Let’s be honest, everyone loves a clean home but cleaning can be a chore. Not to mention keeping it clean, especially if you have kids or four legged friends. That’s why designing a home goes beyond establishing how many bedrooms you need or the style of architecture you prefer.

Designing a home is all about livability and thankfully there are some design choices you can make that will make cleaning the home a much easier job. We’ve gathered 10 tips from the best Melbourne builders and designers to help you create a home that allows you to spend less time cleaning bathroom grout and more time living!

1. Consider your flooring material

Floors get dirty the fastest in the home so considering a material that is easy to clean and durable is essential. Polished concrete, hardwood flooring, stone or vinyl tiles work will in high traffic areas where you can easily sweep, mop and spot clean. Reserve carpet for bedrooms and other areas such as your snug or den where you’re likely to spend time barefoot.

2. Create a mud room

Mud rooms are fantastic transitional zones that allow you to leave the dirt outside. Even if you don’t live on a rural property, considering creating a designated space for shoes, school bags, coats and drying off pets.

3. Consider the location of your laundry

Rather than locate your laundry next to the garage or in the basement, find a spot that’s most convenient. This tends to be next to the family bathroom where everyone can toss their dirty clothes directly in there. Alternatively, installing a laundry chute would be a great solution.

4. Design a kitchen hideaway

If you don’t have the luxury of a butler’s pantry, a kitchen hideaway is a place to store your everyday appliances, such as your kettle or toaster. Even if this is a small cupboard it will help keep bench tops looking clean and fresh.

5. Consider darker grout

When tiling your bathroom or kitchen, consider a dark grout such as a grey or black. This helps reduce the appearance of grim building up. Alternatively, you could forego grout entirely in areas that are most labour intensive to clean. Concrete or glass is an option in places such as a shower or backsplash.

6. Max out your storage

Think you have enough storage? You can never have enough, so make sure you take a second look at your plans and see where you can add more. Under the stairs, built in shelving, furniture with added storage like under a bench seat or bed.

7. Paint with easy-to-clean products

While you may have selected a pretty wallpaper, it’s more practical to paint your walls in a washable paint. Reserve your feature wall for spaces that don’t get as much use or in the same area as little people with sticky fingers.

8. Install a central vacuum system

A central vacuum and sweep inlets will save you time and make cleaning a breeze. No more extension cords and dust pans!

9. Choose durable fabrics

Upholster your furniture in durable, hardwearing fabrics especially if you have kids or pets. Leather and vinyl are great options, but there are also plenty of quality fabrics that will survive life’s pressures. If you are going fabric, consider slipcovers and machine-washable materials to make cleaning a cinch.

10. Design a smaller home

If you’re building a new home, consider how much space you really need. If you design a functional home, you may not need as much space as you once thought. A smaller foot print with well-designed spaces means less time to clean!

A pond is always a great addition to any garden, and one that adds a natural feel. You can use a water feature such as this to enhance an otherwise bland space, and a pond will give your garden that rustic and natural look you have always wished for. If you are landscaping, it is best to plan where your pond is going to be placed; make sure that there is some shade involved and that the pond is not always in direct sunlight, and be aware of trees close by that can be a source of debris in the water.

In nature, a pond will be fed by a stream or river, which provided movement that keeps the right amount of air present in the water. Also, ponds with moving water are often kept clean, and nature does this by allowing helpful bacteria to devour the debris that inevitably collects in the pond. Your pond, of course, will not be fed by a natural stream, but that does not mean you cannot keep it clear and healthy so that fish, plants and wildlife can enjoy it. What you need is a pond filter and pond pump. We’re here to tell you a little more about pond filters, what they do, and why you need one.

What Are Pond Filters?

It is important when choosing the right pond filters for your installation that you understand what they are all about. Let us explain: there are various types of pond pumps and filters, so we will help you try and find which one is best for you.

To begin with, let’s consider the pump: this is the device that will send your pond water, in a continuing cycle, to the filter; it’s a relatively simple device, and comes in various forms. Most pumps are of the submersible kind; you put them in the water and connect them to a filter, which then does the job of cleaning the water.

As the water passes through the filter, by way of hoses between it and the pump, it goes through a series of processes. It will be subject to UV light treatment, which kills the inevitable green algae. It will also be sent through a biological filter, which draws out the bad bacteria that builds up in the water, and it will also collect the inevitable debris that is in the water.

Why You Need a Filter

If you want fish, you need a filter; this is because they need clean, healthy water without the damaging bacteria that will build up in non-filtered ponds. Also, you want clear water, so you can see your fish and plants readily.

Pond filters are not expensive, and should be considered – along with the pump – as part of the design of the pond. You can choose from internal or external filters, depending on your size and type of pool, so check out more about pumps and filters on the website, and see how you can have the perfect pond at little cost.

Why Switching to Organic Essentials Oils is Good for the Environment in the World

The volume of annual essential oil sales has been trending upwards for some time now. Because public interest in essential oils appears poised to stay on the upward path for the rest of year and beyond, it’s natural to wonder about just what kind of implications this may have on the environment at large.

The Essential Things to Know About Essential Oil’s Impact

Essential oils can undoubtedly be very beneficial in terms of bodily health but their impact on the environment cannot be overlooked. As useful as they may be when considering their administration as a health supplement, they’re still one of the most heavily resource-intensive products in the entire economy.

In order to produce just a single pound of shelf-ready essential oil product, it can take thousands upon thousands of pounds of raw plant material to be harvested from the environment. Plenty of consumers choose essential oils due to their status as a potentially effective chemical substitute, but at the same time, many essential oils go through at least a marginal period of chemical treatment before they’re placed in front of customers and ready to go.

Working Against Over-Harvesting

The essential oil industry is expected to balloon up to over 11 billion dollars in value by the year 2022, meaning that the current industrial limits established to cut back on overharvesting will be more important to enforce than they’ve ever been before. Even with the limits put in place to prevent harvesters from taking more than they can be permitted without causing any long-lasting damage to the environment, it isn’t unheard of for some of the harvesting companies that essential oil producers source from to go thousands of pounds over the limit from time to time.

With the higher degree of essential oil harvesting that’s sure to come in the near future, a higher degree of over-harvesting should be expected as a very real risk factor to consider. Certain companies will certainly be more conscious of their harvesting conservation than others, though for the most part, it will be the more popular essential oil products that are most likely to be the subject of excessive harvesting in the fiscal years to come.

Sustainability Efforts

In order for the risks of excessive plant cultivation to be worked against effectively, many have invested time into developing more effective plans for working against the necessary evil of essential oil’s environmental impact with more effective sustainability efforts.

More companies have made a concentrated effort to recycle the containers used for their essential oil products than simply throwing them away, though at the same time, the quality of essential oil will have a very real effect on how the increased recycling affects wild grown plant ecosystems as a whole.

High-quality organic essential oils are generally always manufactured in glass containers, though in some instances, lower-grade products can come in non-glass containers with a flammability level that makes them a hazard to recycle under the wrong conditions. Glass can be recycled an infinite number of times without losing purity. If the heightened demand for organic essential oils is correlated with an increase in quality glass containers, the heightened harvesting rates for wild grown plants could potentially be counterbalanced to an extent.

 

A Guide to Staying One Step Ahead of the Thieves

With burglary on the rise, how secure is your home and property? Follow these simple tips to avoid disaster.

A sad fact of life is that crime will never be eradicated. Whenever you have something of value, there will always be those whose business it is to try and steal it, whether it is your car, the property from your home or your online data.

A common factor across all these areas is that as quickly as we come up with new ways of protecting our property, the thieves are only one step behind us in working out how to circumvent these safeguards.

The pattern is most obvious in the world of cybercrime, where we are constantly advised to update our firewalls and change our passwords. It is also seen in vehicle security – the latest trackers can power off the car engine remotely and tell police where the vehicle is located, but these will not bring car crime to an end.

The most personal type of crime, however, has to be domestic burglary. The feeling of violation when someone has entered your property and been through your personal belongings is impossible to describe unless you have experienced it yourself. There are a variety of ways to protect yourself including CCTV installation and other ways, that will serve both to reduce the likelihood of a break in and to improve your chances of bringing the perpetrators to justice if the worst should happen. Let’s take a look.

Maintain your boundaries

Thieves look for soft targets. If your home is protected by high fences and securely locked gates, it becomes a major exercise in ingenuity just to enter the garden, never mind the house itself, and the criminals will walk on by.

An eight foot fence with anti climb spikes might not be practical for everyone, but a simple trellis can act as an excellent deterrent, and even as a burglar alarm. Anyone attempting to climb over will inevitably cause it to break, resulting enough noise and disturbance to wake half the neighbourhood.

Invest in CCTV

There are a whole variety of CCTV systems available today, and any one of them will reduce the chance of a break in, and provide excellent information for the police in the event that you get uninvited visitors.

The mere sight of CCTV cameras is usually enough to convince undesirables to stay well out of the way. The cameras will also go down well with your home insurance company, resulting in a reduced premium, so will soon pay for themselves.

Sight and sound

Thieves like to work silently and under the cover of darkness. Anything you can do to make this awkward for them will make your home more secure. Lighting is an obvious tool, particularly those lights that are activated by movement sensors. Not only are they a good intruder deterrent, they are also a Godsend when fumbling around for your keys after a night out.

The other useful tool is gravel. You might wonder how this helps deter burglars, but if you have ever tried to walk quietly down a gravel path or drive, you will get the idea. A simple, but unobtrusive way of getting an early warning when someone approaches!

 

Undoubtedly, every woman wants to look attractive, especially in a privacy of her bedroom. A lot of women feel uncomfortable when it comes to their bodies, but there is a wide range of lingerie that can easily bring out the best in female body and discreetly cover little imperfections. A bodysuit is one of such “magic making” items. 

A sexy bodysuit is not only a piece of clothing that magically shapes silhouette but also a very sensual gadget that works miracles in a bedroom. A provocative bodysuit can really add some spice to our erotic life. Various models on offer may increase woman’s self-confidence and accentuate beauty of female body. What type of bodysuit should we choose to highlight our assets and feel comfy at the same time? Is provocative style suitable for every woman?

Classic style sexy bodysuit 

Well-suited one-piece lingerie can make a really electrifying impression on a man. Classic style bodysuit discreetly uncovers the most sensual parts of female body, leaving the rest up to male’s imagination. Classical bodysuits are usually made of stretchy, thin fabric. It can be worn under a dress to surprise a partner after return home. Bodysuits don’t have to be uncomfortable, they come in various models and shapes; some will have adaptable straps and soft cups that nicely expose cleavage. Made of smooth and stretchy fabrics of high quality, they ensure good looks and are pleasant on the skin.

Bodysuit with frivolous ribbons 

A bodysuits adorned with ribbons and tiny bows attract attention and are enormously sensual. Such frivolous models may also have padded and/or underwired cups or side-seam boning in a corset to give a perfect shape to your waist. This is truly offbeat garment that plays with one’s imagination. There is also a wide selection of bodysuits with seductive, lacy necklines or with sheer elements added around hips or even with daring criss-crossing strips that invitingly show off bare skin.

Erotic Bodystockings 

A bodystocking is a type of erotic lingerie that stems from hosiery but is made of totally different fabric. Classical thigh-high stockings are made of nylon, while bodystocking envelops the whole body like a glove and is made of soft, pleasant in touch mesh.

At first, it is wise to choose bodystocking that gives some coverage and when we start feeling comfy and sexy, we can move on to more provocative models that give off more than just a tempting glimpse of bare skin. Women of all sizes and ages tend to love seductive bodystockings as they make them feel attractive and self-confident. This piece of erotic lingerie was created for women, but undoubtedly it is also very appealing to men. Women wearing bodystockings are more attractive to men because basically men adore self-confident women, not to mention the fact that this garment accentuates these parts of female body that men love to gaze at.

Bodystockings are usually made of soft, knitted fabric. All models have one thing in common: they feature an open crotch undies. That’s why they are thought to be daring and provocative. Bodystockings are made of very durable fabrics. It’s advisable to look for bodystocking with a 3SKnit icon on it; this ensures that fabric will not snag or tear and will be extremely stretchy without losing its shape. All patterns and designs will stay in place, while the bodystocking will serve its purpose for a long, long time.

Seductive as it is, bodystocking is quite often a subject of controversy and dispute. Is wearing it appropriate? Isn’t it too daring? It is usually a courageous woman who feels free enough to buy bodystockings, but more and more frequently it is also a choice of women who want to bring adventure to their erotic life and to spice it up. Shy and modest women should start with something subtler to see if such sexy lingerie is proper for them.

Bodystockings come in a variety of affordable prices, manufacturers continuously work on developing new, more interesting models to satisfy needs of a growing number of women. There is one, very important rule when it comes to buying bodystocking: it has to be made of durable, high quality fabric that will survive more than just one steamy night. Undoubtedly, bodystockings are very sensual and erotic, but subtle patterns and high quality fabrics accentuate the beauty of female silhouette.

We should not be afraid of wearing erotic lingerie, as it is not vulgar or inappropriate. It is designed for women who want to feel comfortable with their bodies. Our curves deserve to be emphasized so that our partner can see us in a totally different light. Bodystocking is not only perfect for an evening full of passion. It will work equally well during a day, worn under casual outfit. With this sexy item each woman will feel more seductive and sexually attractive. Isn’t this single argument enough to purchase it? Choose something to fulfill your needs here:  https://obsessive.com/euro_en/products/bodystockings-and-stockings/bodystockings

 

With the prescription drug epidemic and the labeling of medicine that needs to be disposed in special ways, there is a general public awareness of how to get rid of medicine waste. However, that is not the only medical waste that accumulates in your home. Whether due to a chronic condition, a medical emergency, or just everyday use, there are medical supplies that also need to be reused, recycled, or thrown away. This how-to tutorial reviews some of the most commonly used medical supplies and how they should be dealt with after they are no longer needed.

Step 1. Order a Conservative Amount of Supplies

The easiest way to figure out what to do with medical supplies is simply to order the amount that you need. This is easier said than done, but estimate about how much of the supply needed and order only that amount. If a supply has an expiration date such as an epinephrine pen or insulin shot, then order until the estimated expiration date. If the supply is more stable like an ear irrigator or walker, then order only the number needed.

Step 2. Determine the Category of Medical Supply

There are different types of medical supplies. Some of these categories are supply associated with medicine, ambulatory support, diagnostic tools, first aid supplies, and sanitation supplies. Each of those will be disposed of differently.

Step 3a. Disposing of Supplies that Contain Medicine

Medicine can be administered via shot or intravenously. The needles and I.V. bags should be treated as hazardous medical waste and secured in a sharps container or red biohazard bag. Follow the directions on the product or call a local medical waste company in order to learn how these should be discarded. In general, they should never be thrown away with the regular trash.

Step 3b. Disposing of Ambulatory Support

Either due to a medical emergency or chronic condition, many people require some form of ambulatory support. This includes walkers, wheelchairs, crutches, scooters, or canes. There are various materials that make these supports including metal, plastic, and rubber. Most of these materials can be reused even if certain parts of the support have worn out. For example, the rubber tip of a cane or crutches might not be able to be reused for that purpose, but it can be recycled into something else. Check with a local hospital to see about donating used walkers, scooters, or crutches.

Step 3c. Disposing of Diagnostic Tools

Diagnostic tools include supplies such as thermometers, blood pressure cuffs, or pulse oximeters. These are all used in order to provide more information about a bodily function. For the most part, these are almost always able to be reused. They can be donated or dropped off at local medical facilities.

Step 3d. Disposing of Medical Support Supplies

Medical support includes items such as hearing aids, braces, or retainers. Hearing aids batteries that die should either be thrown away or taken to a hazardous waste drop-off facility if they contain mercury. The actual hearing aid can be donated and reused. Items such as braces or retainers can either be thrown away or recycled depending on local recycling rules.

Step 3e. Disposing of Sanitary Supplies

For the most part, all used sanitary supplies will be contaminated. These include items such as adult diapers, pads, and gauze. These used supplies should be double bagged and thrown in the trash.

There are other types of medical supply waste not included in this article. For the most part, this is the type of equipment seen in doctor’s offices or hospitals. However, it is possible that you will have this equipment in your house. In that case, refer to your physician in order to see how to get rid of those supplies. Remember, most medical supplies can be reduced, reused, or recycled. In the event that they are contaminated, follow protocol for hazardous medical waste.

Smaller business often struggle to compete with rivals, especially in competitive markets such as retail and the food industry, so it can a great benefit to find a way of making things more efficient. Your customers will appreciate anything that makes life easier for them – and your team will, too – so what can you do to improve how things are done? Take a look at the day to day running of the business, and that is where you will find areas in need of improvement. It’s the little things that take up time, such as how and when you take payments.

If you run a business where your customers pay face to face, you need to have a good look at your payment and point of sale systems. POS is one area of the business that may be easy to improve, and it helps if you can find experts to give you the advice you need. The people to talk to are Merchant Account Solutions, as they are acknowledged experts on POS systems for small businesses, with many satisfied clients in a wide range of areas of commerce. You might want to check them out for some excellent deals on the latest systems and solutions, including free credit card readers.

Tablet-Based Solutions

Modern technology has helped advance the way we do business in many areas, and not least in that of payments and POS. If you run a business that takes payments by table – a restaurant or café, perhaps – why not check out the very latest POS systems designed for that type of business? These often come in the form of tablet-based systems, so that you use a tablet as the payment solution, and you can take it to the table rather than having your customers stand in a queue and wait to pay.

You can find information on the very latest such solutions at MerchantAccountSolutions.com. Their friendly team will happily help you with all the information you need on the very latest systems, and can show you how to get the best out of your new system. They can also supply free credit card readers – perfect for small businesses – so you get value for money there, too, and you will find the rates on transactions to be more than favourable. Have a look now, and you will soon see the benefits.

Credit Card Readers

If you don’t already take credit or debit card payments, you really need to; consumers will go elsewhere if they find better convenience, so talk to Merchant Account Solutions about this, too. If you are already taking card payments, it may still be worth having a look, as they will most likely have a new and more up to date solution for you, and it will be one that can improve your efficiency for very little cost.

Talk to one of the friendly team now for advice and help on how to improve your POS, and you will soon reap the rewards of greater efficiency.