Tag: Clean

Guest Post: 7 Reasons Not To Fear The Dentist

1. Your dentist gives you free stuff! Don’t you want free lip balm, toys and all the toothbrushes and floss you can stuff down your pants? After the dentist finishes the exam and cleaning, often these lovely parting gifts await you.

2. Your dentist understands your fear. And will give you plenty of nitrous oxide (laughing gas)! Whether it’s because you had a traumatic experience as a child or you don’t like the idea of someone poking around in your mouth, some people have a real fear of visiting the dentist. According to Comfort Dental of Anderson, Indiana, when patients receive sedation dentistry work, it allows them to have little or no memory of the experience. No reason to be scared, you won’t remember anything!

3. Your dentist helps you have a winning smile. Say goodbye to crooked and yellow teeth! Smiling helps facilitate better first impressions and makes you look more attractive. Your dentist can help create a million-dollar smile–whether it’s a professional teeth whitening session or straightening your teeth with braces. Your teeth will look so stellar that friends and family will no longer ask about your uncanny resemblance to Count Dracula!

4. Dentists use the latest technology. No rusty tools a-la Little Shop of Horrors. Today’s dentists’ offices are more like Star Trek (Beam Me up Scotty!). Offices are equipped with the latest technology so procedures are not only less invasive but also allow patients to feel more comfortable. There are many new technologies that accomplish these goals, such as devices that even eliminate the need of the fear-inducing drill.

5. Your dentist keeps you healthy. If your dentist spots something like oral cancer during a routine checkup, you can thank them for saving your life. Truth is you only have one set of teeth. If you deal with dental issues before they become a problem, chances are you won’t be so scared to go because there won’t be any major problems. Crazy concept, we know.

6. Calming atmospheres and soothing music. Some dentists’ offices have transformed into downright spas! Televisions, calming music, chamomile tea and white noise machines with ocean sounds are just a few of the amenities that provide a calming and inviting dental experience.

7. Your dentist knows what he is doing. They went to school…for many, many years! Becoming a dentist involves at least two to three years of prerequisite science courses during the four years of college to receive an undergraduate degree , and dental school is another four years. Throughout schooling, dental students have intensive instruction that involves nine hours of lectures and/or lab five days a week, totaling about 100 credit hours of classes each year.

After all the years of school, they still need to be licensed by the state before they can practice. They need to pass the National Board Dental Examinations and clinical board examinations to show that they are competent to practice dentistry. Some states may even require one to two years of residency. And if your dentist decides to specialize in anything from pediatric dentistry to periodontics, that involves even more years of schooling. All this makes them super smart, so you trust them to look in your mouth.

Becoming a dentist takes hard work and extensive training. So have no fear. You are in good hands!

If you have a dentist who had put you at ease, nominate them here.

Post contributed by Alisa Vilabrera of TopDentists.com

September 23, 2012
Guest Post: 7 Reasons To Grow The Hell Up

So you’re a teenage boy. I was one once, and got over it. You can too, if you TAKE HEED of these important points.

1. You are not special. You are not the first person ever to feel this way. You are not the first person ever to fall in love, or get stoned, or drunk, or listen to music that wasn’t in the charts. You are, in a word, unoriginal. Hurry to adulthood where such tedious conformity goes unremarked.

2. You look like an animated French Bread Pizza. This is not a good look. Get busy with the acne treatment, and you might find the teenage girls you pine after, bother to look at you. I mean, it’s still doubtful, given you only speak in mumbles or grunts and have the personal hygiene of algae, but hey, it’s a start, no?

3. You are composed entirely of knees, elbows and Adam’s Apples. While teen girls are so sylphlike they get their A-Level results photos on the front page of the Telegraph, teen boys lurch about like they were made that morning and the glue didn’t take. You’re fitter than you’re ever likely to be again – stop walking around like you’ve a freakishly heavy head.

4. You need ‘fake ID’. Now that’s just plain embarrassing. To have to proffer some weedy doctored piece of card every time you want to do something normal, like buy Tippex or 12 cans of extra-strength Fusilier Lager from your local shop is demeaning to all concerned. Get old, so you can demand such essentials in a booming, confident voice.

5. You’re all over the scale. Speaking of voices, what’s up with yours? One minute you’re frightening bats, the next minute you sound like Sauron spotting Frodo. Stop mucking about, boy!

6. Why so unwashed? Acne treatment is all well and good, but it needs to be accompanied by actual washing. A spray of Right Guard under the arms every morning is insufficient. You’ve achieved success when strangers can enter your room without being knocked unconscious.

7. You didn’t ask to be born. Sorry, what’s that? You didn’t ask? OF COURSE YOU DIDN’T! Nobody did! It’s not how the system works, for crying out loud! I’m sure this was covered in Biology. To become a man, you need to internalise this existential sense of injustice and only let it out, say, during major sporting tournaments.

September 5, 2012
Guest Post: 7 Reasons You Shouldn’t Use Seat Covers In Your Living Room

What’s the first thing that comes to mind when you think of seat covers? Probably those plastic tarps draped over the chairs in your grandparents’ house, the ones that stuck to your leg when you sat down and refused to let you find a comfortable position. Sure, they may help extend the life of your furniture by a little bit by keeping spills from sinking in, but seat covers can also be uncomfortable, unsightly and downright impractical.

There are a lot of great ways to keep furniture clean and looking great, so here’s some great advice if you were considering buying seat covers. If you already have them, well, consider this your intervention. Here are the top seven reasons not to use seat covers.

1. They look bad. I’m sorry, but it had to be said. It’s taking the nice, colorful fabric of your chairs and covering it up with the equivalent of a bed sheet. Would you buy a nice new outfit and then drape a giant rain poncho over the entire thing? Probably not. If you want your living room to look its best, spend the time straightening up rather than covering what is supposed to be one of the central points of the room.

2. They encourage you to be dirty. One of the main reasons people use seat covers is to keep the chairs from getting dirt of stains, but covering them often gives less inventive to clean them as often as they need it. Chairs need to be vacuumed regularly to keep out the dirt and dust that can make your air unhealthy, but with a cover on them cleaning this is often neglected.

3. They’re expensive. If you want to avoid putting an ugly sheet over the chair, then the only alternative is to find a custom seat cover for it. Though these may come in many styles, colors and shapes, the price is not exactly cheap. You can save money by just skipping them altogether and instead keeping the original furniture in good shape with regular cleaning and some small repairs as needed.

4. They’re not comfortable. Anyone who has ever sat on a covered chair knows the uncomfortable feeling as it shifts and wrinkles underneath them. The plastic ones are even worse, warming up under bare legs until you basically have to peel yourself out of them.

5. They’re a lot of work. Sticky legs and wrinkles isn’t the only drawback of getting out of a covered seat. They also have a tendency to shift out of position easily, becoming bunched in the middle and pulling up at the bottom, revealing the furniture you were trying to cover. Covered seats need adjustments after every sitting, and when it comes time to clean them the fabric often requires special settings and drying. Some of the more expensive or exotic ones even require dry cleaning.

6. They’re not easy to find. If you want seat covers you have two options—get the material and make them yourself or scour home decorating stores to find the right size. Either way you’re in for a lot of measuring, price comparisons and trial and error as you fit them onto your chairs. If you instead put the same amount of effort into fixing the furniture, you could end up with a sparkling living room and seats that look better.

7. They limit your options. Maybe you don’t spill things on your chairs, and maybe you only need seat covers to extend the life of your old or worn furniture. If that’s the case, then those covers are serving a useful role—but it still doesn’t make them the best solution. Covering up older chairs is the easiest route, but it often keeps you from getting really creative and thinking up better ways to spruce up the room. You could try re-arranging the living room to take attention away from older furniture, installing a new design scheme or buying artwork to become the focus point of the room. Whatever you do, simply covering up the problem is not a great way to deal with it.

Author Bio: Denise Hill is an avid blogger for NetQin, writing on a variety of topics.

July 5, 2012
Guest Post: 7 Reasons Why You Should Never Lick A Door Handle

Remember Ewan MacDougal of Furniture Fortress and Window Blinds as Christmas Presents fame? Well he’s back. And this time he’s not alone. Joining him on the 7 Reasons sofa is article co-author Nicola Winters. Oh, and a lot of Japanese girls with their tongues attached to door handles. We’ll leave Ewan and Nicola to explain why.

***

There are many trends, fashions and fads that come and go (most are completely alien to me) but yet they get the whole world talking. Some trends catch on, some don’t and some simply shouldn’t! You can often predict the next big trend by looking at Japanese culture. For a long time the Japanese have been number one for innovation, number one for technology and most defiantly number one for alternative fashion. However, there is a new phenomenon sweeping Japan that I certainly hope is not a sign of things to come at home. The bizzare new fetish where girls are licking door handles! Usually I’m all for diversifying culture, but this is one innovation that I really hope does not catch on at home. Call me a hygiene freak if you must, but I certainly don’t want to find myself trapped in a room, too scared to open the door for fear that it’s been coated with some one else’s saliva. So, in an attempt to prevent this trend spreading, here are seven reasons why you should just say no to licking door knobs.

1. Door Handles Aren’t Always That Clean. A handle is not just an interior design accessory; their primary purpose is to be functional tools, used to open and close doors for anyone (and everyone) who wish to enter or exit. The average handle must have been touched by countless people, all with different standards of personal hygiene. In almost no time at all germs will have gathered. Do you really want to be licking these germs? What if someone else has licked this handle before you? How many germs will it be home to then? I have a really ugly friend who has glandular fever and loves Japanese trends, what if he’s licked the handle first?

2. It’s Just Plain Weird! How many times have you previously found yourself licking door handles? How many times have you been out and about, shopping, picking the kids up from school or walking the dog and got the urge to lick a door handle? What was that? Never? No of course you haven’t. Do you want to know why? Because it’s weird! If you had previously witnessed this type of behaviour on a street near you then you’d be the first person to call the psychiatric specialist and get them off the streets immediately! So don’t think that just because the “cool” Japanese people have started doing it, it’s suddenly stopped being weird. Because it hasn’t!

3. There’s Better Things To Lick. Seriously, door handles? For hundreds of years confectionery professionals have strived long and hard to manufacturer tasty, sweet, juicy and mouth-watering treats to suck on. Surely these hours have not been wasted? Surely in all this time they must have developed at least one thing you would prefer to lick than a door handle.

4. You Could Strain Your Back. Maybe this is a sign that I’m getting old, but surely you’d agree the act of actually bending down to participate in door knob licking is a strenuous process in itself. The risk of pulling, straining or (in more serious cases) breaking the back has to be pretty high. Even if you are just a casual licker it only takes one bad kneeling position and you could ruin your licking-things career for ever. Do you really want a door handle to be the last thing you lick? If you’re going to take the risk, there must be other things out there better licked.

5. You’ll Restrict Others Access. Don’t be selfish. Whilst you are indulging in a little handle love from one side of the door, there could be an extremely important person on the other side. An extremely important person trying to get to an extremely important meeting. If they have to wait until you’re done satisfying yourself, think of all the important things they could miss. Think what this could mean for the world! What if they were a diplomat that had finally come up with a plan that could lead to world peace and they missed the world peace summit because of you? Do you want that on your conscience?

6. You Could Get A Bump On The Head. What if said important person didn’t wait? What if their important thing was so important they just had to push through? Getting hit in the head with a door, whilst its handle is in your mouth, with your tongue wrapped around it, does not sound like a pleasant experience.

7. You Could Be A Fire Hazard. When I was a child, my Japanese mother was tragically killed in a fire when she could not leave a burning building because someone was taking too long to finish licking the door handle of the fire exit. It was extremely sad and left me and my six siblings homeless and living on the streets only able to survive by selling our organs on the black market. It was an horrific existence and it was all because of door handle licking.*

So, take a moment before jumping on this bandwagon. Stop before resorting to this crazy behaviour simply to ‘fit in’. Think about this logically and ask yourself, “Do I really need to lick this door handle?” The answer, surprisingly, will almost always be ‘NO’.

*Reason 7 is entirely a lie, but I was hoping for the sympathy vote.

March 1, 2012
7 Reasons To Wear Socks With Sandals

1. Keep Your Feet Clean. A fairly obvious one, but assuming you aren’t walking about in your bath, your feet are going to get dirty if not covered by sock fabric. Dirty feet mean dirty sandals. Dirty sandals mean a dirty mind. Not always a good thing.

2. You Want To Be Left Alone. If you need some me time – and by that I don’t mean Jonathan Lee time (although I am flattered) – socks and sandals is the way to go. It’s even better than buying a shed and locking yourself in it. Have you ever seen a woman holding the hand of a man in socks and sandals? Have you ever seen children shout ‘Daddy’ to a man in socks and sandals? Have you ever seen a chugger approach a man in socks and sandals? The answer to all these questions is no. That’s the difference a sock can make.

3. You’re Wearing Speedos. And possibly a handkerchief on your head. If you are wearing Speedos and a handkerchief on your head, the only thing that is going to make people look below your knees are socks with sandals. Unless you are actually wearing Speedos on your head, in which case you should remove one sock and position it elsewhere. Immediately. Which come to think of it is another reason for wearing socks in the first place.

4. They’re Not Your Socks. It is a sad indictment of today’s beach holiday, but people do steal socks. You maybe one of the sad indictments. If you are, then firstly, shame on you. Secondly, let me give you a tip. Putting the socks on – beneath your sandals – and it will make it look like you own them. No one is going to accuse you of sock stealing if you are wearing them. Or going through the wallet you also picked up.

5. Hide Your Feet From Podophobes. Podophobes are people with a fear of feet – and I assume iPods, pea pods, podcasts and anything that comes out from underneath Thunderbird 2. People who have a fear of things usually react in one of two ways. The first is that they run away screaming. The second is that they attack. The problem is you have two feet. One may make the podophobe run away, the other may make them massacre it. Really you want it one way or the other. Hopping is very tiring.

6. Avoid Pedicurists. Pedicurists are those strange people who like holding other people’s feet between their thighs. You can never spot them though. They hide too well. Usually as normal human beings. However, come the summer and they are attracted to uncovered feet like moths to the flame. Go out without your socks and you’ll be defending the state of your feet all day. (And why you thought violet was a good nail polish colour).

7. You Have Reached Old Age. As soon as you get to this age, wearing socks and sandals becomes acceptable. I am not sure what this age is – probably because I haven’t reached it yet – but you’ll know because it’ll arrive at the same time as you feel the need to have the heating on all year round and decide that £2.50 is still enough for your grandchild to buy an Easter Egg.*

*I do love my Grandparents, but seriously. I can’t even buy two Kinder Eggs for that.

April 20, 2010