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RIKL ReviewTM - The Smart Spin PLUCOmatic

PLUCOs on the hoof - randomly stacked in cabinet

Is this your problem, too? 

It's time to go to work, and you want to enPLUCOfy your selection of victuals for later consumption.  But, when you open the cabinet, your tops and bottoms are in disarray.  At best, they will be almost like the photo:  Components nicely separated and stacked.  At worst, you'll have a Fibber McGee and Molly event, with PLUCO sections all over the floor, and you left to re-sort and re-store them before you can mate a top to a bottom and thus accomplish your mission.

In a sense, this problem and photo is a consequence of my frugality.  My housemate shops, and occasionally brings home new PLUCOs at, of course ruinous cost.  I don't shop, and refuse to discard any takeout container that shows any resilience or sturdiness with respect to multiple closings.  Eventually, the PLUCO cabinet contains a mixture of new, used, and improvised containers.  Needless to say, compatibility between tops and bottoms is the first desideratum to suffer.  Is there a solution to this problem?  Of course there is, and my housemate discovered it on one of her pilgrimages to the store. 

The Federal PLUCO Standardization Act

No, that wasn't it.  As nice as it would be for the government to intervene to guarantee that all takeout containers would be exactly the same with interoperable lids, and for the Federal Takeout Coordination Bureau to work with each state's Plastic Goods Authority to assure that separately purchased containers met the standard as well, I don't expect this to occur.  There simply is no budget for this, and there won't be until the Federal Spinach Inspectors Union merges with the International Union of Peanut Butter Scrutinizers, which will free government personnel to work on the PLUCO problem. 

Private industry to the rescue!  This is what she did discover.

The Smart Spin PLUCOmatic

SmartSpin PLUCOmatic box As you can see, an insightful entrepreneur, reading my mind as they sometimes do, has invented a PLUCO organizer.  I won't deconstruct the package printing as I did with the Hershey Sticks, but I'm skeptical of the Store All Your Containers & Lids statement.  You'll note that "All," in contradistinction to the other words, is italicized, and the statement is followed by "in less than one square foot" in much smaller print. 
SmartSpin PLUCOmatic box contents I find the photo on the box to be somewhat deceptive.  Clearly it doesn't match the contents after they have been rearranged for maximum utility.  Also, it isn't clear from the box that the base of the PLUCOMATIC is offset from the rotating selector platform.  While the "one square foot" statement is technically accurate when the platform is retracted, in normal use the full appliance requires more space.

Nonetheless, it does appear to have advantages over the haphazard storage method currently being employed.  I spun it around a few times, counted the contents, and verified that there were no other arrant misrepresentations on the package.  I also noticed that "blue" was the predominant color theme, always a plus.

The Actual RIKL Review

Unlike the other products I have reviewedThe Motorola Q, the Tire Pressure Sensor, and others—I haven't spent a lot of time with this product.  I can't vouch for the ability of the individual PLUCOs to stand up to repeated usage, for example, or whether the spin bearings suffer from radiation damage when placed in the test nuclear reactor.  The instruction "manual" seemed typical for a consumer product—incomprehensible, but unnecessary.  In fact, my entire usage of the PLUCOmatic consisted of taking photographs of it and writing this blogitem.

Of course you have figured out why.  Frugality.  The PLUCOs in the top photo still have many opportunities to serve, literally and figuratively.  Surely I'm not going substitute this plastic parvenu for my panoply of PLUCO parts, at least not while they maintain their integrity and pluck!  But perhaps I'll be less avid about saving take-out containers.  Sure I will.


Follow-up 17 May 2007


Geraldine's PLUCO storage solution
Geraldine's PLUCO shelves. Geraldine also happens to be an opera singer, and mentioned that musicians often dream music.

Faithful reader (and frizzy Roman goddess) Geraldine weighs in with her PLUCO scheme:

I have a similar closet with practically identical containers in it but it has two pull-out shelves and I put the lids on the top shelf and the bottoms on the bottom shelf.  I think the "Smart Spin" is useless because it only holds specific sized containers. I would have the pull out shelves put in.  They are  easy to install in any size cabinet and roll in and out easily, which makes it even easier to get to the containers, because you don't have to reach inside the cabinet.

My counter-suggestion was to have someone living inside the cabinet who would hand me what I want. Speaking of "counter" Geraldine loves to give kitchen advice.  She also suggested "granite" for the countertops.  "Why not amethyst or jade?" I suggested.  That only costs twenty times what I have now instead of just three times as much.  (That meant "No.")


NP:  "Average Guy" - Lou Reed

© 2007
Richard Factor

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