Every Home Needs an Eye Wash

High school and college chemistry labs are equipped with eye wash stations. When I was a kid learning first aid, we were told that every home needs an eye cup. This horrified me greatly because let's face it - putting stuff in your eyes is scary. And no, I don't wear contacts, how did you guess?

Fast forward a few decades. I work in a lab some days so yes, we have the necessary safety stuff. But what really got me was spraying medicine on my dog's tail at home. I sprayed upwards to treat the underside (duh!) and lots of dog medicine landed on my eyeball.

On my sprint to the bathroom to wash hands first I realized I didn't have any sterile saline. I gushed eyedrops into my stinging eye. No good. I went to the kitchen, filled a glass with water and poured it over my smarting eye several times. Much better - but now my eye was sore and bloodshot from the saline-free tap water.

This sort of thing can happen any time. Spray-on products, preservatives or additives you might use to make cosmetics, vinegar or disinfectants, drain cleaner, sawdust, that eyelash that fell in your eye, small winged insects you can't extricate...

Every home needs at least one thing for eye safety: Sterile Saline (irrigating) solution. Absolutely not contact lens cleaner. Not in a spray can. In a bottle. It's just salty enough to make eye washing less painful. It's sterile. It has a long shelf life. And you can use it to wash other wounds because it hurts much less than washing with tap water.

If you can find an eye cup, great! Otherwise keep some small paper cups or a shot glass handy for eye washing.

I'm not kidding. We don't wear safety glasses nearly often enough when handling eye-damaging chemicals that you would be required to wear safety glasses to use in a laboratory.

Don't mess around with eye safety. Keep these things in the house. Use them. If you use cleaners or any sort of chemicals at your work - these things should be provided by your employer.

If something gets in your eye and it hurts, wash it out. Who cares if your face or hair gets messed up or your clothes get wet? Your eyes are more important.

Humidifying on the Cheap and Green

Where I live, winters tend to be cold and dry. I use an electric humidifier indoors to keep my nose and eyes and lungs and skin and hair happier.

But I also use a natural evaporative humidifier. Perhaps you've heard of it. It's called "Clean Wet Laundry."

I should add that when the temperature is below 50°F (10°C) laundry doesn't get fully dry if hung outdoors here and when colder than that, my fingers freeze before the laundry is all hung out.

If you buy a couple indoor laundry racks or are able to string a clothesline in your dwelling and not pull out the drywall, you can save several dollars (or more depending on your family size) per month on power. Your stretchy jeans won't shrink as much. Your clothes will actually last longer. I like to set my drying racks over the floor heat vents so the air passes around the clothes, drying them faster and spreading the humidity around.

Laundry racks are a bit of an investment up-front, but they pay for themselves over the course of a winter - and last for years.

If you're not a fan of all air-dried clothes, you can just hang some shirts or towels or all those things that should not be dried in the dryer in your bedroom to dry and add humidity to the air.

What's great about it:
1) Saving money
2) Using less energy
3) Humidified air for free
4) Drying laundry doesn't grow mold or bacteria like leaving water out to evaporate or a rarely-cleaned humidifier.
5) Put off for another day cleaning the hard water residue from the electric humidifier.
6) Burn calories, tone arms and keep your spine flexible hanging laundry. Did I go too far?

What's not so great:
1) Crunchy laundry (the crunch goes away upon use)
2) Extra labor (But see #6 above. Work is good for us. But sometimes time wins).
3) Space!!! This does take some space, but usually it's only temporary.
4) Cats. I don't have any - but might they be tempted to climb a tower of laundry?

Do You Need a Micro-Trim?

What do you do when you get those in between haircut blahs, but you're not ready for a full haircut or you want to let yours grow?

Micro-trim! Some people call it "dusting the ends" but that's hardly accurate. Hair doesn't grow evenly. The ends that were once neat and tidy get a little fringe-y and that can cause your entire look to get a little more shaggy than you like.

This video is the clever and lovely Pedaheh of the Wavy Library to show you how to do a micro-trim and what a big difference it makes immediately.

Cheap. Easy. Fun. Great hair at home.