Once the fabric softener in this bottle was used up, I gave the bottle a new life in my car: it held water that I used to rinse dust from my car's rear window after driving on dirt roads. It was placed into service in September 1989.

It was a joy to use: the handle was easy to grip and fluid poured from the spout in a pleasant, controlled manner. But it had one annoying trait: its narrowness (not visible here) caused it to be unsteady. On rough roads and in sharp turns, it was prone to tipping over. The cap did not seal well, so whenever the bottle tipped over, water leaked onto the floor. After fifteen years of dealing with that minor annoyance I retired the bottle.

In 2004 an apple juice bottle took its place and the bottle pictured here went to the Great Landfill in the Sky (it could not be recycled locally). The new bottle was lower and wider and thus more stable---and it didn't leak. But it got recycled when I determined that I no longer needed such a tool.