WELP, I have some amazing news for you and the small graveyard of underpants you accidentally bled through when Aunt Flo caught you unawares. The Monthly Gift period-tracking app not only will keep you in the know about when the blood rains are arriving, but will also send you tampons, pads, and even chocolate the same week that it's due. It's like the nurse you always wished worked at your high school, instead of the crabby one who yelled "TAMPONS ARE IN THE BACK DRAWER, ONLY TAKE ONE" with the blunt volume of the P.A. system that one time you got your period in gym. (Golly, I hope she misses me.)
This app does more than just track your period, though. The more you check in with it, the more accurate it gets — not just with predicting your cycle for you, but predicting the physical and emotional effects your cycle will have on you during certain parts of month. You can log your symptoms and present feelings on a day-to-day basis, so that by some point you will know the instant you start bawling during your third watching of Fuller House that you're probably on a one-way train to a menstrualpalooza. (Or, y'know, that you have a human heart.)
You can use the app to track without the subscription service, which is already pretty handy by itself — as much fun as it is to blearily stumble to the sink with a tub of laundry detergent at 2 a.m. with bloody sheets, I'm personally quite ready for a change of pace. But if you opt into the subscription service to receive a Little Black Box (LBB), you can get it personalized specifically to you. It doesn't matter if you have a light flow, combination, or heavy, or if you use a certain method over another — they all cost the same amount.
The box costs $10 for a 12-month subscription, $12 for a 6-month subscription, and $13 per individual box. When you clock it in, that's probably less than what you're spending on one-off drugstore trips when your period comes out of nowhere, particularly because this box is so personalized. Think of it this way: if you have a heavy or combination period, you end up buying two types of sanitary napkins or tampon/pantyliner combinations, depending on how your flow is feeling that day. But when you have the personalized LBB, the types of sanitary products are already divvied up for you.
Also, now that I've let you look at my LBB options, we're all basically best friends 4 lyfe. Hooray!
Perhaps the best part of all of this, though, is the good Monthly Gift is doing not just to women who sign up for the subscription service, but women around the world who don't have access to these products. Monthly Gift aligns itself with Days For Girls, a nonprofit devoted to "creating a more dignified, humane and sustainable world for girls through advocacy, reproductive health awareness, education and sustainable feminine hygiene — because no girl should go without." As part of an initiative for Women's History Month, Monthly Gift is providing a woman in need with an LBB of sanitary products for every subscription sold in March.
If that's not enough reason to get your period-tracking swag on, I don't know what is. Never fear, batch of my recently-purchased cotton underwear! You may live to see another month yet.
Images: Pixabay; Monthly Gift
