Mites, Schmites

Just thinking about them makes me cringe. I happen to catch a segment on Rachel Ray the other day regarding dust mites. The woman on there was talking about what you can do to prevent mites entering your pillows and mattresses. First off, she said you should only have a mattress for 5-7 years before it is deemed unhealthy in the mite department. For pillows, she said 2-3 years. She even weighed a new pillow at 3 lbs, then weighed the same kind of pillow, 3 years old and it weighed 3.8 lbs. 8 ounces of DUST MITE POOP! Vomit right now please.

Now, I have heard of these dust mites in the past. I have even had a terrible run in with bird mites. I’ll have to save that for another post, but can we say they were on our phone (in our LA duplex), then got into our hair! Double vomit. Double shower. Anywho, I knew about mites. I have even vacuumed our old mattress before thinking it would actually make any mite that may have been in there disappear. Have you ever lifted a mattress and come to find the thing weighs A WHOLE HELL OF A LOT and it hadn’t at purchase?? Well, it just might be the secret poop deposits inside your mattress.

Since moving to our house, we have been able to upgrade to a new bed. Woo hoo! What do you think we did with the old bed? Yep, moved it into our guest room. What, you don’t ever want to come and stay at our house? The pillows are brand new, so don’t freak out too much. I have no hard evidence that anything resides in there, but I can only imagine. Actually, I did a thorough check of our mattress back in LA when I was attacked by baby spiders on a nightly bases while sleeping. Did they ever venture over to hubby’s side and bite his ass? Nope, just me, all of me. I ended up wearing bugs spray to bed to keep them at bay. Once again, another post. Point is, I was on the floor checking out every area or outlet those freakin spiders could have come from. So, I am quite familiar with the underside of our bed.

After watching this segment on mites I thought about how many times I washed my sheets, that I should be washing them on HOT in order to kill anything that happened to be clinging to them. I am usually a WARM washer doing my part to save the earth, but EWWWW! I also thought about how many times I washed my pillows. Um, can we say NEVER? Why haven’t I EVER washed my pillows??? Down comforter, check, decorative bed pillow cases, check, good grief, NEVER! So, I spent all day yesterday washing my goose down pillows in COLD (label instructions) It was a disaster. The pillows retained so much water from the washer, it took me forever to squeeze the water out. Then, they took forever to dry. I have had to run the dryer twice TODAY just to get the wet feather smell out. Ugh!

Hopefully in the future I will have better luck at keeping things around here mite free. I should just purchase some dust mite covers and call it a day.

One great tip I did learn from all of this is to add two tennis balls to the dryer while drying your pillows. You are supposed to have fluffier pillows as a result! However, I wouldn’t know this. Rt was by my side while drying the pillows, so the demand for the tennis balls won out.

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Sanitizer ‘R Us

How did we ever get by without this golden goop? I am not sure when they actually created it or made it available to the mass market, but it has come in handy in our homestead more than once. You see, germs are everywhere. Now, I am a firm believer of building up an immune system to help prevent major sickness in the future, but you have to protect yourself where you can. The amount of germs out there or the abundance of opportunity to obtain these germs is so easy. So, I to try prevent where possible. I even have one of those shopping cart covers for trips to the store.

What was it like for our parents when they raised us? How many playdates/playgroups did they attend per week? How many book studies and MOPS meetings were available back in the day? My family lived in NC for the first 7 years of my life. We didn’t have any family around. I think I recall having a group of friends to play with, but most of our socializing was through my brother’s sporting events. My point is, I don’t think we were around as many kids as Rt and I are in a day/week/month. I can’t imagine going through the winter “sick” season without actually getting sick and I don’t just mean Rt, I am including myself as well. So, every time I can remember to do so, I give myself and Rt a squirt of sanitizer after each social outing just to be extra cautious. You never know when the kid is going to be eating something with his his hands, so you have to beat him to the punch.

However, there was this one time when Rt and I were in the docs office getting a checkup and he put his hand on the doorknob, licked his hand, then placed it back on the doorknob. I looked at the doc in disgust and he said “Worst case, diarrhea”. And what sickness came of it? NADA NOTHING NO DICE. It must be due to his fabulous immune system…

Happy squirting!

e

Sanitizer ‘R Us

How did we ever get by without this golden goop? I am not sure when they actually created it or made it available to the mass market, but it has come in handy in our homestead more than once. You see, germs are everywhere. Now, I am a firm believer of building up an immune system to help prevent major sickness in the future, but you have to protect yourself where you can. The amount of germs out there or the abundance of opportunity to obtain these germs is so easy. So, I to try prevent where possible. I even have one of those shopping cart covers for trips to the store.

What was it like for our parents when they raised us? How many playdates/playgroups did they attend per week? How many book studies and MOPS meetings were available back in the day? My family lived in NC for the first 7 years of my life. We didn’t have any family around. I think I recall having a group of friends to play with, but most of our socializing was through my brother’s sporting events. My point is, I don’t think we were around as many kids as Rt and I are in a day/week/month. I can’t imagine going through the winter “sick” season without actually getting sick and I don’t just mean Rt, I am including myself as well. So, every time I can remember to do so, I give myself and Rt a squirt of sanitizer after each social outing just to be extra cautious. You never know when the kid is going to be eating something with his his hands, so you have to beat him to the punch.

However, there was this one time when Rt and I were in the docs office getting a checkup and he put his hand on the doorknob, licked his hand, then placed it back on the doorknob. I looked at the doc in disgust and he said “Worst case, diarrhea”. And what sickness came of it? NADA NOTHING NO DICE. It must be due to his fabulous immune system…

Happy squirting!

e