One time in the previous house I went out to get something from the store and my elderly mother and my dog were in the house. There was a brief power failure and IIRC the battery backup for the burglar alarm was weak and needed to be replaced, and when the power came back on the alarm went nuts and activated a VERY LOUD siren. I think it shut off by itself eventually but when I got home my poor old mother and the poor dog were both freaked out, in approximately equal measure!
Perhaps unwisely, I totally ignore maintenance recommendations for the HVAC system. Not sure much is required for the A/C, but there are definitely recommended checkup procedures for the furnace. All I ever do is replace the filter. I do use high quality 3M filters but don’t replace them nearly as often as recommended.
Heh, some good Ryan George there. (I bought my son a “Super easy/Barely an inconvenience” tshirt a couple of Christmases ago, we are fully onboard with the Ryan George program)
Fwiw, old baby powder probably contains talc, and while it’s no more dangerous now than it was then, a lot of talc is contaminated with asbestos, and it’s a really bad idea to breathe the stuff.
This site is probably funded by lawyers who make a living pursuing mesothelioma claims, but i browsed it and the info is reasonably good:
Thanks, I was vaguely aware of the talc and asbestos connection and the potential risks of baby powder. J&J seems to have followed the fine traditions of the DuPont chemical company, Monsanto, Philip Morris, and other plagues on health and the environment. Fortunately, the more than 26-year-old expiry date on a small container is indicative of how much of the stuff I use!
I don’t. My grandfather had one but I never saw it, by the time I was around he owned a Mercedes 300E. I have a soft spot for quirky poorly engineered deathtraps so would love, love an old Lancia as a project car. Alas, I suspect that’s going to be a lifelong bucket list item.
I have a prescription for monthly contact lenses, but I let my eyes tell me when they need to be changed out. Depending on circumstances, this could be anywhere to every 3 to 6 weeks. I also sleep in my contacts at least once a week just because I’m too tired or lazy to take them out and clean them. I know I’m risking my eye health - but it works for me.
I would say anything you’d use without needing gloves. So no industrial degreaser or oven cleaner or anything otherwise caustic like that. I’ve always thought of it simply as “dish soap” and similar.
Not quite “ignore”, but I always look at recommended amounts of laundry soap through the lens of “this was written and approved by people who wants to sell more soap” and use about half the recommended amount. It seems to work just fine, with fewer incidents of soap residue remaining on dark colors.
Oh, that’s one where the recommendations are wrong. They were written for old machines that used lots of water. But all the recent machines use tiny amounts of water (insert rant here) and should be run with vastly less soap. The guy who installed my new front loading washing machine said to use a tablespoon of laundry soap. The repairman who came out when i complained it didn’t rinse adequately recommended using a teaspoon of soap.
(It still doesn’t rinse adequately. I’ve taken to running it twice, the second time on “heavy load” with hot water and no soap.)
I just cleaned the toilet bowl. The container of liquid included instructions for how long to leave it in place to clean, disinfect or sanitize the bowl. I ignored the bit about disinfecting or sanitizing the bowl. I don’t care if the product 100% effective at removing germs and such; as soon as the bowl is used for its intended purpose, it will no longer be infection-free or sanitized.
“NEVER use with an extension cord!” (By extension – hehe – I assume that includes power strips.)
How are you supposed to plug in a small kitchen appliance (toaster, coffeepot, Instant Pot) that came with a 1.5-foot cord “for safety” when your outlets are at floor level? This was always a problem for me as I always lived in old houses (last one was 1925, prior one was 1940). Remind me the next time I design and build my kitchen to install outlets at countertop level every two feet. When, you ask, is that going to happen? Um…it ain’t.