Care
Glasses care: the cleaning routine that keeps coatings alive
The daily clean, in order
Rinse under lukewarm water first; dust on a dry lens is sandpaper waiting for a wipe. Then a drop of plain dish soap on the fingertips, worked over both faces and the nose pads, rinsed off, and dried with the microfiber cloth that shipped in the box. Paper towels, napkins and shirt hems are wood fiber and grit; they win against coatings on points over time.
What strips a coating
Acetone, ammonia glass cleaners and alcohol wipes take blue light coatings off the way they take paint off. Heat is the other killer: a dashboard in July warps TR90 and crazes lens coatings in one afternoon. The rules that follow: no window cleaner, no nail polish remover anywhere near lenses, and no glasses living in parked cars.
Hinges and the multipack advantage
Fold the left temple first each time and hinges wear evenly; it becomes automatic in a week. The spring hinges on the reader packs tolerate the head-top parking everyone does anyway, but stretched temples from that habit are still the most common slow failure. Multipack owners get rotation for free: three pairs sharing the workload age at a third of the speed, and one lost pair is an errand rather than an event.
Storage: the case is not optional
Most scratches happen off the face: loose in a bag with keys, lens-down on a desk, in a pocket with coins. A pouch or hard case per location fixes it, and the packs ship with enough pouches to seed every room. On a desk, folded and lenses-up costs nothing and saves the coating.
The lifespan math
Treated this way, a $10 pair of readers stays optically clean for years, and the frame outlives the prescription drift that retires it; the strength guide covers when that day comes. Frames that loosen slightly can be nudged back: TR90 tolerates gentle warm-water adjustment, metal bends once and resents twice. Details by material live in the materials guide.
