Bedroom is where we spend a third of our life. Maintain it properly.
Dr Abe V Rotor
Living with Nature - School on Blog
Paaralang Bayan sa Himpapawid with Ms Melly C Tenorio
738 DZRB AM 8 to 9 Evening Class, Monday to Friday
Typical Bedroom. Can you identify it features? (Follow the numbers)
The bedroom is where we spend one third of our life resting and finding
recourse from the stressful world outside.
It is a shell call our own. It is where we truly exercise authority over things
private and personal, things we are prevented for one reason or another to do
in the presence of people.
It is a special place, exclusive and intimate, to submit ourselves to two
primordial needs of man, which is Maslow's Herarchy of Needs, are referred to
as biological needs attached to survival of any species - rest and sex. It is
therefore the sanctuary of two functions of living things: rejuvenation and
reproduction.
But too often, the bedroom is one of the neglected places in the home. If not,
it "misused and abused."
The one place we least expect to find dirt in is under our bed.
Here clouds of talc powder settle down, particles slowly crumble from paper,
paint, plastic, clothes and foam as they slowly disintegrate. Flakes that fall
off daily from our skin and hair attract countless mites that co-habit with us
in our room. Wiping and sweeping often miss them stuck in corners and crevices.
We sneeze as if struck by an allergy. Our nostrils clog and we mistake our
misery for colds. Our sleep is shallow and disturbed. When humidity is high our
room smells musky. Imagine how bad the smell is for those who are bed smokers.
Many of us are living in this kind of room. While we can hide dirt under the
rug, we cannot hide the dirt under our bed.
Allergy-proofing the bedroom
- Keep pets out.
- Encase sleeping place
- Clean sheets with lots of
heat
- Run your air through filter
- Banish the blinds
- Steer clear of soft seats
- Filter the vents
- Pluck pillows and comforters
wisely
- Stow gewgaws away
- Wash away the pollen
- Debunk the mites
- Give Teddy a bath
Simplify and organize your bedroom
1. Have a general cleaning in your room, say one weekend in
March to coincide with springtime. It is best to take the bed out so that you
can expose it under the sun for at least two hours. This will drive out all the
mites, bedbugs and other vermin. Scrub, beat if it is foam, and vacuum it, if
necessary. Clean the room walls and ceiling with warm water and mild detergent.
As for the floor, scrub and polish it.
2. Simplify and organize your room. The fewer things we have in our room the
better. Take out those books, magazines, and old newspapers. Remove unneeded
cosmetics and medicine. Keep no food in the bedroom. Dispose of those racks and
shelves that tend to accumulate dust. And keep that computer out of your room.
You can have a TV, radio, study table, and a few of your “favorite things”. Try
not to make your room into a collector’s showcase of figurines, dolls, posters,
mementos, etc.
3. Next, clean the apparador or closet. You are likely to encounter another
pest there – the silverfish (Lepisma saccharina). This is an insect that eats
on old clothes and paper. It is a most primitive of all insects, and perhaps
the most resistant. If your barong (Filipino formal shirt) bears some poke
holes, it is likely the work of this pest. The silverfish likes starchy
materials, and natural fiber.
Other tenants in your room are the fungi. Fungi live on old materials,
especially under humid conditions. They are the moldy growth on your shoes, bags,
at the edge of the mirror, on top of cosmetic cream, on the armchairs. They
cause buni, an-an, and athlete’s foot. Because they cannot produce their food
by photosynthesis, unlike the plants, they have to become saprophytes (nature’s
scavengers), subsisting on almost anything, including the lens of the camera.
4. The number one enemy of fungi is sunlight. Allow sunlight to penetrate into
your room as much as possible. Do not store moist materials, especially clothes
in your room. Expose fungi-prone materials like shoes and bags to the sun by
bringing them out, or letting the sunshine in. Open the case and click your
camera directly toward the sun if you intend not to use it for sometime.
5. Your room should be clean, cool and dry. Air conditioning is good, but a
room that allows natural ventilation and sunlight is best. The ideal kind of
room is one integrated with the outdoors where one step leads to the garden and
to nature, which is the essence of the American bungalow architecture. Here the
confluence is not only defined by aesthetics, but by spiritual communion.
It should be a room where we can find time to meditate. Away from the maddening
crowd, we seek refuge from the fast pace of life outside. Here is a poem for
meditation.
Dust in My Room
Alone in my room, I wrote and wrote:
The door was locked, my meal was cold;
With clumsy hands, my pen dropped,
On all fours I groped in the dark.
There to a curb, it rolled and rolled.
Into a mat of dust and web.
Whence I found, a tale untold
Of my life like the tide in ebb.
Words flowed, like a river on rush,
To be weaned, yearning to be free;
Chronicler, vanguard too, oh dust,
Like lost jewels in the blue sea.
Our health is greatly influenced by our room, the place we rest our tired
bodies, where we keep ourselves away from the rigors of work. This is where we
spend half of our lifetime.
It is the very core of Home Sweet Home.
~~~
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