Getting Rid of Fleas Naturally

We all love our furry friends here at Azuma. Part of having a pet is basic pet care, and sometimes that includes dealing with pests like fleas. Fortunately there's a way to rid your home of pests, with your vacuum and your washer and dryer as the key weapons in your arsenal! Here's how to do it.

Clean Your Pet
At the first sight of fleas on your pet, give him a good bath. You don't necessarily have to use a flea shampoo, and for cats you definitely shouldn't use pesticides. Normal dish soap is enough to kill the fleas. Peppermint or citrus scented soaps are especially irritating to bugs if you choose to use them. Start by wetting the neck down and your pet's backside. These are the first places fleas move to when they sense water. Massage in the soap deeply in these areas before lathering up the rest of your pet. Use your fingers or a flea comb to make sure the water penetrates all the way to the skin. Fleas cling to the skin and not to the hair, and can survive in air pockets in your pet's fur. Soap up the rest of your pet and let sit for 2 to 5 minutes. Rinse thoroughly and towel dry.

Wash All Fabric
Especially blankets, pillows or beds your pet lays in. Wash on the highest heat setting you can and dry on the highest heat that's safe for the fabric. If it's a pillow or bed that can't be thrown in the wash, put it in the dryer for at least 30 minutes to kill any eggs or fleas. You can also put some peppermint oil on an old sock or handkerchief and throw it in the dryer. The oil will evaporate and irritate any adult bugs.

Vacuum
Vacuuming is your greatest weapon next to washing! Vacuum all upholstery and floors, taking care to get in corners and dark places. Flea eggs are about the size of a grain of sand and difficult to notice unless on a dark surface. Once eggs hatch, larva emerge, feed on any dead skin or flea poop on the ground and then spin a cocoon before becoming an adult. Usually only 10% of your flea population will be on your pet. The rest are laying in wait in your couches and carpet. So vacuum thoroughly and vacuum often. This will get 95% of the fleas on the ground. Throw away the contents of the vacuum and take the garbage bag outside after vacuuming.

Diatomaceous Earth (DE)
DE is finely ground silicates found naturally in the earth. Farmers add it to rice and other grain to keep it dry and fresh and keep bugs out. You can use it to keep the bugs out of your home, too! DE is too finely ground for it to be harmful to us, but for a bug it scratches up their shell and dries them out until they die. Use a bulb duster or just sprinkle it around your home by hand. You can put it in your carpets, but it's best used in those hard to reach places like underneath couch cushions, in cracks and along baseboards where bugs like to hide. You can even rub it into your pet's fur to kill off any bugs that are  still on him. DE is totally safe and even edible. Just be sure to wash it off your pet after no more than 8 to 12 hours (it dries out your skin!) and purchase ONLY the food grade kind of DE. If you plan on leaving it in cracks and carpets, it's best to allow 24 to 48 hours for it to kill off the bugs.

Maintain
The most important step: you must do all these things listed and do them often! The flea life cycle spans about 10 to 18 days. So once you find fleas in your home, you must be diligent about cleanliness for at least two weeks. Vacuum daily or every other day, wash bedding 3 to 5 times per week and regularly clean your pet, ideally picking fleas off with a flea comb every day. Remain patient and diligent and eventually all the fleas will be gone.

Until next time, keep it clean!

Post-Labor Day Lifehacking

So you just went on a 3-day bender, whether that means entertaining relatives and friends non-stop, or if you just cracked open a beer on Friday night and planted yourself in one spot until Tuesday morning started peeking through the clouds. Either way, it's tough coming back to work and keeping it all together after a long weekend. Here are a few quick ways to tackle the week and look great doing it.

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Breakfast for the Week
Use the last $2 you found in the couch to buy a dozen eggs. Put them all in a pot, cover with water, and set on the stove to boil. Once the water boils turn off the pot and let the water cool while you ponder your life choices. Put the eggs in a bowl and stick it in the fridge for easy access. Voila!
BONUS: Tap the top and bottom of the egg on a table and pick off a small section of shell. Seal your mouth around one end and blow as hard as you can. The shell will pop right off, no peeling necessary.

Keep your hair looking great

Slept too late to shower? The hair closest to your face is what gets the greasiest. While you're washing your face, wash your bangs or just the section of your hair immediately surrounding your face with the same soap and water. Comb out and blow dry for a 5-minute fix.

BONUS: Lucky enough to have long hair? Grab the unused chopsticks from your chinese takeout to make an updo. Pull your hair into a ponytail, and hold the stick on either side of the tail, pointy ends sticking up. Wrap the ponytail around the sticks until it's like a bun. Then flip the sticks over and press the pointy ends down through the middle of your ponytail to hold in place.

Stay alert

Having trouble staying awake? Now is a great time to try out a standing desk. There are lots of quick fixes to change the height of your desk. Put your computer on a bookshelf, put an end table on top of your regular desk or raise the height of your computer with the old stack of Windows for Dummies manuals gathering dust in the corner. Constantly moving and shifting your weight while you stand will keep you alert.

BONUS: Walk over to your coworker's desk instead of sending an email when you have a question. If you have a meeting, propose a walking meeting where you walk outside or even down the hall while you discuss the topic of the day.

Hopefully all these tips will keep you on your A-Game while you power through the rest of the week. Until next time, keep it clean!

Reconnecting to the Present Moment

I wasn't really on board with Smartphones when they first came out several years ago. It seemed like way more computing power than I would ever need, some kind of gimmick to get me to spend more money on devices and data plans. When I received an iPhone as a Christmas gift, I reluctantly accepted and began switching over. Crumpled lists, pens, cameras, notebooks, receipts and folders slowly disappeared from my life. Everything was perfectly organized, categorized and saved to databases. I hacked my phone and adjusted apps and coding to be able to use a more affordable plan on a different network. I fiddled with the satellite tracking system to find friends, places to go and let people know where I was. I keep my grocery list, my daily reminders, and my workout plans in one place. I get news alerts when important world events are happening. I play Sudoku when I'm waiting in line or for a friend. It checks me in at the airport and gets me to a place I recognize when I'm lost.

Last night, I made the unfortunate mistake of submerging my phone in water. It slid right out of my pocket and plunked straight into the toilet. When I saw huge bubbles of air releasing from it as it filled with water, I knew it was doomed.

Weirdly enough, I don't talk on the phone much. I'm not even much for texting. But my phone is my staple. More of a staple than my wallet or keys. I feel naked without it in my pocket. It's my alarm that wakes me in the morning and my news source as I wind down to go to bed at night. It hasn't even been 24 hours and I keep finding myself reaching for it.

It's socially acceptable now, and even a social necessity to have a smartphone and be connected to it at all times. In any given public place, you'll see at least half of the people playing with their phones. But noticing how panicked I feel without it, how disconnected, how disorganized, just in the span of a few hours, I realize that my reliance on it is bordering on ludicrous. There was a time in my life when I owned an alarm clock, sat quietly and people-watched when waiting, where I ate my food instead of taking pictures of it. Some data is obviously very useful. I would be reading a newspaper, have a calculator on my desk and a notebook to write down to-do lists. It's nice to have all of the basic stuff in one place.

What's most eye-opening, though, is realizing how much time I spend thinking about other things. And even with the smartphone, I don't think I'm necessarily getting more done. Most of the data I had can be recovered. It's on a database or backed up on my computer. But my list of bands to check out is numbering several hundred long. As many hours as I spent reading the news, an equal amount of time was wasted looking at funny pictures of cats. And I'm certainly guilty of using my phone to escape awkward conversations or chase some piece of information down the rabbit hole of the internet, like "What was the name of that one actor in that one movie I sort of liked 2 years ago?", as though it's of dire importance.

Many people complain of phones preventing people from connecting face to face. I am actually in the camp that believes it helps people connect more and in new creative ways. The problem I find myself facing is never being alone with myself. That type of cerebral silence is difficult to train yourself into. With constant instant gratification, I can't help but wonder what skills my brain has gone soft in because the task was usurped by my phone. I have a feeling that being rushed and stressed is something I've constructed for myself with technology instead of something I actually have to abide by.

So today, I present a challenge. Resist the urge to use your phone. Instead of playing a game, talk to someone or play tic tac toe on a napkin with a friend. Instead of looking up what's-his-name, test your memory. Instead of tracking yourself on GPS, try to memorize the streets in your neighborhood and find your way. If you eat lunch by yourself, bring an actual novel to read or sit quietly with your thoughts. Instead of sending an email, get up and walk over to your coworker's desk to ask a question.

Enjoy some time with yourself, you may teach yourself something. And until next time, keep it clean!

The Incredible Healing Power of the Mushroom

You may already know that mushrooms come in all sorts of edible shapes and flavors. But did you know that they're an incredibly powerful weapon in nature's arsenal to heal you and itself? Here are a few amazing things that mushrooms can do.

Cancer Prevention
A recent study has shown that as little as one mushroom per day can cut the chances of getting breast cancer by two-thirds. When combined with regular consumption of green tea, it cuts your chances by 90%! Those are unbelievably high numbers.

Creating livable, farmable land
Polluted and irradiated soil would be considered unusable until the radiation and pollution dissipate enough to make it usable again. This can take decades, and even then, once farmed again the pollution can rise up and contaminate your crops later, as evidenced by our recent problem with arsenic-contaminated rice. Mushrooms can remove pollutants and radiation in a surprisingly short period of time. In eight weeks, this mycologist turned a pile of land saturated with oil and diesel into an oasis teeming with life, all by just leaving mushrooms to do their business!

Recovery after radiation exposure
Mushrooms are regularly recommended as holistic medicine in assisting treatment for radiation exposure and cancer treatment. Mushrooms contain enzymes that break down chemicals that would otherwise be harmful to the body, helping to slow down and even arrest tumor growth.

Not used to adding mushrooms to your diet? You can slice them up raw over a salad, saute with vegetables or even eat them as your main course. Here's a quick and easy recipe to try. These are great served as a meal over noodles, over brussels sprouts or even as a dressing for a heartier veggie burger.

Glazed Mushrooms
2 portabella mushrooms
1 cup shiitake mushrooms
1/2 large sweet onion
3 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
coconut oil
1/4 cup vegetarian "beef" broth

Heat the oil in a cast iron skillet. Slice the onion into thin half-rings so they're long strands. Toss in the onions and coat with the melted oil, then allow them to sit for 5 minutes to caramelize. Stir them around and let sit for another 2-3 minutes. Cut the mushrooms into thin slices and throw them in the pan with the onions. Add balsamic vinegar and broth. Loosely cover the pan for 5 more minutes to allow mushrooms to get soft and most of the liquid to evaporate. Mushrooms should have a nice thick, dark, salty-sweet glaze.

Until next time, keep it clean!