Pop 'Em

I made a trip to Virginia to visit Linens N Things. I had been down on them for a while, but I think they are competitive with Bed, Bath, and Beyond. However, the local Rockville site didn't have an Oxo Pop Container.

Oxo makes tons of products. They now make stuff to compete against themselves. Multiple can openers, for example.

The popup container competes against stuff like Click-Clack containers. You can put rice, flour, sugar in these acrylic containers. The key for the Oxo is that there's a button on top. Press it, and it creates a vacuum seal. Press it again, and it pops out, and serves as a handle. It's pretty darn cool.

Except it was a pain to find.

Google Maps failed me again. It took me to the wrong address for Linens N Things. It pointed me further up the road, and I was wandering wondering how any store could be buried far off the main road and not be visible. It didn't make sense.

I decided to go the other direction a bit, which took nearly half an hour, because I kept wandering around, and found it, by a place called World Market. It's hard to say what kind of store this is. It has furniture, kitchen stuff, mostly containers, and such, but also spices, coffee, tea, etc. I can't quite say what the store reminds me of. Pier One?

Anyway, I ended up getting a bunch of spices there for a dollar each. Then, they suggested I get spice jars, of which they had like 5 different kinds.

Then, I went to Linens N Things to find the Pop container. I didn't see it, at first, then finally realized it was on the shelf on the other side. The person who helped, despite being friendly, didn't realize it was sitting on the other side.

Then, I headed to look at Williams and Sonoma, which is generally overpriced, but tries to keep this air of sophistication.

Anyway, Oxo is generally hit or miss. Not all their products are that good. I just bought ice trays with the tops (they slide over the ice). The tops suck, but the ice tray is reasonably OK.

I could be buying stuff for a while for the kitchen, so I'm running into issues finding places to put everything. The usual kitchen dilemma.