From Toronto With Love

Just an idea *ping

This blog is for my fiance Kerry who left today at 2pm to drive North to Barrie for work meetings.

It really is dangerous to leave me by myself with no cable in an unknown city. Let me re-iterate that, not dangerous in the self-harming way, more in the self reflection and indulgence way.

I haven't been in this condo by myself yet for this long so I went for a walk by the lake and then ended up at Shoppers Drug Mart (SDM) where I intended to buy toilet paper. This is the part where I actually explain the title. Fortunately for convenience sake and unfortunately for my bank account this SDM is brand new. I observed some life lessons during the 30 minutes I was encapsulated in consumer bliss.

I came to the conclusion that women have to make more choices in everyday life than men. It's true that as women we choose to choose, however we are also given more choice and required to decide more frequently than men. Let's take hair conditioner for instance, men generally speaking look at price first, quantity second and smell third... purpose is purpose and regardless of their hair the conditioner is just something they use.

Ok, so because I'm a woman I'll generalize my choice process by speaking for all women. Firstly I look at the bottles, which colour appeals to me most. Then I look at the brands... reliable brands that do the job or, the exciting brand I've never tried. Let's face it, if I'd tried every brand of hair conditioner that would just be outrageous. It's quite the commitment depending on the size of the bottle and the length of your hair. Really, what if it sucks? Then you're stuck with a conditioner that you will try to hint that your significant other or roomate use. They will, they'll realize it sucks... or if your other is male, he will use it anyhow, but at a pace that a 2 year old would eat broccoli.

Back to my point, so you find the bottle you like, the colour you like, the brand you trust. That leaves the smell. It's strange how some conditioners can smell great in the bottle and crap on your head, or not at all when you let your hair down and expect to smell yummy $5 a bottles worth of frangrant bliss. Now another thing I failed to mention is ingredients.

What the hell is in hair conditioner? Even if it says on the bottle that it's "Honey Nut Conditioner" do you really think there's honey and nuts in that bottle? That's where my shopping trip started to get longer. I was then not just looking for a conditioner, I was looking through the ingredients for one that actually had the very "thing" stated on the front of the bottle, listed as an ingredient inside the bottle.

So for interest and research sake, here is what is in Life Brand "Honey Nut Conditioner" in order:

• Water
• Stearalkonium chloride
• Cetyl Alcohol
• Hydroxyethylcellulose
• DMDM Hydantoin
• Parfum
• PEG/PPG-18/18
• Dimethicone
• Benzophenone 3
• Citric Acid
• Bertholletia Excelsa
• Yellow 5
• Red 4
• Violet 2

So I researched some of these ingredients and now I'm scared to use conditioner. *pout I'd include links to the toxic reports on the chemicals above however I think you'd read them and be scared too. Really I'm doing you a favour by not including the ones I found. This really is a trainwreck.

I'll get to the point. In order to make decision making easier I think that stores in the future could do a lot more to help out their consumers. For instance all I wanted was toilet paper, easy decision:- more paper for least dollars. I didn't want to stand and do the math in the aisle, hmm well if Royal has a 12 pack and each roll costs .34 cents. My god it's a grade 10 math exam. Can we not make this easier?

I think I had a point somewhere.

posted by Sarah Owen @ 8:03 p.m.