Attention Q-Tippers

I am a frequent user of Q-tips - if I don't use them for a couple of days, I can just feel the wax in my ears after a shower. But it was recently pointed out to me that Q-tips are actually damaging to your ears and push the wax further in. My dad just a couple of weeks ago damaged his ear drum from Q-tipping too hard.

And believe it or not, nowhere on the packaging does it suggest Q-tips should be used in the ears. Instead, Q-tips "variety of uses" are:

1) First aid (gently applying ointments and creams)

2) Electronics (cleaning and dusting hard-to-reach places )

3) Baby care

4) Household use/cleaning

So who had the bright idea to stick these cotton swabs into an ear? And how did that become such a preferred method of hygiene despite the fact it is not acknowledged by the producer?

In line with this, Q-tips has also branded itself as the top cotton swab company, to the point that you rarely hear the product acknowledged as cotton swabs, but instead as Q-tips. When I ran out last week, I asked my mom to get me some more Q-tips (I don't think I even knew the actual product name until writing this post). It's the same with Band-Aids (adhesive strips) and Kleenex (tissues). The latter particularly gets under my skin since my dad worked for Procter & Gamble and Kleenex was a direct competitor. I tried to start a trend calling them Puffs, but it never panned out.

Still to this day, however, I won't hand someone a Kleenex - they have to call it by its proper name.

Or Puffs.

:)