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I’m currently in struggle town. We have to move by 16 June – sort of against our will. Our landlords have decided to sell the apartment and they will obviously be aiming for the owner-occupier market rather than the investor market. Obviously, because they are booting us out to do renovations so they can sell it without our stuff smearing the potential buyer’s dream.

So we have to move our stuff, and we haven’t found a place yet. So we’re moving into temporary accommodation, which is a huge impetus for us to clear out all the crap we’ve accumulated in three years and six weeks in this apartment. It’s actually the longest we’ve lived in any place together.

I’m finding it really daunting to figure out where to jump in. Our place isn’t tiny but it’s not huge either, and we are using all the bedrooms, so there is no space for us to accumulate stuff as we sort it. And sure enough, just as I sort something, one of the children decides to go through it all and mix it up again.

Ah the joys. I can’t wait for the next six weeks to be over.

I’m a great believer in being a pain in the arse providing constructive criticism. I used to work for an FMCG manufactuer, and being in a consumer driven industry meant that I became very accustomed to listening to what consumers had to say, and not just how they chose to spend their $$.

So I am quite happy to bitch directly give feedback to a company if I think their product is below par.

My most recent bug bear was my Palmolive Dishwashing Detergent. It claimed to be a concentrate formula, thus you use half as much. However even when it was closed properly, the detergent formed a plug in the lid and, in the process of squeezing the plug out, double the amount of detergent would spew forth from the bottle. ARGH – the ANNOYMENT! I mean, this totally negated the whole concept of using half as much with the 2 x concentrate.

Can you not see why this drove me bonkers?

It really annoyed me in that niggly fashion and being at work all the time meant that I never got around to calling the Colgate-Palmolive consumer line during business hours to have a whinge. (Yes I’m all for giving consumer feedback, but I didn’t want to embarrass myself by revealing my complainy, pain in the arse side to my work colleagues!)

Roll on maternity leave. When Harrie didn’t arrive on the third day of my mat leave as planned (!!), I decided to take fate into my hands and emailed off a little note to Colgate-Palmolive, letting them know my problems (with their product).

Imagine my surprise when I received an email back that very afternoon, saying they had actually made some modifications in the product, and they were going to send me a bottle of detergent so I could try it out.

Lo and behold, two weeks later, two bottles of detergent arrived. I was sceptical at first – after all the 2 x concentrate formula was only a new product in its own right – but believe you me, those pesky detergent plugs are gone forever.

Which means I will now happily buy my purple sink detergent once again. So YAY for consumer feedback, no?

And all I can say is, when confronted with the much hated task of cleaning the dishes, my grumpy mood is no longer exacerbated by detergent related frustrations.

The fact I am blogging about this may just be an indication of the fact that I need to get a life? But I am busy raising one.

Have you ever complained about sub-standard products, or do you just grin, bear it and shift your loyalties to a different brand?

*I was not asked or sponsored to write this post. Colgate-Palmolive has no idea I have a blog and that I am blogging about it. I was just very happy with Colgate-Palmolive’s commitment to their consumers, so thought I would let you all know.