Most of the time pain is temporary and therefore tolerable. Scrapes, cuts, sprained ankles, bruises - most people can easily deal with these superficial, trivial injuries because we understand them and know that in time the pain will subside. Even broken bones and many surgeries can be easily treated with some pain medicine and time to mend. This immediate, temporary kind of pain is called “acute pain”. When pain is either constant or intermittent for six months or more, you’re dealing with chronic pain. Chronic pain can make life miserable. Of course it makes work difficult, but the stress and anxiety that results from chronic pain makes everything a challenge - from enjoying the smallest pleasures to upholding the greatest responsibilities. Unfortunately, many chronic pain sufferers don’t know that there are many ways to get rid of pain beyond pills and medications. They also may not completely understand how pain works - the interplay between nerves, spine, and brain that leads to discomfort. You can learn about the pain process and how to get rid of pain (or at least manage it) in my latest article in which I discuss pain clinics, pain specialists, practical at-home therapies, as well as alternative and complementary pain treatments.
It’s finally come to this…your home has become so out-of-control, so chaotic that you’ve turned to the Internet to learn how to clean house. Risky, but if you’ve made it here you’re heading in the right direction. Here at How to Clean Things our philosophy is that house cleaning should be easy, low-maintenance, and non-toxic. Sounds simple enough, but following through on this will show you how different this strategy is compared to the just-spray-this-on-it, take-some-speed-and-clean-all-day method pushed by our commercial culture. We are constantly urged to bring more things into our homes, and when things get dirty, we use untested chemicals to get the job done. Yikes. (That’s right…yikes.) Read my latest article on how to clean a house, lest you end up like Mrs. Cuddles Bear.
Sinus congestion is just one of those things that we suffer through all year. In the summer, we suffer from allergies and related congestion. In the winter, we have cold and flu season. And all year long we are subject to sinus infections, sinusitis and various irritation of the sinuses that can cause nasal congestion. But, whatever the cause, nasal congestion relief is possible. From over-the-counter antihistamines and decongestants, to prescription-strength relief of sinus congestion symptoms, you can find quick and easy relief. Just read my article How to Get Rid of Nasal Congestion, and you can find the best ways to get rid of nasal congestion and get back to breathing from one, or even two nostrils.
When I was nearing completion on my research for the article How to Clean Laminate, I sent an email to one of my very close friends (who I know to have laminate floors) to ask her if she had any laminate floor cleaning tips. What she told me was rather astonishing. While she did confirm for me that it’s not necessary to clean laminate flooring very often, she also confirmed my suspicions that it’s pretty common for people to not know how to clean laminate flooring correctly. Almost everything she told me she was doing to clean laminate wood floors was in direct opposition to my own research… research that included care instructions from several manufacturers of laminate flooring. Needless to say, the moment I get this blog post finished, I’ll be sending her a link to this article. I’m just hoping she hasn’t already done irreparable damage to her wood laminate flooring. And while I’m at it, may I suggest that you, too, read my article on cleaning laminate flooring.
While it seems like you should be able to clean stone with whatever the hell you want in whatever manner you want (I mean, it’s stone right?), that just simply isn’t the case. I’m gonna go ahead and guess that the old codgers you’ve talked to about this have probably told you to just use some good ol’ TSP, muriatic acid or bleach. Yeah. Right. Next time you’re over at their house take a good look at their stone floors and see what kind of shape they’re in. I’d bet my left jelly bean that they’re etched, cloudy looking and the grout is crumbling. When it comes to cleaning stone, my advice to you is to listen to what the old folks have to say, tell them you’ll take their advice, promptly disregard their advice, read my article on how to wash stone, and learn about cleaning natural stone with proper stone cleaners that won’t damage your investment.
With as common and ancient a building material as brick is, you would think that the specifics to cleaning brick would be stacked near the front of every homeowners mind. This, however, is simply not the case. The knowledge of how to clean bricks seems to be slowly fading away with the passing of each year. OK, maybe I’m being a bit over dramatic, but I do believe that many of us don’t take care of things as well as our forefathers did. Luckily, since I know a good many people are going to read this article on washing brick, there are still enough of us out there who care enough to not let things go to pot. But there I go being over dramatic again. Before I embarrass myself further, allow me to stop ranting and direct you to my latest article, How to Clean Brick.
Once upon a time, when I was about 16, my stepmom paid me $20 to clean and wash her car. Because she actually hated doing it herself that much. Me? I kind of like cleaning cars, although you’d never be able to tell by looking at my Saturn. But that’s what makes it so satisfying: once every year or two, I thoroughly clean something that thoroughly needed cleaning. And that just feels good. What doesn’t feel good is learning that cleaning and washing a car is, almost by definition, an environmentalist’s nightmare. All that water; all those chemicals; all those poor aquatic creatures living near where the storm drains empty into the river. So this year, when it came time to give the car a bath, I did some research and learned how to clean a car using only nontoxic everyday household products. And to save water, I resisted getting entranced by the ripples in the water flowing over the hood. Turns out, cleaning a car the environmentally friendly way can also mean cleaning it the inexpensive, efficient way.