reviews: Pledge Fabric Sweeper for Pet Hair

When I received the Pledge Fabric Sweeper for Pet Hair in the mail I was eager to try it out. I have a tortoiseshell Persian cat and she sheds alot. We go to great extent to keep pet fur from being a major issue and I was really excited about this product for review. I must mention that we have a Persian cat and she sheds alot. She typically lays in about 3 spots, her cat hotel, one cushion on our living room sofa (that no one ever sits on, we live in our family room!) and behind the sofa in our family room on the floor. Otherwise, she's a pretty good cat and doesn't lay all over our stuff!! But she's FURRY, and the perfect test cat for this product!!

Now, let me preface this by letting you know that in no way are giant fuzzballs of cat laying around in my house. I have a weird obsession about cleaning, and use those sticky rollers like nobodies business. I own a Rainbow vacuum and that thing can find fur in places that human eyes can't see... it takes the cake for cleaning in my opinion.... but on to the product I'm reviewing!

Positive: The product is compact, nothing to put together, and no special cleaning requirements. The handheld sweeper seems to be designed for ease of use and quick easy storage. I like the use until it's full and then throw away feature. The product worked well on slightly affected areas such as the couch cushion she lays on, and also in cleaning up general "fuzz" from our seat cushions on the kitchen.

Negative: The rollers get jammed once a decent amount of fur build up gets between them. The side to side sweeping motion doesn't seem to be as affective once fur gets on the 'grip like' rollers and makes them less affective. I found this to be so after only using the product for about 5 minutes. When it was time to clean her 'cat hotel' which is the most affected by her shedding (her favorite place to be most days), the product gets two thumbs down from me!

Please see the video review and demo below!

{excuse my silly verbiage}

Would you like to give it a whirl??

Download your coupon for $2.00 off here

Product review for: BzzAgent.com

I'm a word of mouth Agent for Bzzagent.com and I received this product to experience and test and spread the word!

word of mouth sites

I thought I'd share some of the nifty sites I visit from time to time to get some goodies....

BzzAgent - word of mouth product testing. Free to sign up, no obligations. You chose what you participate in. This is where we scored our dandy 250.00 remote I mentioned here, with absolutely ZERO invested. Sometimes they do offer really expensive product testing that you have to pay a fee to participate in, but I always opt out of those. I'm more interested in the fun stuff. I've tested for free: Ziplock products, Scrubbing Bubbles products, Pledge products, Oust products, and several snack products. All they ask is that you give feedback, and pass the information you gather along by word of mouth. The really cool thing is that when you give feedback, you earn womlets....those are points. And guess where they go??? To MyPoints.

MyPoints - it's a fun way to earn more free stuff. If you buy off of amazon, ebay, target, etc., you may want to consider logging in to mypoints first then using their search engine to go to the site you want to purchase from. You get your purchase + earn points. The points transfer into the form of a giftcard. Also, they'll send you about 5 emails a week, each email you LOOK at (that's it) gives you 5 points. There's also several surveys you can do to earn quick points along the way w/o buying a thing. If I'm waiting on a file to upload for work, I may do a quick 2 minute survey and earn 50-100 points.

Psst... by General Mills - free product samples and coupons.

VocalPoint - I just joined this one. It's another product sample testing site. I read about this one in a local magazine about how moms are turning to these types of sites to 'get paid to shop'.

All in all - I may spend about 20-30 min a week surfing through these offers. BzzAgent sends me product testing offers by email, and those are about 1 x a month. Others just send them directly to me in the mail, with no strings attached. I like how the sites allow you to do a quick set of surveys to describe your interests and then they gear your product testing around things you already enjoy or buy.

random: getting down with being frugal

I'm frugal, more frugal then I ever thought I'd be! My mom's super proud, she used to tell me 'you'll understand some day' when I would roll my eyes at her for clipping coupons or seeking out the best deal. I used to think of being frugal as being cheap - but it's really being sensible, no matter how big or little your income is. How smart is it to pay more, when you could be paying less all along? My friend Julie has even recommended that we get some trendy shirts made about how it's cool to be frugal.

Anyway - this week I followed MoneySavingMom's advice and headed over to Walmart after printing off some of the e-coupons as well as looking through ones I'd clipped already. I left with 4 bags of goodies that retailed for just under 40.00, and I paid 18.47. One of those goodies was a clearance Thomas the Tank Engine toy for the little guy (5.99). Some other items included a small bag of Iams cat food (had a free coupon!), Pillsbury Cinnamon Cinnabon Rolls (free coupon!), Goody's Ouchless bands (.19 after savings!) and many more deals just like that.

So - this weekend it's triple coupons up to .99 cent at Harris Teeter and Bloom stores, Friday-Sunday. I've calculated in the past 3 months that using coupons, sales ads, and finding in store specials - we've saved almost 400.00 in shopping savings alone (groceries, toys for Christmas, bedding, cleaning supplies). That's a good bit!!! It gives us more to put in the dining out budget when we save on the necessities. Lowes Foods recently had triple coupons, and SuperKmart had triple coupons up to $2.00 last week. I left there with 1 months supply of cleaning items, cat litter, bottled waters, non-perishables, toiletries - and paid nearly nothing after coupon savings. I generally don't buy things just because I have a coupon for them, unless it's what we regularly use OR if I'm going to get it for nearly free.

Call me silly - but the way I see it, if the manufacturers are providing ways for us to cut corners... these days with prices going no where but up, we really can't afford to pass them up! I even get over 50% of our organic foods for less, I write the manufacturers (Full Circle, etc) a quick email from the contact us link on their sites and request coupons or free product trials and they almost always deliver. After writing them once, I become a regular on their mailing list and receive coupons by mail directly from them almost monthly.

A friend of mine suggested once that I join a company where you do free product testing, I did and we've received lots of goodies for FREE (no strings, only brief feedback is required) as well as lots of coupons and samples. The coupons and samples are yours to keep and either pass out to other people, or use for yourself... again - no strings. One of the products we received 100% free to keep, was a 250.00 all in one remote control . There are a few other word of mouth product sites that I've joined, but I've yet to see alot of product testing. Once I do - I'll share those too. The good thing about the ones I have joined, is almost all of them like you to do a survey so that they fit the product testing to your likes/interests in food/electronics/etc. Most people that I've told about this think it takes up alot of my time, but I seriously spend maybe 15-20 min one time a week. And I get rewarded with lots of freebies and fun stuff to try! Someone's getting stuff for free, someone's gets to test products for free, so I figure - why not me?