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Local 10 in Miami, FL just reported on 5 home improvement products to avoid. Number 2 on the list:

2. Liquid Drain Cleaner

Highly toxic and only marginally effective, liquid drain cleaners fail time and again, leaving you with a sink-full of poisonous solution to deal with when you or your plumber has to clear the drain manually. Interestingly, one of the leading brands of drain cleaner recently began selling a drain-cleaning tool (much like a Zip-It) along with their liquid product. Isn’t this obviously admitting that their product doesn’t work all that well on its own? The right tools for the job: Zip-It or other flexible hair-clog extractor; coat hanger; drain snake; or tongue-and-groove pliers, for taking apart the P-trap assembly to clean it by hand.

We couldn’t agree more. Thanks Local 10!

The folks at Gizmodo are concerned about your bathroom. Yes, YOUR bathroom. They know your bathroom is a mess, so they have listed 6 Tools to Make Your Disgusting Bathroom Pristine Again. Wouldn’t you know, Zip-It makes the cut. Of course it does. We’re a little concerned about your bathroom, too.

The Christmas stocking. Hung so carefully by the chimney. But they don’t look nearly as good as when they are stuffed to overflowing with presents. And there in lies the trick – overflowing. To properly stuff a Christmas stocking, to elicit squeals of joy from it, you must load it with goodies that breach the upper lip of the sock. You know where I’m going with this. Zip-It, in it’s packaging, is 23-3/4″ long.  This thing is definitely going to extend past the lip of the stocking. And the very act of pulling Zip-It out of the stocking is very much like actually using it in a drain. Zip-It deserves to be stuffed in a stocking (and then a drain). Even Alan Miller, the Old House Handyman at the Columbus Dispatch agrees:

Next on the all-time favorites list is something called Zip-It Clean, a tool so simple and vital — especially in a house occupied by four women with long hair — that I should have thought of it. The tool is a thin, flexible plastic rod with a handle and short spines sticking from the sides. You can find it at most hardware stores for about $3. Shove it into any sink or floor drain in my house, pull it back out, and along with it will come a pile of hair and gunk the size of a drowned rat. I used it two weeks ago to clean out a slow drain in the bathroom. The job took all of about three minutes, including the trip to the basement to get the Zip-It. (I recently bought one for one of my college-age daughters for use in her houseful of women.)

Oh, just think of the squeals of joy you will hear when your loved ones find a Zip-It in their stocking on Christmas morn.

This is Afrobella

There is a trend in the kinky haired community to let your hair do what your hair is naturally inclined to do (I let my hair do the same thing, but it’s kinda wavy and sticks straight up – and I wouldn’t change a thing – but I digress). These ladies are proud of what they have and love showing it off, and we love every last one of them.

Our new found friends at Afrobella are on a quest to find all of the products a girl needs to let her curly hair fly free. They have also found that some of that free flying curly hair flies right into the drain. Mercifully, Afrobella recently discovered the joys of Zip-It. What has impressed me most in her write-up is the use of the terms “doohickey” and “oooooh chile”:

Now here’s the thing. The Zip-It is different from other drain cleaners, because it’s manual. It’s a long plastic doohickey you stick down your drain as far down as you can, and then you pull it back out, oooooh chile. Let me prepare you for what you may behold.

With a chemical drain cleaner you never actually come into contact with your shower sludge, or clumps of hair. But with the Zip-It, you are literally pulling this stuff out of your shower drain manually, so for the love of Pete make sure you’re right next to your toilet or bathroom trash can. Because if you’re like me and you’d rather not touch this stuff, it’s the only way to avoid having to do so. It gets gross, it gets real – but it works like nothing else ever has.

Thank you Afrobella. You are gorgeous!

Read the whole thing HERE.