In laundry rooms across the country, a quiet reckoning is taking place between consumers and the containers they trust. A Reddit user's discovery — that an 'empty' Tide bottle still held a full load's worth of detergent, locked away by its own spout design — opened a wider conversation about the gap between what we pay for and what we can actually use. The thread that followed became a kind of folk archive of workarounds, a testament to the ingenuity born of frustration when design serves the shelf more than the buyer.
Reddit user reveals how much detergent hides in 'empty' Tide bottles
The spout design traps product long after the bottle stops pouring
Mark
So someone just took pliers to a Tide bottle and found more detergent inside? That seems like it should be obvious.
Mimi
You'd think so, but the spout design actually prevents the liquid from flowing out once the bottle tips past a certain angle. It's not that the detergent disappeared—it's trapped by the bottle's geometry.
Luke
Do we know how much detergent is typically left this way? The source says "enough for one more load," but is that measured or estimated?
Mimi
The original poster measured it into the cap and it reached line 2, which is a standard measurement. But that's one person's bottle. We don't know if this is consistent across all Tide bottles or if it varies.
Mark
Why would a company design a bottle that wastes its own product?
Mimi
It's probably not intentional waste—it's a trade-off. The spout design makes the bottle easier to use and less likely to leak during shipping and storage. The trapped product is a side effect, not the goal.
Luke
But people are clearly frustrated enough to use pliers and cut bottles open. That suggests the waste is significant enough to matter to consumers.
Mimi
Exactly. And the thread shows this isn't unique to Tide. People reported the same problem with paint, lotion, shampoo, conditioner. It's a pattern across product categories.
Mark
So what's the actual solution here? Are people supposed to just accept this as normal?
Luke
The source mentions P&G rolled out a plastic-free Tide format. We don't know if that addresses the spout design issue or if it's just about the packaging material itself.
Mimi
That's the gap—we know consumers are frustrated and have workarounds, but we don't know if manufacturers are actually changing the design to reduce trapped product.
Mark
And the water-and-shake method—does that actually work, or is it just diluting what's left?
Luke
The source reports people saying they do it, but there's no testing or verification that it recovers the same amount as the pliers method. It's anecdotal.
El Pulso
- What looked like an empty detergent jug turned out to hold an entire hidden load's worth of product — revealed only when a pair of pliers forced the spout off.
- The discovery struck a nerve: commenters flooded in with their own stories of product trapped in paint jugs, lotion bottles, shampoo containers, and face wash — a systemic pattern, not an isolated quirk.
- Frustration sharpened into a pointed critique of packaging engineering, with users noting that spout lips and curved bottoms are effectively designed to make full emptying impossible.
- Practical solutions multiplied fast — from drilling holes and cutting V-notches to shaking water through the bottle or simply leaving it upside down on a towel destined for the wash.
- The thread landed not as a celebration of clever hacks, but as a collective exhale of exhaustion with a consumer system that quietly charges for product it won't let you reach.
In laundry rooms across the country, a quiet reckoning is taking place between consumers and the containers they trust. A Reddit user's discovery — that an 'empty' Tide bottle still held a full load's worth of detergent, locked away by its own spout design — opened a wider conversation about the gap between what we pay for and what we can actually use. The thread that followed became a kind of folk archive of workarounds, a testament to the ingenuity born of frustration when design serves the shelf more than the buyer.
A Reddit user thought they had an empty Tide bottle. Instead of throwing it away, they reached for a pair of pliers, removed the spout, and found enough detergent for one more full load — product the bottle's own design had made unreachable. The post landed in r/Laundry and immediately resonated.
The original poster already had a workaround: leaving the bottle upside down overnight to coax detergent toward the cap's first line. But the pliers method exposed just how much more the spout was trapping. Commenters arrived with their own variations — cutting the top off paint jugs and scraping with a silicone spatula, adding water to shampoo bottles, drilling small holes in the bottom corner and letting gravity drain the rest into a waiting cup.
The problem extended well beyond detergent. Lotion, conditioner, body wash, face wash — the same engineering flaw appeared across the bathroom and laundry room alike. Spout lips, curved bottoms, and narrow openings conspired to leave usable, paid-for product clinging to the inside of containers deemed empty.
What emerged from the thread wasn't just a list of hacks. It was a shared acknowledgment that packaging design routinely prioritizes shelf appeal over honest emptying — and that consumers, tired of discarding money along with the bottle, had quietly been solving the problem themselves for years.
A Reddit user posted about an experiment that turned into a small revelation about household waste. They had what they thought was an empty bottle of Tide detergent—the kind that sits in the laundry room, squeezed dry, seemingly finished. But instead of tossing it, they grabbed a pair of pliers and removed the spout. What came out surprised them: enough detergent to fill a measuring cap to the second line. One more full load's worth of washing, hidden inside what the bottle's design had made impossible to access.
The post landed in Reddit's r/Laundry forum, and the response was immediate. People recognized the problem. The original poster explained their usual workaround: leaving the "empty" bottle upside down overnight, which typically yields enough product to reach the first line on the cap. But the pliers method—destructive as it was—revealed just how much the bottle's spout design was trapping inside. Commenters piled in with their own discoveries and tactics, turning the thread into a catalog of household product waste.
The waste wasn't limited to detergent. One commenter who buys acrylic paint in bulk described cutting off the top third of the jug and using a small silicone spatula to scrape out what remained. "SO much product" still clung to the sides and bottom, they wrote. Others reported the same pattern with lotion bottles, shampoo, conditioner, face wash, and body wash. The design of these containers—the way the spout sits, the curve of the bottom, the lip that prevents liquid from flowing—was systematically leaving usable product behind.
One commenter captured the frustration plainly: the jug was "awful with how much goes to waste otherwise." Another noted that the lip around the spout "keeps a LOT of product inside after it's no longer able to pour." These weren't complaints about the product itself. They were complaints about engineering—about containers designed in a way that made them impossible to fully empty, even when full of liquid that cost money and took resources to produce.
But the thread also became practical. People shared methods that ranged from destructive to gentle. The pliers approach worked, as did cutting a small V-shaped notch at the bottom and draining from there. Others preferred less invasive solutions. One person recommended adding a little water to the jug, capping it, shaking vigorously, then turning it upside down so the thinned detergent ran into the measuring cap. Another simply added water to rinse out the residual product and tossed the whole thing into a wash load. Some drilled or cut a small hole in the bottom corner, propped the bottle up overnight with a cup underneath, and let gravity do the work. One commenter's method was almost absurdly simple: leave the bottle upside down on a towel you're about to wash anyway.
The conversation pointed to a broader tension in household products. Manufacturers design bottles to be convenient and to look full on shelves, but that design inevitably traps product at the end. Consumers, faced with waste and the cost of replacement, have become ingenious at working around it. The Reddit thread was less about a clever hack and more about a collective acknowledgment that the system wasn't working as advertised—and that people were tired of throwing away money.
Citas Notables
The jug was awful with how much goes to waste otherwise— Reddit commenter
The lip around the spout keeps a lot of product inside after it's no longer able to pour— Reddit commenter
Quieres la nota completa?
Lee el original en Yahoo ↗
Technology