is right. Our first sone at 18 months dragged a chair from one room to the kitchen climbed up and OPENED his Flintstone vitamin bottle with the child proof cap!!
Thank you for the tips on the two part lids – I have had them and cursed tham every time I spent too much time trying to open it.
I keep vice grips handy for opening all the plastic twist caps that won’t open.
What tools do I keep in my kitchen?
A man.
One nice thing about a man in the kitchen: most of them are very decorative.
I laughed out loud at that one, because that is pretty much all my man is in the kitchen……..decorative. BUT, he can open all sorts of things that I can’t.
I will occasionally have to cut into a plastic clamshell-type package, but not very often. I use the utility kitchen sheers for that. I also use this rubber (?) thing to help me twist open jars that are sealed very tightly. That’s about it.
I recall reading at one time that in Germany the manufacturer’s have to pay some sort of fee for packaging, so they keep it to a minimum. It was done more for environmental reasons, though. Sounds like a good model to me!
The sheer waste is even more annoying, to my mind, than the vast nuisance factor.
Packaging — or rather overpackaging — is big business. And since big business owns politics in America, we can’t expect any restrictions on this nonsense, at least not at any time in the foreseeable future.
A manual can opener works on some of those plastic clamshells.
I’ve heard that. Tried it: didn’t work. The top piece of impermeable plastic was sealed to the bottom piece of impermeable plastic, so in the first place the opener couldn’t cut through it very well and in the second place, once it did slice through it, what you had was sealed-together layers of impermeable plastic with a razor-sharp edge. That one, as I recall, required tin snips to break into.
I actually have returned products to Costco with the complaint that I couldn’t get it open.
The clamshells are the worst. I also hate children’s toys that have 15 wire twist-ties that attach the toy to the back of the packaging. Thankfully, my kids are past the age where they want such toys. Now they just want the expensive “toys!” I will say Apple keeps packaging to an elegant minimum. But then, all their inventory is “in the back” where the customer can’t get to it.
I’m thinking of adding this to my household: http://www.amazon.ca/dp/B005DI0XM4/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pC_nS_ttl?_encoding=UTF8&colid=2YX7MV3XOGY40&coliid=IOAI1DS90W6AL [Leatherman Wing-Man Multi-Tool]