SqueakyCleanCo’s Antibacterial Hand Sanitizer

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Some days, cleanliness is next to impossible. Some days, my hands are toast from constant washing and drying. And like some people nowadays, I’m hopelessly addicted to hand sanitizer. Like, I have a bottle in every bathroom, in my purse, in the car, in the bedroom, in the garage. When Squeaky Clean offered me a bottle of their antibacterial had sanitizer to try out, I couldn’t say yes fast enough.

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Good sanitizers, at their most basic levels, are pretty much the same: Copious amounts of ethyl alcohol in a glycerin suspension. There’s usually some other things to stabilize it, some fragrance, and maybe a moisturizer to keep our hands from becoming dry, cracked like an old catcher’s mitt. And because alcohol is ridiculously cheap, hand sanitizer is  affordable. I usually pick up Target’s Up & Up brand for about $5 for a 32 ounce bottle. It’s not too fancy, it’s got some weird green color to it, but it also does the job. So here’s where brands like Squeaky Clean start diverging from Purell, Up & Up, and almost every other brand I’ve tried: It’s expensive. A 16 ounce bottle is over $14 on Amazon.com. Yikes! Multiplied out, I’d be spending nearly $30 to get the same amount as what I normally pay $5 for at Target. That makes no sense.

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In Squeaky Clean’s defense, their product smells divine, and the aloe and vitamin e left my hands smooth, soft and not at all dried out, plus there’s no added dyes to make it that funky green color as my usual brand. It has 62% ethyl alcohol instead of my usual 70%, so it’s more on par with Purell there too. The box it came in looked very chic and high-end, and the pump reaches to the bottom so you’re not shaking the bottle at end to use the last little bit of it. It’s delightful fragrance stays with you for some time, too. But I don’t know that those pluses are worth more than 3 times the price of leading brands. In fact, I’m sure they’re not. I like the product, it does what it says it’ll do and is what it says it is, but it’s far, far too expensive for me to recommend.

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I received the above product(s) free of charge from SqueakyCleanCo.  I am not obligated to provide a positive or favorable review, just my honest opinion.  My review is based on my experience with the product and/or brand, which may differ from yours.

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Taylor Bluetooth Body Fat SmartScale w/ SmarTrack App

 

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I’ve covered a couple of different bathroom scales on here, and most of them have been fairly basic. I have one from Ozeri that measures body fat, bone, muscle and water levels too. I’m very happy with it. One even had it’s own “app”. But until now, I’d not had one with bluetooth. In steps Taylor, a Salter Housewares brand, with their Taylor Smart Scale with Bluetooth, model 7222F.

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It has the fairly standard tempered glass surface, this time with stainless steel strips inlaid for the measuring of all those extra metrics like body fat, body water and muscle mass. And it then beams those numbers via bluetooth to your paired smartphone or tablet via their SmarTrack app. At least in theory, that is, because I could not get the app to register me, despite multiple tries on my phone, tablet, and over both our FiOS wifi and 4G network connection. Which, essentially, renders the features that most folks paid extra for useless. Shame. The idea behind easy and convenient tracking of your weight, and your fitness, is a good one, but one of these days these companies really need to understand app development and that it’s more than throwing a few dollars at an IT company that bid the lowest to cobble together what amounts to placeholder to be able to say you “have an app”. It has to work, people.

Okay. Deep breath.

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Aside from the incredible amount of frustration caused by this, the scale in and of itself is accurate, and while the numbers were slightly off from the other body fat-measuring scales we have here in the house, that can simply be chalked up to the fact that they all use “estimates” from small electrical signals sent through the body, and so many factors can skew that, I’m not going to begrudge a scale a few percentage points here and there. Up to 8 people can use this scale with basic non-bluetooth tracking features, an “athlete” setting for those that work out regularly, and a bright, dual-line backlit LCD readout with “touchscreen” controls. All this and it operates on 3 AAA batteries. Unfortunately, most of the advertised features like true tracking, cloud storage, and compatibility with MapMyFitness, RunKeeper and other popular apps are inaccessible due to the native app being useless. So it quickly becomes less and less a value because, let’s face it, you paid for those features. I wanted to like this product so much more, and I’ve had Taylor, Salter, and Homedics scales before that were fantastic. This scale is, as a scale, flawless. It’s all the advertised extras that caused the premium pricetag that are rendered useless by a non-functioning, junk app. For that reason, I find that I can’t, at full retail, recommend this product, because so many of the potentially wonderful features advertised cannot be accessed, and they’re built into the price tag. Too bad.

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Connect with Taylor Precision Products:

I received the above product(s) free of charge from Taylor Precision Products.  I am not obligated to provide a positive or favorable review, just my honest opinion.  My review is based on my experience with the product and/or brand, which may differ from yours.

Gurin: GO-410 Fingertip Pulse Oximeter #Review #FingerPulseOximeter

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One can never have too much information about your own health. One can sometimes share too much about it, but the knowledge is invaluable and important to all. So when I get a chance to try out tools that tell me more about my IMAG2394overall health, I’m thrilled. Enter Gurin, and their GO-410 Pulse Oximeter, stage right. Not just an oximeter (which measures the oxygen saturation of your blood), but it also tells you your pulse as well. The color OLED display is easy to read, bright, and large enough to be easily seen. IMAG2395It even adjusts the display to whatever angle you need, depending on how it faces you.  The oximeter is lightweight, conveniently portable, and even comes with 2 AAA batteries (Always a favorite feature I will always, always praise. Nothing’s better than including batteries. Take note, every company that doesn’t!).
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This momentary-use device (it’s not for continuous use) uses infrared light to measure from one finger. It has a soft IMAG2396rubber interior for a very comfortable fit for any size finger. It has a lanyard for easy retrieval, and even a velcro-sealed pouch for safe travels. It has an auto-renew feature for battery life extension, and even remembers the last reading to keep track of your health. It has a high/low alarms well! Perfect for families or households that have someone with respiratory issues or for when someone comes down with a URI. Like I said, the more information you have about your health, the better.

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This seems like a quality device, and for $38.95 or less from Amazon or other retailers, you could do much worse. Plus, it’s backed by Gurin’s 100% satisfaction guarantee, so it’s a no-brainer as far as I’m concerned. A quality good I’m happy to know is as close as my medicine cabinet.

Connect with Gurin Products:

I received the above product(s) free of charge from Gurin Products.  I am not obligated to provide a positive or favorable review, just my honest opinion.  My review is based on my experience with the product and/or brand, which may differ from yours.

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