by Tara Floyd

Created on: June 07, 2008

Addiction and the Role a Shopping Cart Plays

A few years ago, I came out to my friends and family as a cleaning product junkie. I admitted my long-term abuse of Mr. Clean, Lysol Toilet Bowl Cleaner and the worst addiction of them all; The Glade Candle.

Long had I huffed the aisle where products promise freshness, cleanliness and sparkly-ness (a made up word, I know). Hours I would've spent opening, sniffing and closing detergent, fabric softener and floor cleaner, if my husband and children hadnt staged an intervention..

I knew that it had me and I did almost anything to get my fix.

Using the shopping cart with boxes of cereal and flats of meat, I'd hide one or two cleaning products underneath the cereal boxes in the cart. As I found cuts of meat I was willing to cook, I'd stack them neatly around the hidden booty and act completely surprised when they showed up in the grocery bags when we brought them into the house.

Eventually and none too soon, my husband smelled a rat (or was it Pine-Sol?) and began going shopping with me. It was one thing to hide Clorox Cleaner from the kids behind innocent-looking Cap N Crunch boxes, but it was a completely different ballgame trying to sneak a large bottle of Gain Soothing Sensations past his beady little eyes.

"How many detergents did you inhale before settling on this one?" he would ask.

"Just two, or was it three? I don't know! Why are you doing this to me? I only do it every now and then and only a little bit at a time," I tried to explain.

He didn't buy it. He knew that somewhere in the shopping cart I had other scented items. Behind the toilet paper, he found a Cinnamon Apple Candle scent and underneath the much needed kitchen towels he found the Murphy's Oil Soap.

Suddenly, he grabbed the shopping cart and started down the aisle in a dead run, discarding the products I'd painfully taken the time to hide. I chased him part way before I got a head rush from the Febreeze Pet Odor Neutralizer. I stopped at the sponges and mops and slid down to the floor in defeat.

It was over.

Quietly my husband approached me and gently helped me to my feet. He pushed the shopping cart the rest of the time in the store and instructed me to not remove my hands from the side, a punishment usually handed down to our sons when they would wander off.

It didn't take long before I realized and admitted my addiction and I can happily say that now that I no longer have a job, I no longer can reason away a trip to the grocery store to purchase that sweet-smelling goodness that is Downy.

I can no longer rationalize a reason to purchase a candle or the latest window cleaner.

Now, as part of my rehabilitation, I have to use the products I've purchased to clean my house.

Just another sad story of grocery cart hideaways, huffing and addiction.

Warn your children.

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