Product Reviews

Ok, you all know that I rarely pay full price for anything. Sales & coupons, baby. So, I decided to review a couple of things in hopes that my experience will save someone else $.

Dish Detergent:
Aaron and I have a nice Bosch dishwasher. It uses hot water, steam drying, and it sanitizes our dishes. When we bought it, there was a tag inside that said something like, "Bosch recommends Finish power tabs". So, for the last two years, that's what we used. A while back, I decided to buy Finish powder detergent instead of the power tabs, just to see how it compared. I kept a tally on our dry-erase calendar on our fridge. We got a total of 47 loads with the powder detergent, and we filled the detergent cup to the very top every time. These are Target's prices (rounded to nearest cent):

Finish powder: $3.19/box (@47 loads, that's about 7 cents per load)
Finish power tabs (20 count): $3.79 (that's 19 cents per load-- almost 3x as much!)
Finish power tabs or gelpacs (32 count): $5.99 (19 cents per load)
Cascade action packs (60 count): $12.79 (21 cents per load, the most expensive)

So, I recommend the powder detergent. In my experience, it cleans my dishes just as well and it's a LOT cheaper. Also, my dishwasher "yells" at me when I don't have Jet Dry in it, so I had to use it with the action packs anyway. It's pretty inexpensive, and coupons can often be found at http://www.finishdishwashing.com/news-and-offers.php Coupons can also often be found at www.print.coupons.com.

Benefiber:
Benefiber is a white powder that can be mixed into food and beverages for a "completely dissolving, taste free" way to get extra fiber. I bought it at Kroger, where it was $8.69/bottle. When I bought it, I had a Kroger coupon for $7 off two bottles and a manufacturer coupon for $7 off two bottles, so I only paid $1.69/bottle.

I do not like this product. First, I tried the orange flavor. I tried it mixed into a bottled water and it just tasted like fake orange masking chemicals. The next morning, I mixed it into hot water to make like a tea out of it. With hot water, the chemical taste was even stronger. So, I decided to try the flavorless. I mixed it into orange juice one morning and it made my orange juice really thick. The rest of the day, I had a metallic taste and numb feeling in my mouth. I tried it the next day mixed into a fruit smoothie. I couldn't even make myself finish the smoothie. My mouth felt numb and tasted metallic for two days after the Benefiber smoothie. I'm going to call the company tomorrow and ask for a refund. I wonder if this is what my grandmom meant when she was on Chemo and she said everything tasted like metal, so she just didn't eat much. Poor thing.

Pantene for thick hair shampoo & conditioner:
Again, I had coupons. I got a bottle of Pantene shampoo and a bottle of Pantene conditioner for about $2 each at Kroger a while back, which is pretty good savings. This was the first time I had ever used Pantene. I was not impressed with the shampoo at all! Yuck! I generally wash my hair every day. Sometimes, I'll go a day without washing it and pull it up into a pony tail on those days. Even when I used this shampoo daily, I noticed that around the crown of my head, my hair looked greasy. It got to the point where after I washed & dried it, it looked like it hadn't been shampooed in a week. It was so disgusting. I even scrubbed that area for about 15 minutes in the shower (not exaggerating!) one day and it still looked like that. The next day, I tried Clairol's Drama Clean shampoo and the greasiness went away immediately.

As for the conditioner... it wasn't "bad", but it wasn't so great either. It's no better than anything else I can get in the same price range at Target or Kroger. I don't think I'll buy it again unless I'm getting mega discounts on it.

So, I hope I've helped some of you. If any of you have had different experiences with these products, leave me a comment.