It has been so cold this winter and if you are like the rest of America you have been listening to your heater cycle on and off and wondering about your next electric and oil or gas bill.
On top of paying for higher heating costs you may have found that your home is getting very dry and its causing you dry sinuses, dry skin and just making you feel uncomfortable.
There are some high dollar solutions such as a whole home humidifier if you have forced hot air or you could get a stand alone humidifier. A lot of people who have breathing conditions will need these products but the fact is if they need them to feel better then increasing the moisture levels in your home will make you feel better too.
So what can we do?
Overnight last night I woke up with really dry sinuses and actually was at the point where i knew I was going to have a sinus headache if I didn’t take care of it and go drink a few glasses of water.
Now you can’t always drink so much water that it will help your sinuses .. if you did you would be running to the bathroom all day but the three or four glasses of water I drank kicked in after about an hour and I could feel some moisture coming back to my eyes. Thats another chronic problem we hear about on TV every five minutes .. have dry eyes??? use these drops. well using medication should be minimal because of all these side effects .. even asprin has side effects if you use too much of it all the time..
So maybe because I was getting a headache and was acting in desperation I said to myself ..
If the house is dry maybe I should hose the place down…
Yeah .. nah you can’t really do that and I started thinking about how bad it is for underlayment plywood to get wet from a rain storm while you’re building a house.. it can buckle.. so don’t attach a garden hose to your shower head and spray down the house.
But what I ended up doing I think everyone can do and it will help calm those winter dry sinuses and eyes .. and basically just make you feel better when you feel your body is being attacked by dryness but there is no way you can turn the heat down or off.. I guess I should say our heater was only set at 71 and during the day the sun is enough that the heater doesn’t run very often or at all.
The first thing I did was to grab two clean bath towels and wet them and I hung them from the hamper in the bedroom. They will give off a good amount of water but if the whole house is dry thats not going to help as the air circulates from heating.
The next thing I did was take an empty spray bottle that mists and I cleaned it just to make sure no remaining soap was in it and sprayed water through it for about a full minute to clean out the nozzle.
And yes I sprayed down the house with this spray bottle.
Mostly I just sprayed the carpet because I knew it wouldn’t get damaged like a piece of furniture might. I wasn’t spraying so much water that it would pool up .. just enough to apply a little moisture that would quickly evaporate and add humidity in the air.
Then I started thinking how can I do this more often and not be wasting all of my time.
Well since freebreeze the air freshener that comes in a spray bottle is mostly water and I use the concentrate refill and add about 50% water to it I figure I will probably dedicate a bottle that has just an ounce or a few table spoons of the freshener and the rest water.
I think at a low enough concentration you could spray anything in your home that is fabric and not cause damage and add a pleasant smell if you like that product. This is not an endorsement of Freebreeze and actually that stuff can be a little annoying if you use too much of it but its cheap if you buy the refill concentrate and I like it more than aerosol sprays for most applications.
Anyway how did the test work?
Well after a full bottle of water the humidity level in the house went from 38% to 44% and that took about an hour to happen.
Since all the surfaces are dry now I am thinking I will probably hit it again and maybe I will get another 2-3% which will bring it into the liveable range for me.
Now if you are someone who has a diagnosed problem with asthma or something related then you probably have been told to get a humidifier to keep humidity at a constant level… but if you are just feeling wiped out by winter dryness you can get a little relief from what I tried and then find a permanent solution if you need to.