When Old Becomes New - and Confusing

So I went to Twin City to pick up some bleach and ran into one of those modern-day quirks where a staple product has morphed into choices I never heard of before.

The shelf had concentrated bleach, presumably based on the theory that reducing the volume of water in the product also cut down on transportation and other costs. And then it had the "New!" Ready-Use Bleach, billed as "Pre-Diluted" - apparently with the water added back.

If there was no mixing, no measuring, wasn't it the same as good old Regular Bleach? The value-added part  turned out to be a clever, pull-up spray cap, so one could just squirt bleach in a sink or tub.

Interestingly, the Ready-Use Bleach section was nearly empty, while the Concentrated Bleach was not moving off the shelf, so maybe the "New!" product was just the century-old one revisited after consumers shunned the concentrate.

Much has been written about the proliferation of sub-categories of common products today. It is sort of a mind-bleep to an older consumer or someone from another country to see half an aisle of the same product done up this way and that way when all you want is Regular or Standard.

The Clorox web site lists 27 kinds of cleaning and disinfecting products, including scented, foaming, germicidal, splash-less and of course regular, concentrated and pre-diluted bleach. Despite being mind-boggling to this septuagenarian, the web site is also quite clever and funny, especially regarding the kind of bodily mishaps that require bleach for cleanup (under Laugh, check out the Ick-tionary).

I could also tell you about my quest for plain old Bayer aspirin at Scott Drugs - suffice to say I could not understand the current choices and all their ramifications and cautions, so I left empty-handed.

--Bernice