A story about a vacuum cleaner
I had a Canadian friend who was a former RN and she kept telling me "Your mattress needs to go. It's got to be part of the problem." and I didn't want to hear it.
One morning after three or four months of blowing her off, I woke up with the corners of my mouth cracked and bleeding AGAIN and feeling more tired than when I went to bed AGAIN and decided she was right: The mattress was a problem.
I had my sons haul it out to the dumpster within the hour, I think. Certainly the same day.
This was a revelation for my oldest son who took to tossing things out very enthusiastically. The amount of stuff we owned began to shrink dramatically.
But it took me a long time to really mentally get with the program. I had some mental glitch where I wanted a spartan life and was hellbent on accumulating my way to one.
Like if you stockpile enough mountains of crap with clean lines, suddenly -- magically -- your life is now SPARTAN! Voila!!!
Um, no. That's not actually how that works.
Anyway, one day my son wanted to throw out the vacuum cleaner and I was like "No. I cannot afford to replace it." and he was like "Um, mom, I said nothing about replacing it. The entire plan is throw it out. Full stop."
So we did and about a week later I felt really, really, really bad and wanted to buy a new one, convinced the carpet was nasty and making me sick. And he was like "I don't think that's it, mom. I think it's a die off reaction and we need to just WAIT. We will feel better in a few days."
He's way smarter than I am about some things so I was like "Okay. We will do it your way." Sure enough, in another day or two, we began to feel a lot better.
I later saw studies indicating that vacuum cleaners spread germs. Unless you CLEAN the vacuum cleaner, you may be sucking up dust and dirt but you are keeping germs alive and well on myriad surfaces.
So it took a week or ten days for the crud in the carpet to die and we felt worse before we felt better. This is a general truism: Things get worse before they get better and stopping the process too soon can mean you won't ever see "better."
Had I gone and bought a new vacuum cleaner, I would have never gotten over the hump and learned that we are healthier using other means to keep our home clean. I trusted my son who knows a lot more than I do about some things and it worked out.
But it means following my blog and trying to use it as medical advice is problematic because I'm not on hand to say "Oh, give it just a little more time." or, alternately, "Whoah. No. That's a bad thing. Don't do that. Stop immediately."
One morning after three or four months of blowing her off, I woke up with the corners of my mouth cracked and bleeding AGAIN and feeling more tired than when I went to bed AGAIN and decided she was right: The mattress was a problem.
I had my sons haul it out to the dumpster within the hour, I think. Certainly the same day.
This was a revelation for my oldest son who took to tossing things out very enthusiastically. The amount of stuff we owned began to shrink dramatically.
But it took me a long time to really mentally get with the program. I had some mental glitch where I wanted a spartan life and was hellbent on accumulating my way to one.
Like if you stockpile enough mountains of crap with clean lines, suddenly -- magically -- your life is now SPARTAN! Voila!!!
Um, no. That's not actually how that works.
Anyway, one day my son wanted to throw out the vacuum cleaner and I was like "No. I cannot afford to replace it." and he was like "Um, mom, I said nothing about replacing it. The entire plan is throw it out. Full stop."
So we did and about a week later I felt really, really, really bad and wanted to buy a new one, convinced the carpet was nasty and making me sick. And he was like "I don't think that's it, mom. I think it's a die off reaction and we need to just WAIT. We will feel better in a few days."
He's way smarter than I am about some things so I was like "Okay. We will do it your way." Sure enough, in another day or two, we began to feel a lot better.
I later saw studies indicating that vacuum cleaners spread germs. Unless you CLEAN the vacuum cleaner, you may be sucking up dust and dirt but you are keeping germs alive and well on myriad surfaces.
So it took a week or ten days for the crud in the carpet to die and we felt worse before we felt better. This is a general truism: Things get worse before they get better and stopping the process too soon can mean you won't ever see "better."
Had I gone and bought a new vacuum cleaner, I would have never gotten over the hump and learned that we are healthier using other means to keep our home clean. I trusted my son who knows a lot more than I do about some things and it worked out.
But it means following my blog and trying to use it as medical advice is problematic because I'm not on hand to say "Oh, give it just a little more time." or, alternately, "Whoah. No. That's a bad thing. Don't do that. Stop immediately."
