House Guru

Sign up here for a free Floor Planner program suitable to plan spaces as small as tiny apartments and as big as luxury houses. The program advertises itself as

The easiest way to create and share interactive floor plans

Plans can be drawn in two or three dimensions. They're working on more dimensions ;-)

It's free, so what could go wrong?

There are at least three free alternative programs that help you design rooms and interiors:

1.  SeeMyDesign 
2. Ikea's SpaceMaker [this is the dorm room version, but follow the links for more versions]
3. MyDeco 

With all this free help available start working on your space now!

According to this study:

Oregano, allspice and garlic essential oils (EOs) can be effective, natural barriers against E. coli, Salmonella and Listeria, according to a study in the Journal of Food Science....

In addition to adding flavor to our lives, herbs and spices fight germs. This study opens a window into a new, and potentially pleasant world. In the future not only will we enjoy herbs and spices for their taste benefits, we will also be encouraged to eat them to improve our health.

An earlier study by the same group found similar beneficial properties in cinnamon, allspice and clove. Mmmmmm. Everything possible should be done to encourage these people to continue their work. As the list of antimicrobial spices grows many stomachs get happier.

Not that herbs and spices are the only edible products which have been found to have anti-microbial properties. They have also given the green light to apples and tomatoes as germ fighter. Go for it!

Honey may reduce healing times in patients suffering mild to moderate burn wounds.

That is the conclusion of this article, which continues a long string of studies which demonstrate that humble ordinary honey is a kind of minor miracle-worker.

In this study honey was used on a number of different kinds of wounds, not just burn wounds. Compared to the usual treatments, honey speeded up healing in burn wounds. It did not, however, work as well on other kinds of wounds. In those cases, the usual kinds of treatments worked as well or better than honey.

The mechanisms which cause this healing improvement is not yet known.

Indeed, honey has been used as a treatment for burns since ancient times. The news of this study only confirms what people have known for millenia. In general, the study also confirmed the safety of the use of honey in this usage. Different kinds of honey produce slightly different results. Some researchers are trying to zero in on which kinds of honey are most effective to treat burn wounds.

A very preliminary study found that indoor plants may give out toxic chemicals into room air. Many people assume indoor plants are valuable because they help clean room air. This study found that idea is true to some extent, but the benefits of indoor plants may not be total.

The researchers used four species of common house plants. They sealed samples of each species into containers that measure incoming and outgoing air. The plants otherwise went through normal light and watering cycles found in most houses which keep indoor plants.

The results of the preliminary study were that the plants were found to remove some volatile organic compounds (VOC) from the air. But the plants gave out some VOCs from their containers, suggesting that there are possible downsides to some household plants.

But careful analysis found that some of the VOCs from the experiment's containers were not caused by the plants themselves. Some of the VOCs were caused by organisms in the soil in which the plants were planted. Other VOCs were probably caused by the pots in which the plants were planted. In this case, the pots were plastic, which in this case was associated with VOCs.

As reported above, this is a preliminary study. There is much research yet to be done before useful information can be found about the toxicity of household plants. For example, no warnings were issued by the researchers about removing household plants in general or the specific species used in this study. So far, at least, it doesn't seem as if the VOCs emitted or given out by household plants is a serious danger.

But there are a lot of species of plants which have not been studied so far. And a lot of other variables to study before serious conclusions can be reached about the safety of house plants. Indoor plants almost certainly will be found to be beneficial. But there may be a few surprises yet to be discovered about house plants.