Your ‘Clean’ Workout Routine TURN HOUSEHOLD CHORES INTO EFFECTIVE EXERCISE
Everyone knows how labor-intensive cleaning can be. A long day of scrubbing down your house is a great way to work your muscles and get your blood pumping, so crank up some tunes, grab a mop, and get ready to transform your cleaning routine into a great workout. To get physical benefits from cleaning, you need to turn up the intensity of your methods. Exaggerate your motions, pick up your pace, and keep your abs tight and knees flexed. Nearly any chore can be turned into an exercise, but here are some ideas to get you started. • Vacuum: Vacuum briskly nonstop for at least 20 minutes, switching arms as you go. For an added challenge, do lunges as you vacuum and remember to keep your toes pointed straight ahead and your knees bent at 90-degree angles.
legs, not your back. You can also do squats while unloading the dishwasher or with any other chore that involves repeated bending.
• Wipe Down: Whether you’re wiping windows or scrubbing appliances, do big, exaggerated arm circles until your muscles start to burn and make sure you’re switching arms as you go. • Cook: It’s not cleaning, but it’s still a chore with useful downtime. While food is simmering or thawing in the microwave, do some pushups, situps, or planks to get your muscles moving. You can implement dozens of exercises to turn mundane activities into beneficial workouts. Some chores will burn more calories than others, but every bit of activity helps. Now’s the time to work your way to a cleaner house and a healthier you.
• Pick Up: Instead of simply bending over to pick up toys or clothes, do a squat with every item you grab. Remember to use your
HOW TO AVOID AND FIX CLOGGED DRAINS SAVING YOU TIME AND MONEY
Let’s talk about drain care — specifically, how to avoid clogging them. While clogged drains are sometimes unavoidable, you can do a few things to prevent backups. We’ll start in the bathroom. The first thing you can do to avoid clogged drains is never flush any material other than toilet paper. Don’t flush paper towels, feminine products, or “flushable” wipes, even if they say flushable on the packaging. They’re flushable in the same way that marbles, monopoly money, or phone chargers are flushable. They might fit down your drain, but they will still clog your pipes. Let’s move on to the kitchen sink and the garbage disposal. Garbage disposals are useful, but they’re not magic, and they’re certainly not garbage cans. If you regularly dump half a plate of food in your kitchen sink, try dumping it in your blender or food processor sometime. Run it for a few seconds and look at the food. That’s what you’re letting sit in your drain. Don’t dump rice, pasta, potato skins, or any food that expands on contact with water, as that can cause major clogs in your pipes. Instead, scrape all solids into the trash. Whatever residue is left on the plate is safe to rinse into the disposal. When you’re done, turn the water to hot, run the disposal for 10 seconds, and then continue to run hot water through it for 10 more seconds after you turn it off.
This will ensure that nothing is left in the disposal.
Sometimes, however, you can’t avoid clogged drains. Hair builds up in sinks and showers, and over long periods of time, food residue can build up in kitchen pipes. When this happens, don’t use a chemical
drain cleaner. Aside from the hazards of working with incredibly corrosive chemicals, they often don’t fix the issue and can damage the drain. Instead, try clearing the blockage manually with a drain snake or look for an alternative treatment. We use Bio-clean, a bacterial compound that eats organic matter without damaging the pipe.
As always, if you find yourself in doubt, you can give us a call or book an appointment online. Stay safe, stay well, and stay Plumb Smart!
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