Cut Your Lotion Tubes

 I'd seen a few vidoes circulating around the internet about how you should cut your lotion tubes to get every last bit, especially for those more expensive lotions. I'd always thought I was someone who tried very hard to squeeze every last bit out of the tube before tossing it. So how useful was it to actually cut the tube?

I did an experiment and found out for myself. 

Both my children had and my son still has infantile eczema. It's super annoying and we constantly have to remember to keep him lotioned and lathered or else these red patches start appearing on his arms and legs. Because of this, I've bought a lot of baby eczema lotion. It's not off-the-charts expensive, but it's not cheap either. It retails at approximately $8.00 for a 5 oz tube.

With my daughter, I would squeeze the tube from every direction to try and maximize what I could squeeze out before tossing the tube. I'd even pull the cap off and try to squeeze some more. Was that good enough? 

No, it really wasn't.

We got a food scale last year so it measures items down to the gram. Super helpful for baking with precise accuracy or just nerding out and weighing all sorts of random things. Out of curiosity, I wanted to see how accurate the weights were on the package from manufacturers. 

I had three tubes of the same lotion for this experiment. One was completely new. One was completely empty after I cut it and finished what was left inside. One was empty to the squeeze and what I would normally deem as empty and toss if I didn't cut the tube.

The completely new bottle was 162g. The labeled weight of the product is 141g on the package. This meant that if accurate, the packaging itself was 21g.

The completely empty bottle I'd cut and used was actually 20g which meant the manufacturer's label was very accurate. 

Then I weighed the tube which was empty to the squeeze: 50g! Unbelievable. This meant there was 30g of lotion in there I couldn't squeeze out unless I cut open the tube. 

Guys, that means if I had just thrown the tube away (which I had many times) and didn't cut it open, I would be throwing away $1.70 worth of lotion every time. 😱

This is how much lotion was left inside
after I cut it open to have a look.

So here it is. We all need to be cutting open our plastic tubes to get every last bit out because there is a baffling amount left inside, even if it is empty to the squeeze. Someone needs to invent a better way to squeeze lotions...

When did you start cutting your lotion tubes?