The incredible shrinking products
Posted by: SueSooner or later, the lightbulb in my brain was bound to go on. I’d heard about shrinking products. Products where the price stays the same, but the size is smaller, so you are actually paying MORE. But if you don’t notice, you don’t realize it. Now, I knew bleach containers had not been full gallons for a long time. I don’t use a lot of bleach, so this didn’t have a big impact on me. But I should have realized things don’t exist in a vacuum. If one product was shrinking while keeping the same price, others were bound to do the same.
It hit home for me when I was doing another of my dish soap challenges. For those who don’t know what I mean by this - two years ago, I took a bottle of dish soap and challenged myself to see how long I could make it last. (In case you’re really curious, twice as long as a bottle normally lasted.) A few months ago, I decided to repeat the challenge, because I seemed to be going through an awful lot of dish soap in a short amount of time. Part of that can be attributed to my husband using it as hand soap, but I was still using too much.
Strangely enough, the cost of a bottle of dish soap was the same, when on sale, as the sale price had been two years ago. Initially, I thought “wow, that’s great!” I looked up my past challenge to refresh my memory, and noticed that the challenge was to see how long I could make a 12.6 ounce bottle last. I looked at the brand new bottle in my hand. For the first time, I noticed that it said something about “new size”. It was a new size, allright - 10.3 ounces. As I went through my stockpile of bottles of dish soap, I noticed some of them were 11 ounces. I completely missed that downsize! And I probably would have gone on missing the size change of the current one, had it not been for my little challenge. Yes, sometimes a house does have to fall on me for me to notice things.
Aluminum foil is another shrinking product. The 50 sq. foot roll is now 45 square feet. Surprisingly, I did notice that one. The paper plates I buy, those went from 100 count to 80 count to the current 72 count. As with other items, they continue to go “on sale” for the same price they used to. That could be good, however - really, why am I using so many paper plates?
All this inspires me to really start paying attention. I think I’ll be surprised at just how many products have shrunk. But on a positive note, this should make me question whether a sale is really a sale. And that may be a very good thing.
March 2nd, 2009 at 10:15 am
I knew about shrinkage. I pay attention to it but I’ve only recently become frustrated with it as I try out recipes found on the internet with “prepped product” specific sizes such as a 13.8 ounce Pillsbury Pizza Crust or some such. I’ve decided to just skip following recipes, get the “jist” from them and go one with my own-made such things….ah until tomatoes show up in the local farmers market.