Thursday 18 December 2014

Glad Wrap - What Have You Done?

Back in October, I finished a box of cling wrap that my dad had given me. It was 600m of plastic goodness that had wrapped my sandwiches and left-overs for 3 years and 4 months and left me feeling a little empty inside when it was gone. You can read about that here.

After wiping the tears, I advised my parents that the cling wrap was finally finished, only to receive the wonderful news that my dad already had a replacement. He'd been storing it under the bed, waiting for me to finish mine so he could surprise me with another. He's a good man.

The catch? He couldn't get it to me before Christmas. That was a long time to substitute foil and zip lock bags for jobs that clearly weren't theirs. So I bit the bullet and bought some, a modest 100m of Glad Wrap, the real stuff.

And that's when the shit-fight began. Watch:



You see, the cutting edge is above the cling wrap. Above. So you  have to pull out the plastic,  then lift it up to tear it. It's at this point that the plastic decides  - EVERY TIME  mind you -  to attach itself TO ITSELF and RUIN YOUR DAY.

My kid's lunches usually get made in the mornings (because I mostly only dream about being that organised that I will have prepared them the night before) which means I'm starting every day with a mother of all battles. And that's before I even start with the children.

Initially I thought it was just me, particularly when I saw the way husband looked at me, all eyebrows raised and lip curled, judging me for my inability to manage a small square of plastic. So I asked him to do it.

HA! COP THAT! He studied it. Oh, did he study it. "We must be doing something wrong," he said. "There must be a trick to it."

No. NO. It's just stupid.

Still, I was concerned that this was just a problem that affected only the two of us. Perhaps we'd lived together so long that we'd absorbed each other's inability to manage simple tasks. That may be fair and even likely, but I know now that we're not alone.

When friends visited last weekend, I let out a little grumble (or a cray-cray wild rant?) when trying to wrap some leftovers in Glad Wrap. What I didn't expect was the support I was about to receive, for they too had been struggling with this stupid bloody thing that destroys lives. Together we raised our glasses and bitched for a good half hour about why this is happening, the  design of the box, the required angle of the arm and the sharp edge versus the slidey-cutter on my previous and much loved 600m box.

I get that there  are different ways to use cling wrap. Yes, you can lay the plastic over a bowl and provided you can stick the wrap to one side before cutting, this usually works well (unless you're trying to stick it to Tupperware or plastic containers.....which is a whole other battle). When you just want to lay a large sheet of it onto the bench to then place your sandwich onto, it's not cool.

It's quite possible there are just four of us who have an issue here and every other human is capable of using this Glad Wrap box with ease and joy.  But I suspect not. I think there could well be an entire nation of us and we will rise. Oh yes, we will.

Which household item ruins your day?

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