Dollar General Stores

[Jango]

Y'all seen the reports that Dollar Tree/Family Dollar announced they will close about 1000 stores? I guess there isn't the profit in a dollar that there used to be.

Family Dollar to close almost 1,000 stores

Parent company Dollar Tree is also closing 30 stores amid tougher market conditions and worsening store performance.

www.nbcnews.com

if this trend continues, Dollar Stores will start to make cents.

 

[ripcord]

if this trend continues, Dollar Stores will start to make cents.

 

[GON]

Y'all seen the reports that Dollar Tree/Family Dollar announced they will close about 1000 stores? I guess there isn't the profit in a dollar that there used to be.

Family Dollar to close almost 1,000 stores

Parent company Dollar Tree is also closing 30 stores amid tougher market conditions and worsening store performance.

www.nbcnews.com

If doillar Tree and Family Dollar didn't merge, would there still be 1,000 stores closing?

 

[vwmaniaman]

We have a home in Grand Rivers,KY and we have a local IGA and a dollar general. THe dollar General is closer to our home so for most things like staples of bread eggs and milk that is where I go. I pay a little more but I can get a birthday card there or vitamins or cleaning supplies or even motor oil. The population is only 386 so no major retailers are coming here.

 

[bunnspecial]

Check the % concentration of sodium hypochlorite" on the dollar store bottle.

I was at Menards a week ago and my wife asked me to grab a bottle of bleach. They had (3) choices, Clorox (7.5%) and two Menards-branded. One was a little cheaper than the Clorox and was also 7.5% while the other was 1/2 the price of Clorox and nowhere on the bottle did it state the "bleach" concentration. Being a chemical like that, I was pretty surprised.

Pretty sure that’s a regulated amount…

I learned way more about it than I ever cared to know a few years back in my days in the Chemistry stockroom and troubleshooting an experiment where we used bleach as an oxidizing agent. We had stocked up on “Concentrated bleach” from one of the chemical suppliers(they gave us a deal, and at a university sometimes that’s just easier) and all of a sudden that experiment quit working unless we used some older plain “bleach” we had on hand.

I ended up doing a dive into the labeling and such, as well as buying a bottle of nearly every “bleach” Kroger sold.

What I found, and I’m working sort of from memory, is that “bleach”, no qualifiers, is 5% sodium hypochlorite, while “concentrated” is generally 6.5% and “ultra” is 7.5%.

BTW, I had a terrible time even finding just plain bleach. I ended up with the most generic looking bottle I could find, and was only able to get it in quart bottles.

Also, for this experiment, we never were able to get anywhere by diluting higher concentration bleach down to 5%. I suspect it goes back to how it is made, which is by dissolving chlorine gas in sodium hydroxide, and I expect that the higher ultimate concentration of sodium hypochlorite changes this. I did do some starch-iodine titrations to confirm bleach content, but never an acid-base titration to look at this part(and that can get tricky dealing with as much sodium hydroxide as is normally present in bleach anyway, plus acidifying in a titration releases chlorine…a common cheap way under other circumstances to make chlorine water…).

 

[Hall]

Pretty sure that’s a regulated amount…

I honestly don't know but I do remember when we had a swimming pool and "pool chlorine" was hard to find, everything/everyone said just use laundry "bleach" but to be aware that it's not the same concentration - you have to use (a lot) more. Isn't "bleach" just a blend of NaClO and water (and sometimes add'l components) ? In the chemical world, you would source NaClO and blend it as needed for your application.

 

[ripcord]

Bleach typically comes in 5 to 9 percent solutions in consumer products. The problem with bleach is that it starts to degrade away and the active concentration starts to decline. Who knows how long that cheap brand will be on the shelf which is why it may not declare a concentration on the label. It may start out as 5% sodium hypochlorite, but after 6 months on the shelf it will be significantly weaker.

 

[bunnspecial]

I honestly don't know but I do remember when we had a swimming pool and "pool chlorine" was hard to find, everything/everyone said just use laundry "bleach" but to be aware that it's not the same concentration - you have to use (a lot) more. Isn't "bleach" just a blend of NaClO and water (and sometimes add'l components) ? In the chemical world, you would source NaClO and blend it as needed for your application.

Sorry, I hit by post before I finished my thoughts.

In any case, sodium hypochlorite as a solid isn’t exactly something that’s done. It’s super unstable-in fact actually a contact explosive as an anhydrous solid(and just prone to decomposition as the pentahydrate).

Writing this post made me read up a bit. I knew it was made by dissolving chlorine in sodium hydroxide, but of course it’s more complicated than just that. There are actually several equilibrium reactions going on, and formation of hypochlorite is favored at higher pH. The exact pH can influence what other species are present, though, and in general higher hypochlorite concentrations require higher phs.