So how is the new year going so far? Well, kids are eating Tide Pods. We're only doing slightly better than 2017. With all the fuss about the dumb Tide Pods challenge that you should definitely not do because you will actually die, I started thinking about other Tide Pods related things that make me angry. This is a rant about Tide Pods, but it's not about eating them. This is a rant about people not knowing how to use Tide Pods when they do laundry.

Picture this. It's the middle of your freshman year of college. You live in a first-year dorm with 100+ other supposed "adults." You walk into the laundry room and there's about six inches of soapy water flooding the room and now your socks are wet. How did the laundry room flood? Someone put a Tide Pod in the place where liquid detergent goes instead of in with their clothes. That's not how Tide Pods work. Now if this was a one time thing, I wouldn't be writing this article. It gets worse.

After the incident, there were signs put up around the laundry room, telling people to put Tide Pods in with their clothes instead of the detergent compartment. And people still put Tide Pods in the wrong place. HOW DO YOU NOT READ THE 5 DIFFERENT SIGNS IN THE LAUNDRY ROOM? HOW DO YOU NOT READ THE INSTRUCTIONS ON THE BOX OF TIDE PODS? DID YOU EVER DO YOUR OWN LAUNDRY BEFORE YOU WENT TO COLLEGE? WHAT'S WRONG WITH USING LIQUID DETERGENT?

This year, as a sophomore, I live in a different building and there are signs all over that laundry room too, making me think this wasn't specific to this one incident in my freshman dorm. For the love of God please just read instructions before you use a washing machine.

Stupidity aside, I don't really get the point of Tide Pods. I get that they're small and you don't have to lug around a big jug of liquid detergent but I've used nothing but liquid detergent for my laundry and it does its job. Liquid detergent just makes more sense to me because it's like soap that you're mixing in with the water to clean your clothes. Tide Pods are these gross little plastic things that dissolve in the washing machine. One time when I was putting my laundry in, there was this gross melty plastic outside of a used Tide Pod that was left in the washing machine and I had to take it out. It was gross and I was sad.

Anyways there was no point to this article. I'm not actually this heated about detergent. Just don't be stupid. Don't eat Tide Pods. Don't put Tide Pods in the liquid detergent compartment. Thanks.