Consolidation Concerns

I may collect too many trinkets around the rest of my house, but when it comes to my bathroom I tend to lean towards what I like to call a 'minimalist' look. After growing up with sisters who would constantly overrun the bathroom with three kinds of shampoo, two kinds of conditioners, half a dozen bottles of hairspray, soaps and lotions as well as various curlers and hair dryers covering the counter, I currently try and keep things as barren as possible. I just don't know why women need so many products to do essentially the same act that I am doing, but if you have ever shared a shower with a girl you will know that for every girl in the house there must be at least one shelf of products, many of which will claim to do the same thing, but each woman must have their own bottle and in some cases an extra bottle. They have singlehandedly created an entire industry, as I am convinced that 98% of all suction-cup shower units for extra shelf space are sold to women. That is why you can tell my bathroom is currently a men-only zone because the counter is down to the bare essentials (toothbrush, toothpaste, mouthwash, shaving cream, an air freshener and a radio (sometimes I like music while I shower)) while my streamlined shower holds 3 bottles (shampoo, conditioner and body wash) and even that feels a little too crowded.

Because I strive to have as little clutter as possible you would think I would be a big fan of the new 5-in-1 bottle that several companies are putting out which claims to contain shampoo, conditioner, body wash, shaving cream and moisturizer all in one. (Can I just say that including moisturizer feels like a cop-out because if you are in the shower aren't you already getting moisture? Honestly, it was as if their marketing department had a meeting and the boss declared they weren't leaving until someone came up with a fifth use because some focus group said 5-in-1 sounded better than 4-in-1.) I have to say, the idea does appeal to the minimalist in me. I like being able to keep an area clean and I am not above creating some strange bedfellows in the name of space. Companies also love to combine products into a single container because it allows them to charge a little extra since people think they are getting more bang for their buck (they aren't) and meanwhile the company is actually saving money by only packaging one thing instead of two. I thought the idea had been tapped out when shampoo and conditioner were combined into a single product but, given that someone once thought it was a good idea to put peanut butter and jelly into one jar, I guess I should have realized it was only a matter of time before this happened.

But while I appreciate the concept of combining several products into one container, at some point it begins to feel suspiciously like these people are trying to shove everything they couldn't sell on its own in one place. After a while it's like you've made a Swiss Army knife which only has the attachments no one ever uses (no blades, no bottle-openers, just several mini-tweezers which are too small to actually grab anything). Since companies are not in the business of giving people better deals out of the kindness of their hearts it also makes me assume that these particular versions of these products are not the best they have to offer. That makes it seem like these companies are under the assumption I don't care what goes on my skin or in my hair, which is a big mistake on their part. I have a car wax which claims it both protects and shines but that doesn't mean I am in a hurry to see what it will do when applied to my hair. Just because I don't want my shower to look like the shampoo aisle at my local CVS that doesn't mean I'll use just anything in the name of saving space. There is nothing worse than buying a product which doesn't satisfy your requirements and then trudging through the rest of the bottle out of some sense of obligation (or you give it to someone who mentioned they are about to run out of body wash, which is how this bottle ended up in my shower in the first place) so it has to actually work to make it worth it.

The other major flaw in this plan if you are the lotion company is that it essentially reveals the fact that no one actually needs all those other different products you sell. It may not work for a guy like me because, like I said, I have a couple different preferences but if you were the kind of person who looks at showering more as a chore than anything else and only does it because polite society demands it, why would you ever go buy anything else? If you can use this one product, which doesn't appear to be any different in terms of quality from any of the other body lotions I have tried in my life, for all these other functions than why would spend one cent more than you had to? It just makes all these other claims of what these specialized products can do for you that nothing else can look like they are part of a giant scam making promises they can't keep to make you buy things you don't need. I'm not a criminal but I always thought the first rule of pulling off a successful scam was not letting people know they could live without buying what you were selling. I've always suspected no one needs this many kinds of shampoo because humans did fine without it for centuries, but now I have proof and the shampoo-makers themselves are the ones who gave it to me. Now if I could just get gas companies to admit there isn't any difference between the regular and premium octanes then my life's work will be complete.