The two most popular methods for accomplishing this task are the Condom Method and the Syringe Method.
We're going to learn both, but no matter which one you choose, or if you construct your own combination method, filling cartomizers is a Project.
If you tire easily, have difficulty using your fingers, if your hands tremble, if your vision can be categorized as more of a special effects novelty than provider of information, if you have focusing and cognitive issues due to disease, medication, or both, or if like me, most of all of the above, it's an Epic Project.
For us, the best method of all is having a loved one fill a nice supply of them.
Though it does take practice, it's not difficulty that makes doing it ourselves an Epic Project.
It's a textbook example of the kind of thing that a young, healthy person with nimble fingers and sharp eyes can do effortlessly in a matter of minutes, whereas the rest of us will need to devote at least a day, as well as every quark of energy we have to it.
That said, it's something we all need to be able to do for ourselves in a pinch.
Even if you can afford to use pre-filled cartomizers exclusively, and have loved ones who are always available to put juice in spent or new empty ones, life, with all its attendant curve balls and slings and arrows, happens.
Sometimes the store will be out of the cartomizers you like. One healthy, active loved one will sprain her thumb doing some healthy, active thing, the same week the loved one with the best eyesight in the whole family is facing down a fearsome work-related deadline.
Your budget may change, or you may decide you'd rather fill cartomizers and use the difference to buy backup hookah-doodles or Special Wall Rodents for your Unscheduled Zombie Attack Preparedness kit.
Although we may still be in an early stage of our transition, still smoking tobacco cigarettes, we should never find ourselves smoking them because we don't have e-cigarettes to notsmoke!
I don't know about you, but reading and watching the Instructional Videos about filling cartomizers was intimidating for me. It took a while before I could get up the nerve to pick up some condoms and do it. Once I got over that initial hump, though, I made an important discovery: It's not nearly as hard as a lot of the material makes it seem.
Case in point: Every cartomizer has that little plastic or silicone hat, with a hole in it. You know, the part we puff.
Well, if we propose to put anything into that cartomizer, we have to start by removing that little hat.
If you've done your homework, you've seen page upon page of earnest debate about the best way to do that, people literally climbing the walls - getting up on stepladders and dismantling their window treatments to harvest drapery hooks!
I think I even saw somebody talking about using power tools or something to alter a piece of one of those big "bulldog clips" you use to hold big stacks of paper together.
Well guess what. About half of them, you can take off with your fingernail. And ALL of them can be removed with virtually any small stick-like thing that's small enough to go into the little hole and sturdy enough not to break while doing it.
That means nerddriver, crochet hook, hair pin (Old School, Modern, or Ancient of Days), hat pin, fish fork, the list goes on. Getting that hat off is the easiest and quickest part of the process, and it can be done even if you are living with various "limitations."
I can get those hats off in my sleep, and you'll be able to, too.
So let's move on to the stuff that really is complicated - though very basic and necessary, regardless of which method you're going to use.
For me, one of the most challenging things is the organization - just getting all the things I'll need together.
This was touched on in the preparation rant, but here's the list again:
(You'll need all these things for either condom or syringe method, we'll append on syringes themselves later).
hair pin, fish fork or whatever to take the little hats off
cartomizer "condoms," those little plastic things on the ends of new ones that look like Barbie water tumblers. You're supposed to have some saved up.
Labeling supplies:
labeling machine
OR
scraps of paper or sticky labels
pen
Scotch tape
scissors
Juice
cartomizers (either previously filled, now spent, or new, empty ones)
Magnifying equipment (for people who have some vision, but not a lot)
The most complicated and annoying aspect of filling cartomizers isn't filling them, it's working out a system for identifying which cartomizer contains which flavor.
If you can afford it, obviously the easiest thing is to get one of those labeling machines. If you're blind, you've probably already got a Braille one, so you're good to go.
The rest of us have to do a lot more thinking and fiddling.
The next easiest thing is to do it with cartomizer colors. This is great for those of us with low vision - even if we start guessing everything after the big E on the wall at the ophthalmologist's, we can tell at a glance if something is blue or pink.
Especially if we also have cognitive and fine finger motion issues that make working with teeny tiny bits of paper a challenge, just relying on cartomizer colors alone can save us a lot of aggravation.
There's a trade-off, though - Color coding alone only works if you have only a few flavors in your daily rotation, because cartomizers only come in a handful of colors!
But keep your priorities straight. If you've established a flavor palette of 7 flavors that's working for you, DON'T try to do something like decide which 2 flavors to remove just because you only have 5 colors of cartomizers.
Annoying and time-consuming though it may be, this is just an incidental organizational detail. Our goal, the prize upon which we have glued our eyes, is phasing out tobacco cigarettes.
We do not want to compromise or hinder that process, especially not for something as trivial as the minutiae of how we distinguish our cartomizers! That would be really stupid!
In the midst of my whining about what a terrible chore this is, I should point out some good news - while filling the cartomizers is something we'll have to do on a regular basis until technology frees us from it by giving us a better device, we only have to design our system ONCE, and as with any organizational structure, if we put in the work upfront, and do it well, we can significantly reduce the quantity of time and energy we'll have to spend on the part we'll have to keep on doing every so many days - the actual filling.
If color-coding alone isn't a good fit for your particular flavor palette, you have lots of options, and which one will be easier for you will depend, first and foremost, on your individual mental and physical configuration and peculiarities.
You can develop a modified color-coding scheme: some people use colored rubber bands (the little tiny ones used on various orthodontage), others might use colored tape, little sticky labels, or colored bits of paper taped on to all or part of the cartomizer, and thus increase the number of colors to correspond with the number of flavors they notsmoke every day, and even beyond that, into their occasional flavors.
Just as we have our limitations, cartomizers have one too - we can't identify our flavors by just writing on the cartomizer with a Sharpie or paint pen, even if we have enough vision to read what we wrote. If we do that, we still need to put tape over it, because the juice will dissolve any ink or paint, or at least smear it.
Some people use nail stickers, a different one for each flavor, in combination with a reference chart that they keep pinned to the wall or desk so that it's always visible.
Of course if you can remember which symbol or design is which flavor, even when your pills kick in, then yay you. You just go right ahead and do that. Hmmph.
Obviously, budget as well as readily available materials will impact the implementation of whichever system you set up. If you have a little extra money, you can buy ready-made cartomizer "skins" or make your own with a variety of sizes and colors of sticky labels.
If you or a family member rock one of the tooth design devices that use those little rubber bands, those will be all over the place.
A loved one with good eyesight and functioning fingertips who works with seed beads can string some on some Stretch Magic and make little necklaces for your cartomizers, that you can use over and over again.
The most basic and low-to-no budget method is of course the humble scrap of paper and Scotch tape. If you have low vision, however, this method will be very annoying, because you will have to magnify every cartomizer every time you pick it up so you can make out whatever it is you wrote on the little piece of paper!
(And yes, I speak from experience here. It's really the bottom of the barrel, as flavor identification systems go. I do not enjoy it one bit, and I plan to upgrade to something as soon as I can figure out what. At the very least, I'll buy some of those neon-colored round "garage sale" labels at the CVS next Pill Day. Unfortunately, I used all mine up labeling home-made eye shadow and face powder and forgot to get more LAST Pill Day when I was supposed to, a mistake for which I am paying dearly. But I digress...)
Whatever you decide to do, things will go much more smoothly if you decide before you begin which juices you will be putting into your cartomizers, and labeling, taping or rubber banding them FIRST.
Be sure to put Scotch tape over any writing, whether you've written directly on the cartomizer itself, on a covering, or a piece of paper or tiny Flinstones band-aid. This is VERY important, because as soon as that juice hits ink, it will become illegible.
NEXT: Lining up the Juice
We're going to learn both, but no matter which one you choose, or if you construct your own combination method, filling cartomizers is a Project.
If you tire easily, have difficulty using your fingers, if your hands tremble, if your vision can be categorized as more of a special effects novelty than provider of information, if you have focusing and cognitive issues due to disease, medication, or both, or if like me, most of all of the above, it's an Epic Project.
For us, the best method of all is having a loved one fill a nice supply of them.
Though it does take practice, it's not difficulty that makes doing it ourselves an Epic Project.
It's a textbook example of the kind of thing that a young, healthy person with nimble fingers and sharp eyes can do effortlessly in a matter of minutes, whereas the rest of us will need to devote at least a day, as well as every quark of energy we have to it.
That said, it's something we all need to be able to do for ourselves in a pinch.
Even if you can afford to use pre-filled cartomizers exclusively, and have loved ones who are always available to put juice in spent or new empty ones, life, with all its attendant curve balls and slings and arrows, happens.
Sometimes the store will be out of the cartomizers you like. One healthy, active loved one will sprain her thumb doing some healthy, active thing, the same week the loved one with the best eyesight in the whole family is facing down a fearsome work-related deadline.
Your budget may change, or you may decide you'd rather fill cartomizers and use the difference to buy backup hookah-doodles or Special Wall Rodents for your Unscheduled Zombie Attack Preparedness kit.
Although we may still be in an early stage of our transition, still smoking tobacco cigarettes, we should never find ourselves smoking them because we don't have e-cigarettes to notsmoke!
I don't know about you, but reading and watching the Instructional Videos about filling cartomizers was intimidating for me. It took a while before I could get up the nerve to pick up some condoms and do it. Once I got over that initial hump, though, I made an important discovery: It's not nearly as hard as a lot of the material makes it seem.
Case in point: Every cartomizer has that little plastic or silicone hat, with a hole in it. You know, the part we puff.
Well, if we propose to put anything into that cartomizer, we have to start by removing that little hat.
If you've done your homework, you've seen page upon page of earnest debate about the best way to do that, people literally climbing the walls - getting up on stepladders and dismantling their window treatments to harvest drapery hooks!
I think I even saw somebody talking about using power tools or something to alter a piece of one of those big "bulldog clips" you use to hold big stacks of paper together.
Well guess what. About half of them, you can take off with your fingernail. And ALL of them can be removed with virtually any small stick-like thing that's small enough to go into the little hole and sturdy enough not to break while doing it.
That means nerddriver, crochet hook, hair pin (Old School, Modern, or Ancient of Days), hat pin, fish fork, the list goes on. Getting that hat off is the easiest and quickest part of the process, and it can be done even if you are living with various "limitations."
I can get those hats off in my sleep, and you'll be able to, too.
So let's move on to the stuff that really is complicated - though very basic and necessary, regardless of which method you're going to use.
For me, one of the most challenging things is the organization - just getting all the things I'll need together.
This was touched on in the preparation rant, but here's the list again:
(You'll need all these things for either condom or syringe method, we'll append on syringes themselves later).
hair pin, fish fork or whatever to take the little hats off
cartomizer "condoms," those little plastic things on the ends of new ones that look like Barbie water tumblers. You're supposed to have some saved up.
Labeling supplies:
labeling machine
OR
scraps of paper or sticky labels
pen
Scotch tape
scissors
Juice
cartomizers (either previously filled, now spent, or new, empty ones)
Magnifying equipment (for people who have some vision, but not a lot)
The most complicated and annoying aspect of filling cartomizers isn't filling them, it's working out a system for identifying which cartomizer contains which flavor.
If you can afford it, obviously the easiest thing is to get one of those labeling machines. If you're blind, you've probably already got a Braille one, so you're good to go.
The rest of us have to do a lot more thinking and fiddling.
The next easiest thing is to do it with cartomizer colors. This is great for those of us with low vision - even if we start guessing everything after the big E on the wall at the ophthalmologist's, we can tell at a glance if something is blue or pink.
Especially if we also have cognitive and fine finger motion issues that make working with teeny tiny bits of paper a challenge, just relying on cartomizer colors alone can save us a lot of aggravation.
There's a trade-off, though - Color coding alone only works if you have only a few flavors in your daily rotation, because cartomizers only come in a handful of colors!
But keep your priorities straight. If you've established a flavor palette of 7 flavors that's working for you, DON'T try to do something like decide which 2 flavors to remove just because you only have 5 colors of cartomizers.
Annoying and time-consuming though it may be, this is just an incidental organizational detail. Our goal, the prize upon which we have glued our eyes, is phasing out tobacco cigarettes.
We do not want to compromise or hinder that process, especially not for something as trivial as the minutiae of how we distinguish our cartomizers! That would be really stupid!
In the midst of my whining about what a terrible chore this is, I should point out some good news - while filling the cartomizers is something we'll have to do on a regular basis until technology frees us from it by giving us a better device, we only have to design our system ONCE, and as with any organizational structure, if we put in the work upfront, and do it well, we can significantly reduce the quantity of time and energy we'll have to spend on the part we'll have to keep on doing every so many days - the actual filling.
If color-coding alone isn't a good fit for your particular flavor palette, you have lots of options, and which one will be easier for you will depend, first and foremost, on your individual mental and physical configuration and peculiarities.
You can develop a modified color-coding scheme: some people use colored rubber bands (the little tiny ones used on various orthodontage), others might use colored tape, little sticky labels, or colored bits of paper taped on to all or part of the cartomizer, and thus increase the number of colors to correspond with the number of flavors they notsmoke every day, and even beyond that, into their occasional flavors.
Just as we have our limitations, cartomizers have one too - we can't identify our flavors by just writing on the cartomizer with a Sharpie or paint pen, even if we have enough vision to read what we wrote. If we do that, we still need to put tape over it, because the juice will dissolve any ink or paint, or at least smear it.
Some people use nail stickers, a different one for each flavor, in combination with a reference chart that they keep pinned to the wall or desk so that it's always visible.
Of course if you can remember which symbol or design is which flavor, even when your pills kick in, then yay you. You just go right ahead and do that. Hmmph.
Obviously, budget as well as readily available materials will impact the implementation of whichever system you set up. If you have a little extra money, you can buy ready-made cartomizer "skins" or make your own with a variety of sizes and colors of sticky labels.
If you or a family member rock one of the tooth design devices that use those little rubber bands, those will be all over the place.
A loved one with good eyesight and functioning fingertips who works with seed beads can string some on some Stretch Magic and make little necklaces for your cartomizers, that you can use over and over again.
The most basic and low-to-no budget method is of course the humble scrap of paper and Scotch tape. If you have low vision, however, this method will be very annoying, because you will have to magnify every cartomizer every time you pick it up so you can make out whatever it is you wrote on the little piece of paper!
(And yes, I speak from experience here. It's really the bottom of the barrel, as flavor identification systems go. I do not enjoy it one bit, and I plan to upgrade to something as soon as I can figure out what. At the very least, I'll buy some of those neon-colored round "garage sale" labels at the CVS next Pill Day. Unfortunately, I used all mine up labeling home-made eye shadow and face powder and forgot to get more LAST Pill Day when I was supposed to, a mistake for which I am paying dearly. But I digress...)
Whatever you decide to do, things will go much more smoothly if you decide before you begin which juices you will be putting into your cartomizers, and labeling, taping or rubber banding them FIRST.
Be sure to put Scotch tape over any writing, whether you've written directly on the cartomizer itself, on a covering, or a piece of paper or tiny Flinstones band-aid. This is VERY important, because as soon as that juice hits ink, it will become illegible.
NEXT: Lining up the Juice
