Hi JobC, welcome to the Monastery!

After writing my answer, it appears as though the #after lines are what you have already cleaned up (NOT your desired output). If that's correct, the below response is useless. Please clarify, and provide a few examples of what the final output should look like...

I may be under-thinking this, but could it be as simple as the following? Let us know if it does what you want. I simulate each one of your rows with an element in the @strings array:

use warnings;
use strict;


my @strings = (
    ',"PAD, FOAM, 24 X 24 X 1/4                #16193
    112 SHEETS PER ROLL, ORDER IN FULL ROLLS",',

    ',"PKG LIST,ASST ARM,RAD,300
    #F37784",',

    ',"PAD, TOP CAP RE17-30048          #F30121
    CORRUGATED ASSEMBLY, 22-7/8 X 21-1/8 X 4-3/4",'
);

for (@strings){
    s/\s+/ /g;
    print "$_\n\n";
}
[download]

Output:

,"PAD, FOAM, 24 X 24 X 1/4 #16193 112 SHEETS PER ROLL, ORDER IN FULL R
+OLLS",

,"PKG LIST,ASST ARM,RAD,300 #F37784",

,"PAD, TOP CAP RE17-30048 #F30121 CORRUGATED ASSEMBLY, 22-7/8 X 21-1/8
+ X 4-3/4",
[download]