Home sweet House of Care

What makes a home-maker? We’d like to think that a homemaker is one who makes a house a home. The homemaker provides more than a place for household members to come home to at the end of the day. But in today’s frenetic rat race, being a homemaker – especially for those who must juggle the demands of holding down a nine-to-five job on one hand and running a household on the other – may well require the dexterity of a tightrope acrobat.

Taking that to heart, the Shopwise House of Care threw its doors wide open to assorted homemakers recently. Shopwise did a little home improvement on its Alabang branch and gave its household section an exciting, homemaker-friendly, new look and feel. Everything has been rearranged to make everyone feel right at home.

A combination of high and low shelves brightens up the place and gives it a feeling of space. Lighting above and underneath the shelves highlights the products vying for the buyers’ attention. Perimeter walls and pillars with brick shingles lend a touch of home.

Walk through the model house and you’ll find four main rooms or sections, depending on how you would go about your humdrum household chores.

There’s the laundry room/section, which carries all laundry-related items – from the must-have detergents and starch sprays, to pails, hampers, hangers, clothespins, and things you never thought you needed – that promise you won’t end up all washed-out after doing your laundry.

There’s the bathroom section that’s got everything you need to keep this most-visited part of the house a place where one can find comfort. No ifs and baths about it.

And then there’s the kitchen area, brimming with all the cleaning aids to keep this well-loved part of the house sparkling clean, as well as assorted food wrappers to keep food fresh.

There are dust pans, sponge mops, mopheads, and odds and ends of household items.

Indeed, Shopwise has put a lot of tender loving care into its House of Care, knowing how much care a homemaker puts into his/her own home.

Says Crickette Tantoco, Shopwise’s vice president for marketing and merchandising and herself a homemaker, "We want to assure the caring homemakers that we care as much about their home as they do; that they have a partner in the task of keeping their homes clean and beautiful. With this in mind, we devised a way, together with our partner P&G, to see to the modern homemakers’ needs, to give them comfort and assistance in the task of shopping for their households, to assure them they are doing an excellent job in their homes, and reward them for their excellence."

The Shopwise House of Care creates another destination within the supermarket for the homemaker, adds supermom Crickette. "It’s another way to excite households. After all, everybody cares about their house."

Ace lensman Raymund Isaac took care of the transparent board. "It looks aspirational," Crickette describes. "The models are sipping lemonade in the meadow amid clean, fresh, country air."

To be sure, there’s always something fresh and refreshing that awaits shoppers at The House of Care.

Now bustling are the House of Care’s three activity centers – laundry, kitchen, and dishwashing. And to help shoppers not just in choosing what products to buy but also in using them, the cleaning products, for instance, have been categorized as follows: superior cleaning (premium in price, but you get what you pay for), value cleaning, and mild cleaning. There’s even a Tagalog translation on some products for the benefit of household helpers.

"Our househelpers often get confused, what with all these products on the market today," says Crickette.

Certainly, today’s homemakers are spoiled for choice. Thus, Shopwise has partnered with suppliers like Procter & Gamble (P&G) and Kimberly-Clark to educate consumers on how to use the wide array of household products available on the market. Call them partners in grime.

"Every two weeks, there will be product demos," announces Crickette. "The schedule will be posted at the entrance of House of Care."

Did you know that using too much detergent or overloading your washing machine could break it? Did you know that the versatile vinegar can be used to remove spots from glass, polish a car and furniture, unclog drains, and clean a thousand and one things? Do you know how to take rust or ballpen marks out of a white shirt?

All this and more the homemaker is bound to find out in The House of Care’s home-savvy demos, to be conducted by experts and R & D (research and development) people from suppliers.

"We want to help homemakers maximize their budget and get the most out of the products that they buy," Crickette stresses.

Ongoing is the home and household festival promo, where a windfall of prizes and surprises is at stake. Get great discounts on home and household items or a chance to win home appliances worth over P1 million in the raffle draw.

Every P300 single receipt purchase of any home or household items, inclusive of P50 worth of participating sponsors, entitles a customer to a track card and a house icon stamp on the track card. Complete all 10 boxes in the track card within the promo period and get an instant gift pack, plus a chance to win prizes in the raffle draw.

A total of five winners will be drawn simultaneously in all participating stores on Sept. 7 at 4 p.m. Deadline for submission of entries is on Sept. 6 at 11 p.m.

Certainly, the people behind the House of Care care enough to make life easier – and more fun – for homemakers, often the unsung heroes of the home.

Welcome home, dear homemakers!

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Shopwise has branches at the ground floor of Festival Supermall in Alabang; at the corner of Pasong Tamo and Vito Cruz Sts. in Makati; along E. Rodriguez Sr. Avenue, Bagumbayan, Libis; at the corner of General Aguinaldo and McArthur Avenues in Araneta Center, Cubao, Quezon City; and at the Royal Duty Free Shop in Subic.