That, right there to the left, is the bane of my existence: unused baby formula. Babies never drink every bottle in its entirety and over the course of the day this leftover formula adds up.

It might be complete corporate bullshit, but every company that makes formula says: if your baby has not finished the bottle, do not reuse the formula, throw it out. That’s because they say bacteria from the child’s mouth can go back into the bottle through the nipple, contaminating the formula. And keeping this formula around only gives the bacteria time to multiply and become DEADLY!

I have twins, so that only makes this problem exponentially worse. So I did a little math on the value of the formula that’s being wasted.

On average, my kids are currently wasting about 12 ounces of mixed formula daily.

That’s 6 scoops of formula a day.

Even getting the big tubs at Sam’s Club, the cost per scoop is $0.233.

So let’s do a little math here: (6 scoops x $0.233) x 365 days per year = $510 over the course of the year.

Holy. Shit. I pay $500 a year for formula I pour down the drain. That makes me want to spit-up. Now that’s with twins, but still $250 for one child is nothing to scoff at.

So I ask, can corporate America please make some smarter bottles? Maybe put a little anti-siphon valve in there right below the nipple so that no “contaminated” formula can make it’s way back into the reservoir?

Surely someone with some engineering knowledge could solve this problem. It can’t be that complicated, can it? It’s 2011.  We’ve put a damn robot on Mars, we’ve elected the first Black-Irish President, we’ve even got Snuggies for dogs, this is within our reach!

And for whomever solves this problem: You could print money! You could sell these bottles for $100 a set and show people that they’re actually getting a great deal in the long run.

It’s probably too late for me, I know technology can only move so fast, but for the other parents out there, please, someone, solve this problem.

Fun Tidbit: If you search Google for “Can you reuse formula”, one of the top suggested results is “can you reuse a condom”. Which is funny because if you’re dumb enough to be searching Google for “can you reuse a condom” there’s a good chance you’ll be bitching about wasted formula soon.

I have two four month old twins. As a result of this we go through somewhere in the neighborhood of 13,492 bottles every day. As if the injustice of having to pay for the formula to fill those bottles isn’t bad enough, we also use Dr.Brown’s Bottles.

For those of you unfamiliar with Dr.Brown’s bottles each bottle has six parts: the bottle, the venting straw, a rubber valve thingy, the nipple, a nipple holder-downer ring and the lid. Taking these things out of the dishwasher and assembling them makes you feel like you work at the Foxcon factory.

As part of this fancy system Dr.Brown makes nipples with different flow rates and it just so happens from time to time my twins are on different nipples. You give a kid the wrong nipple and they don’t eat right which messes them up until the next feeding.

Unfortunately, the only way to tell one nipple size from another is a number placed on the underside of the nipple that you need a goddamn electron microscope to see. As a result, a busy parent like myself has to spend hours painstakingly inspecting these things like an Amsterdam diamond dealer, “Boy, fetch daddy his loupe!”

I propose that this issue could easily be resolved if Dr.Brown’s simply colored their nipples. A different color for each flow rate and they’d save their customers hours of agony. It would be so easy.

Shitballs. That’s crystallized. You aren’t using that honey today. Or are you?

If you happen to have a baby at home who’s still using a bottle, you’re in luck. Get out that baby bottle warmer, fill it with an ounce of water and drop in your jar of honey:

If your jar doesn’t fit. That’s ok. Set it in the top as best you can and let that steam go to work. A bottle warmer is perfect for this because it gently heats the honey and it’s made so that it won’t melt plastic bottles, so if you’ve a got plastic little bear, his ass won’t melt.

By the time your oatmeal is done, your honey will be perfectly liquid allowing you to easily add it completing a delicious breakfast.

I figured if Andy can bitch about poor product design, I can too.

Dear TomTom,

I’ve had your GPS for 4 years now and I must say that I truly love your device. I can’t count the number of times when traveling when your device has navigated me through the toughest of directions with ease and in such a friendly voice. Your device gets me to my destination fast, warns me of impending toll roads and even helps me find a massage parlor near the highway when I’m feeling down.

I’ve recommended your GPS products to all of my friends and family as I feel they are superior to other devices on the market.

However, I’ve recently encountered a problem with you GPS device: It lacks a “no ghetto” button.

See, a week ago my wife and young son were visiting family in Washington DC. After a late dinner at a relatives house we headed off in our mini-van to where we were spending the night. “Need directions to the highway?” asked the relative. “No, not us, we have a TomTom GPS system capable of directing us to our final destination with ease” I responded.

We punched our final destination into our device and off we headed to the nearby highway, or so we thought. Instead of being directed to the highway on-ramp that was less than a mile from our departure point, your device directed us through some of the “more challenging” streets of Washington D.C. Streets that I would never drive through by myself at night, let alone with my pregnant wife and one year-old son.

Your device is always sure to warn me that I might have to pay a toll on a road, then gives me the option to continue or not. Why not have the same thing for unsuspecting out-of-towners going through bad neighborhood? I’ve even gone ahead and developed a nice little screen for you to use up top.

Regards,

Mark

If you’re not familiar with RSS feeds, imagine getting customized news feeds sent right to you. You’ll need an RSS feed reader to act as the centralized delivery location, I’d suggest Google Reader for this. It’s very good and it’s free.

Most websites will have a orange icon that looks like that one up there. All you need to do is click on it and say that you want to subscribe with Google Reader or the reader of your choice. Just about every website now has rss for news, weather, blogs and even sales.

RSS Feeds to Save You Money

Craigslist – Ever wish you could know when a new item was posted to Craigslist? Now you can. With Craigslist, you can save any search as an RSS feed which is great because you can specify what you want to get results for. Here are some that I like to keep an eye on: Baby & Kids, Toys & Games, and Farm and & Garden. We’ve gotten some great deals for our son by following these, a great example was the huge box of clothes we got for $50. It was about $300 worth of clothes. And the farm and garden one is great during the summer when people have excess garden bounty.

Bens Bargins – I rarely buy any electronics without watching the prices for a few weeks on Ben’s Bargins. I like that you can get RSS feeds for a specific category of products.

Deal News – This site tracks deals all over the internet for just about every kind of product. They too let you drill down to specific items, Babies and Kids, for example. My favorite part about Deal News is that they’ll tell you how the current deal relates to previous deals on that item, so you’ll know right away if this is the cheapest they’ve ever seen an item.

Full Disclosure: This type of behavior may be hereditary as I look the exact same way when I watch this video.

Thanks to 1-800-FLOWERS.com one of our faithful and loving readers is going to win a $50 gift card. That can be you. It’s easy to enter.

All you need to do is leave a comment down below and you’re in. You have until Wednesday Feb 17 at 5 p.m. to enter. We’ll pick a winner at random.

Tim Sandwich Artist: Hi, welcome to Subway.

[Never looks up, continues to fiddle with a bag of broccoli cheddar soup]

Randy: Duuuuude, baby, what it is, what it is?

Sandwich Artist: What kind of bread would you like?

Randy: Ehhhh, I don’t know dog. This is hard man, this is hard.

[Fiddles with the whiskers on his chin while looking intently at 6 loaves of bread]

Sandwich Artist: I’d go with the Honey Oat, it’s got oats on it.

Randy: Hawwwww man, I like it. You know what I like about it is that even though it’s a little yeasty at times, it’s still able to bring me back in with the oat. I like it man.

Sandwich Artist: What kind of sandwich can I make for you?

Randy: Yo dog, dog, you even have to ask? Chicken Bacon Ranch, baby! Love that ranch, dude, feelin’ it, ranch is where it’s at yo!

Sandwich Artist: Alright. Would you like cheese?

Randy: I’m going to say 100% yes!

Sandwich Artist: Toasted?

Randy: I’m going to say 1000% yes!

[Guy slides the sandwich on to the tray for the toaster. Both awkwardly await for the toasting to commence]

Sandwich Artist: Would you like any vegetables on here?

Randy: Duuuude, dawwwwwg, duuuuuuude, no.

Sandwich Artist: What about the ranch?

Randy: Six-hundred-million-thousand-hundred percent yes!

[A small amount of ranch is applied]

Randy: Duuude, it’s just like it doesn’t have enough UUUUGGGGGHHHHH! Come on man, UUUUGGGGGHHHHH!

[Ranch completely covers every available inch of the sandwich]

Randy: Dawg, dawg, dawg! That’s what I’m talkin bout! I felt that, I felt that.

[Thumps chest with fist, repeatedly]

Sandwich Artist: Would you like to make this a combo today?

Randy: No. Sorry duuuude. Today’s not your day man.

Sandwich Artist: Okay then, that will be $6.18.

[Pays with diamond from his watch face]

Sandwich Artist: Thank you, have a good day.

Randy: Once you got started you had it goin’ on! I was like WHAAAAAAT! Just really classy man, you made it your own. Awesome. Awesome.

[Randy walks out. Sandwich artist goes back to fiddling with the bag of soup]