Technology Meets the Trash Can – Mr. Sticky is Officially Retired

The weather has been so good for the past few days that My wife and I decided to do some spring cleaning. I found myself wondering why we even bought some of the things we were now throwing away. A perfect example is our Mr. Sticky.

Mr. Sticky was advertised in a home and garden expo as the lint roller that never needs to be refilled. We have hard wood floors, a cat and a dog, so a never-ending sticky lint roller on a broomstick sounded like a great idea at the time.

The man doing the demonstration used his Mr. Sticky to pick up all sorts of dirt, hair, and other unmentionables on his hard-wood demo set. He would pick things up, rinse it off, and like magic, it was clean again and ready for action. After watching it work wonders in front of the crowd, we decided to make Mr. Sticky a part of our home for the low, low price of $29.99.

So how did this wonderful piece of 21st century cleaning technology find its way into the trash this weekend? For starters, Mr. Sticky is a 1.5″ diameter roller coated with a sticky silly-putty-like substance. Just like in the demo, it worked great for picking up pet hair and the like, but after a couple rotations of the roller, its surface was covered and could not pick up anything else.

We then rinsed Mr. Stick off, and sure enough, all of the debris came right off. But Mr. Sticky was hard to dry. When you try to dry it with a paper towel of even a cloth towel, it would pull the lint from the towel, coating the surface again. If you attempted to use Mr. Sticky without drying him off first, it would not pick up anything.

Mr. Sticky quickly found a place far in the back of our broom closet, right beside the Roomba Robotic vacuum cleaner that was supposed to make our lives so much easier (it clogged so often it was more work to clean its brushes than it was to just vacuum yourself).

So as you clean your closets and cabinets out this spring, stop for a second to take a look at what you are throwing out. Every piece of technology has a story, and some are worth telling!