One thing that I find particularly 'usable' or user friendly, is when a single product has multiple uses. It saves not only space (store one thing to do multiple things) but money and effort as well. It's especially great when you discover a new use for a product that you've been using for only one thing for awhile.
My recent new multi-use discovery is Bon Ami cleanser. Pretty much since I started buying my own cleaning supplies, I've always used Bon Ami. It doesn't have bleach and has been marketed as 'earth friendly' for as long as I can remember. I've always used it as a normal cleanser for kitchen sink and bathroom cleaning. But I'd never used it on my pots and pans.
I have a 4 quart stainless steel pot that I use frequently. It had gotten a kind of baked on rim in the middle of the inside that I just couldn't scrub off. There was also a faint white tinge to the bottom of the inside as well. Kind of on a whim, I dumped some Bon Ami in there, scrubbed away just using my normal scrub sponge, viola! sparkling clean - almost like new! It was so amazing I used it to clean my Le Creuset pot and some other pots I have. It was a strangely cathartic experience.
Perhaps this is a cleaning fact that most people know - one that my mother just never passed on to me. But it made me appreciate Bon Ami even more than I did before.
The Bon Ami website is a great example of an older offline brand translated very well online. There are a few funny games, a vintage ad gallery, some desktop calendars and an interesting history of the company. Being able to go to the web site and read about the creation and meaning of the tag line "hasn't scratched yet" and the marketing campaign that was used to revive the product in the early '80's ("Never Underestimate the Cleaning Power of a 94 Year-Old Chick With a French Name,") all make me even more loyal to a brand that I hadn't really thought about before.
So if you have some spare time this evening, don the rubber gloves, get out the Bon Ami, and start polishing your pots and pans!

