The Real Tide Pod Challenge

Tide makes those liquid detergent pods that look like candy wrapped up in bright colors. This has caused some hand-wringing over the last few years since kids could mistake the pods for candy, eat them and die.

Procter and Gamble has taken a few steps in recent years toward making this product safer so parents won’t need to call poison control. These steps include making the packaging bitter so kids won’t bite into them, making the packaging opaque, child safety warnings and all other kids of safeguards. I don’t know whether or not it’s working but for any parents who are nervous that their kids will eat a Tide pod, I have a foolproof solution:

Don’t buy them.

The easiest way for your child not to be poisoned by Tide pods is not to buy Tide pods. I realize the actual easiest way would be for Procter and Gamble to stop making them, but since stopping the march of capitalism isn’t going to happen, take matters into your hands and stop buying them.

You don’t have to buy Tide pods. There are other forms of Tide that will not tempt kids to consume them. Like, nobody will take a swig out of the big bottle expecting a sweet treat, and nobody will eat the powder. There are also other brands of detergent that don’t look like Easter treats.

I buy regular liquid Tide in a smaller size because larger sizes won’t fit upright in the cabinet in our laundry room. But if there were a documented risk that our 9-year-old would drink the small size bottle, I think I’d probably use my head and buy something else.

What, do you have some special washer that only works with Tide pods and you’re still nervous about the kids getting into your stash of surfactants? No? Then stop buying it, moron, and you won’t have to worry about any of this. Now I just saved a bunch of societal hand-wringing about the easiest way to prevent something that is easily preventable. It appears the real Tide pod challenge, now that there is a well-known risk of poisoning, is using your head.