We are Marching through the last of the winter and into spring. This weekend promises to the be warmest since last fall and we don't need to be told twice to enjoy it!! I have suggestions on how to use the above freezing temps and glorious sunshine to our best advantage.
We will soon open our windows wide to let fresh, relatively warmer air into our homes. Before you open the street side windows, be ready with a wet paper towel to wipe the window sills. I rarely recommend using paper towels; they are wasteful and generally unnecessary, expensive to buy and those dollars support the unhealthy manufacturing process of bleaching paper. This is one instance where protecting our immediate health calls for getting pollutants quickly and completely out of our homes. A wet paper towel does it well.
The black "dirt" on the windowsills on the street side is mostly road dirt. That same blackness saturates the snow banks. It is an accumulation of auto exhaust, ground rubber tires and lead. The lead comes from metal weights auto mechanics use to balance our tires. Lead weights are soft and malleable; perfect for attaching to tire rims. Lead is relatively heavy, even in small pieces; perfect as weights. When the wheels go round and round, vibrations shake those lead weights off. Their softness and weight is then perfect for traffic to grind them into fine lead dust on the roadways. The dust mixes with the rest of the road dirt, gets kicked up and settles on snowbanks in winter, curbs and sidewalks all year long and settles on windowsills on the street side of our homes. Lead is extremely toxic when breathed in or ingested.
Another ingredient of road dirt comes from inside the combustible engines of our cars. Inside the engine is a hellish scene. The compression and explosion ignites fossil fuel, with the additives, shredding the molecules of the fuel, the metal of the engine itself, the oil and gaskets. These super heated, super shredded, toxic, metal and fuel molecules are blown out the tail pipe, whooshed up and around by the aerodynamics of vehicles in motion and of the air herself. These pollutants settle to the ground and on everything within many yards of the road. These pollutants then come into our homes on our shoes, clothes, hair, face and on our pet's feet and coat. These toxic molecules are also the blackness on the street side windowsills.
The smaller the particles, the harder it is for our lungs to expel them. These small molecules get into the cilia lining the insides of our lungs and are too small for the cilia to move out. Wipe these window sills with a wet paper towel so the road dirt doesn't blow around or shake off and throw it right in the trash.
It may be early yet to throw open the windows wide so there is still time to get some pre open window dusting done. The longer dust sits undisturbed the more harmful it is to breathe. Dust mites can colonize quickly when left to do so. The old dust doesn't freak me out quite as much as the build up of road dirt, but if you have breathing issues or allergies, use wet paper towels because you don't want to breathe this old dust. Wipe off the inside sills, the baseboards, heat sources, tops of window and door frames, tops of wall art, ceiling light fixtures and lamp shades. Get behind and under furniture this time of year because when the warmish winds of spring start to blow through our homes, all that dust is going to kick up from behind and under. We'll be breathing it in and indoor house dust contains plenty of bad chemistry, dead bug parts and dried bug poop. We don't want to breathe that stuff.
The great news is, this late winter, early spring air is freshly cleaned by the extreme cold. Even in the heart of the city, this air is considerably more oxygenated than the over breathed air inside our homes. Dust first, then let the fresh air in.
Now let's talk about using the sunshine to our advantage. Sunlight is very cleansing. Now is a great time to take the couch cushions, couch and bed pillows, comforters and blankets outside and shake the dust off. Hang or lay these cushy comforts in the sunshine to stop mold and mildew spores from growing. The cold, dry air is death to dust mites. Squeeze the old air out of the pillows and cushions until you can feel the coldness in them. They'll warm up again when you bring them inside and they'll be refreshed, refreshing you in the process.
Enjoy the free, healing and cleaning power of cold, dry air and sharp sunshine while we have it. It will be hot, humid and hazy soon enough. Well, maybe not soon enough, but soon.
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