July 07th, 2026

You see before you, Exhibit A, an ordinary pump dispenser.  This one happens to be body lotion. We use a lot of moisturizing lotion in this house.  Both of us. Even Tim.  I know this comes under the header of TMI, but since we have moved to Florida, Tim and I have fallen into the habit of taking 2 showers a day.  The first one, in the morning, is just part of waking up. While Tim drinks coffee, I do not. So for me, my morning shower is my "perk me up" instead of caffeine.  But, again, as Florida residents who spend actual time outside year 'round, we get sweaty, so before bed, we shower again.  We do this year 'round.  In the hot weather it is a necessity. In the cooler months, I suppose it's just habit.  The point remains, we shower, twice a day.

Which means we are very clean. But it also means we are drying out our skin which makes our skin itchy.  I hate itchy. I would rather be in pain than be itchy and I mean that seriously. Moisturizer, especially a super de duper moisturizer, applied liberally and often, helps tremendously (as does taking a less hot shower interestingly, but that's a different future post).

Anyway, that means we go through a goodly amount of moisturizing lotion on a regular basis.  We've tried a number of brands and kind of landed on Gold Bond in the end as one that we both liked.  As a product, I am a fan. A big fan.

However, the pump dispenser itself, as a means of accessing the lotion, is seriously flawed.  I mean it starts out just fine.  Tralalala, merrily we go on our way, pumping out lotion willynilly, until the bottle is about 3/4 empty. Then, suddenly, nothing. It seems to be kaput!  No matter how firmly or gently pumped, nothing else comes out. The bottle appears to be empty.  

Turns out, it is not. It was my friend Marsha, who cued me in on this.  "Good heaven's," she said to me when I whined about it to her, "it's not empty, don't just throw it away".  When I questioned her, she explained that she just cuts open the container to get access to the remainder. I raised my eyebrows with interest and curiosity.

On the one hand, I do like getting my money's worth.  Not a big fan of waste. On the other hand, is there enough leftover cream in the container to make it worth all of the pain-in-the-assidness of cutting open the bottle?  Only one way to find out.

First, I needed my tools, the most important of which was something to cut it open with.  I tried a number of things but it turned out that a box cutter was the best option.  As little scary, as I am not graceful and the bottle is every so sightly curved and I could easily imagine it slipping out from my clumsy hands and accidentally cutting something that bleeds rather than the container.  I vowed to myself to be extra careful.

Also got some paper towels because I anticipated at least a little bit of a mess and a different empty lidded container to hold any leftover moisturize.  Then I gathered up all no longer producing bottles of moisturizer that were in the house. Turned out to be two.

I laid each one carefully on it's side and took a deep breath, got a good grip on both bottle and boxcutter and began. Turned out to be more a series of punctures in the bottle than straight forward cutting as one might do on a cardboard box. But it worked so I suppose it doesn't matter.  In the end there were two half bottles of lotion and no blood lost so that's a win!

I was truly surprised at how much lotion remained at the bottom of the bottle.  At least a week's worth of application, would be my first guess. Easily. Probably more.  That's how much I was wasting by assuming that the pump dispense knew what it was doing when it stopped producing.  The container, after all isn't clear. I cannot see in!  And even if I unscrewed the top and peered inside, the lotion and the bottle are both white.  It would be somewhere between difficult and impossible to know for sure if the bottle were empty or not.

I suspect this is by design. I hate to be that suspicious of anyone's motives but come on!  I began to think about other pump dispenser products that I have used throughout my entire life and it's a crazy big number.  I wondered if it were true of ALL pump dispensers or just this one.  Well, I did a little investigating, and it turns out that the reason it happens is one of three things:

1.  a tube that is too short
2.  the bottle shape. A flat bottomed bottle tends to result in more residue 
3.  pump suction loss.  As the bottle empties, the pump loses suction and draws air instead of         product 

I hmmmmed on that for a wee bit because all of those reasons seem to be easily resolved with a design change so what the what?   I continued to read, perhaps there is something mechanical or physics related that I was missing in my thought process.  Turns out, Nope!  

"This design is a manufacturing and cost‑reduction choice — automated filling machines often round up to the nearest volume, so bottles are filled slightly over the labeled amount to ensure the pump delivers the stated volume. It’s also a practical compromise for mass production, as it’s easier to fill and test bottles at the factory."

And that is a direct quote. 

Ok, since I am not in charge of the world but also do not want to pay even more for the moisturizer, nor do I want to go without it (and making the necessary design changes would absolutely result in charging customers more), I guess I will just continue to do what I'm currently doing and preforming surgery on all pump dispenser bottles to garner every last pennies worth of product !!!!

You doubt me?  Here is what I scraped out of the two bottles I just cut open yesterday:

As an aside, I also learned that the pump dispenser design itself is literally thousands of years old.  Ancient Egyptians used it way back in 2000 BCE. The design has, of course, been refined  and modernized since then but still, I'm kind of impressed that the same basic concept used by Cleopatra and Ptolemy is still sitting on our bathroom vanity!  

Anyway, I guess the whole point here was to suggest to any of you who have noticed the same issue and maybe wondered if it was worthwhile that yeah, as lazy as I basically am, even I see the value in putting forth the effort to get every last drop in this particular case.  

No actual surgical license necessary  :)