home remedies

Eggshells.  One of nature's greatest feats of protective packaging.  One the package is opened and you've consumed the egg inside, though, what do you do with that shell?

Well, one of the things that makes eggshells so nearly perfect is their after market uses.  Here's half a dozen of the best ones that I use them for regularly:

1 – Compost them. This one is the most obvious and probably the second most common thing for the empty shells to end up becoming (next to just landfill).  Eggshells are a rich source of calcium and mineral supplements to your compost.  To speed up the breaking-down process, crush the shells.

Many old-timers would dry the shells thoroughly, saving the powder until they had a quantity of it, and then spread it over a field or pasture and let it "soak" into the soil.  This ads rich calcium to the soil and plant life and makes for excellent grazing pasture once it's been integrated into the soil.

2 – De-bitter your coffee. If you hate bitter morning coffee, you can use an eggshell to make it less so.  Just put a chunk of an eggshell to the coffee grounds in most any kind of coffee maker (obviously, this doesn't work with instant coffee).  The shell absorbs some of the acids in coffee that make it bitter.  Plus, when you're done, the paper filter, grounds, and shell are perfect additions to your compost.

Whether you own your home, rent, lease, or are just living there, you have at least one sink with a faucet.  Probably more than one.  If the water where you live is relatively hard, you probably battle hard water buildup on your sink, in your tub, etc.  Did you know that same buildup can slow down the water flow and even cause you to use more water?

Yep.  I found this out.

Most likely, you either do most of the maintenance in your home yourself or you hire a handyman to do it.  A lot of stuff, like what I'm about to show you, is so easy that paying someone to do it is just ridiculous.

Hard water buildup also affects the aerator on your faucet spouts.  The aerator is the little screen that looks like the screens on your windows for keeping the bugs out.  All it does is "break up" the water as it flows through, making it come out more uniformly by aerating it (breaking it up to add air).

Constipated? No matter what you're doing, that backed up feeling makes it uncomfortable.  I won't describe the whole feeling to you, you already know what it's like.  No point in my describing the stuffed, uncomfortable, can't sit flat, lower abdomen ache that is constipation.

I remember when I was a kid, maybe 7 or 8 years old, I got backed up really bad.  I don't remember the reason, but I recall it involved a large quantity of food the day before.  Cheese, probably.  That's always been one of my weaknesses.  Anyway, I had that over-stuffed feeling you get and was trying to figure out what to do.  Without telling my parents, of course.  I had a real fear of sickness, since my father was an anesthesiologist and everything he did to fix things seemed to involve needles.

So I told my friend Robby about it.  He thought that maybe a horse ride would work.  It didn't.  So we tried a few other things.  Then someone (him or me, I don't recall) got the idea that maybe punching me in the gut would work.  It didn't, but it hurt like hell.  When I got home, I didn't eat dinner so my mom knew something was wrong.  I never missed meals.  I broke down and told her what had happened.

Happy Monday everyone!  Are you having a case of the Monday’s?  I was at a pool party yesterday and everyone was eating the traditional hamburgers, hot dogs and nothing of any nutritional value.  I remember a time when it was okay to have these things as a part of our everyday diet. As we get older, our stomachs don’t want to participate like they have in the past.  Having an upset stomach is no fun whatsoever, and I’m sure eating may be one of the last things on your mind.  Trust me, this feeling will also pass (no pun intended) and  it’s still important to fuel your body the right way. Since I’ve also been down this road and am not anticipating days like this during the upcoming football season, I’ve researched some home remedies to fix your upset stomach.

I remember the days when we looked at our older counterparts and used to laugh at all of the antacid commercials.  Where did the good times go?  Why are we continuing to put our bodies through such ongoing punishment?  While it is always best to avoid any foods that are particularly greasy or sugary, especially fried foods, I am definitely a realist in knowing that we (including me) will not cut these habits out of our diets completely.  This will not be an article about eating tree bark!

If you want natural, chemical-free armpits, you have three choices:  shower two or three times a day, stink and hope no one notices, or make your own deodorant.

Luckily, you don't have to waste water or lose your social life because making your own deodorant is actually pretty easy.  It's cheap, doesn't take a lot of ingredients, and is even more cost effective than the bourbon that your uncle from the 1980s wore as cologne.  Remember him?

Here's the stuff you'll need:

• Corn starch
• Baking soda
• Coconut or aloe oil
• A small or medium-sized mixing bowl
• A container for the finished product (more on this later)
• Optional scents (essential oils or additives)

You can skip the essential oils, but a few of them are useful as anti-bacterial/microbials for further scent control.  Your stinkiness primarily comes from bacteria growing in your sweat and belching out stink.  Good oils for anti-microbial are bay, cinnamon, clove, and thyme.  Make sure you aren't sensitive to these, since they can cause a rash if you are.  They're optional, so if you have a problem, skip them or use something else.

Other nice scents are aloe, mint, vanilla, and rose oil.  Go easy on these, since their essentials are extremely potent.  Lighter scents like lemon oils, sandalwood, and others are also nice.

When I was younger, I was very prone to ear infections and the resulting earaches.  My father, being a medical type, had thousands of wonders to inflict cure me with.  For his generation, the wonder drug that cured everything was penicillin.  I had large lumps in my butt more than once from penicillin injections.

Later, after a particularly serious infection in my right ear (I had a habit of swimming in ponds, ditches, etc.), it was determined that no amount of ear drops or penicillin was going to cure me.  So my parents packed up my grubby butt and hauled me to the hospital.  This was a trek for us, since the tiny 3-bed "hospital" my dad ran in our farm town was 45-50 miles from the nearest actual hospital.

Long story short, it was found that I have a peculiar genetic thing in which my ear canals have "channels" that bypass the ear drums, which is why I don't notice altitude changes or get painful ears when diving.  It also means infections are easier for me to get.

Well, once I was under my own medical control, I began finding out what I could do to keep from getting ear infections (besides becoming a hermit) and how I could treat them when they did come.  Without pharmaceuticals. Thanks to my childhood, I now abhor needles, pills, and just about everything else from established, modern medicine.