Seeking out good nursing care for your aging parent can be a financial challenge. Professional senior care in Naples, FL, regardless of the type of care you may want to hire, can cost tens of thousands of dollars PER YEAR. That’s right, you could be nearing six figures when all is said and done annually, and that’s for living in a nursing home, should you decide that is something your parent may require for their health and well-being.

If your senior is facing some form of chronic health condition, whether it’s diabetes, cancer, arthritis, or Alzheimer’s, you may be left spending even more money to care for your elderly adult. Perhaps you are the senior in question and the costs are left to you to cover. You may find that your independence is being threatened because you need comprehensive care but you aren’t sure how you will pay the high bills associated with healthy aging.

So, here are some of the most affordable care options that you or someone you love might consider when they are aging on a budget:

Friends and Relatives

These are options for caregivers who are a good fit to offer assistance to a senior who needs someone to help out around the house, go grocery shopping, provide transportation to doctor’s offices, and prepare meals. These are individuals who are close friends or relatives and happy to be of assistance when necessary. You typically don’t need to pay these caregivers, but they aren’t the best options for supplying round-the-clock medical care.

Professional Caregivers

These are individuals you pay to come to the house and do all of the above-mentioned services, as well as other assistance such as bathing, getting dressed, going to the bathroom, and other more sensitive tasks including medical services and physical therapy.

These caregivers are trained to provide a wide range of tasks and services in the home, these folks will come to you or your aging parent’s house and their services can cost anywhere from $18 to $20 an hour for their time. So, you may want to pick and choose when and how often a professional caregiver comes to the home to provide the services needed.

Elderly Day Care

This care option is much like that which you might rely on for taking care of children. There are day care centers for elderly adults in that a senior spends time at a day care facility where caregivers are available to watch after that senior when a primary caregiver is unavailable to watch them in the comfort of their own home.

These facilities are ideal for helping main caregivers who need to go to their job or simply must step away from their caregiver duties for a temporary period of time. You can find a good adult day care center by conducting some basic research for facilities in your area. The costs of attending adult day care might be more expensive than having a friend or relative helping out, but less expensive than a nursing home or assisted living facility.

One of the easiest and most enjoyable do-it-yourself tasks that homeowners can and should accomplish at least once is painting a room. But while this job doesn’t have a whole lot of challenges to overcome in doing the work properly, there are a few things you should know so the finished product looks like you hired exterior painters richmond va.

There are some hard and fast rules as to the order in which you should take each step of the process, if you fail to follow these guidelines you won’t just be making the job harder on yourself, but your work may not look its best when you’re done. That could result in your having to do the job all over again or hiring an expert to come in and fix what you attempted.

So, here is the progression of steps as to how you should paint a room in your home like a pro:

Preparation of The Surfaces

Before you open one can of paint or dip your brush into it, you must prep the surfaces that you plan to paint. That means cleaning everything thoroughly, remove all grease, dirt, dust, grime, anything that has accumulated on the wall over time. Allowing these things to remain on the wall prevents the paint from bonding to the surface properly and it will start to peel.

You should also make any repairs to the walls or ceiling that are necessary before you start. You’re not going to paint a damaged wall, that doesn’t make much sense. Use a spackling putty and putty knife to fill in any dents or holes. After the putty has dried, sand to a smooth finish.

Priming the Walls

The interior walls of your home are typically painted with a latex paint, which means you should be able to repaint them without any primer. However, this does not apply in situations where you are painting over a dark color or something bright and bold. You will need to prime first. If there are dents or dings in the drywall that you have not been able to patch up, you may also need to use a primer. Walls that have been painted with an oil-based paint instead of latex will also require a primer.

Caulking the Cracks

You will also need to check your walls for any gaps or cracks that exist and, if you find any, you’re going to need to caulk them. But first remove the old and loose stuff before applying the new caulk with your caulking gun.

Go with an acrylic caulk and be sure you choose one that is resistant to mold and mildew if you are applying it in a kitchen or bathroom where moisture is a constant. Do not use silicone caulk anywhere you plan to paint.

Prepping Your Room

Now that your surfaces are prepped and repaired, it’s time to get started on the task at hand. You’re almost ready to paint, but first you need to prep the room you’re about to paint. That means removing all furniture, furnishings, wall decorations, and removing electrical covers. Basically, make the room bare.

Apply painter’s tape at the baseboards, windows, and door trim and cover the floor with a tarp or plastic sheet, this is especially important if you have carpet on the floor. You do not want to spill paint on your carpet fibers. That can get to be a real mess and a pain in the neck to clean up.

Start with The Ceiling

You want to begin at the highest point first because paint can and will drip. You would much rather have it drip and drop on your walls before they’ve been painted, so you don’t ruin the work you’ve done already. So, get your roller ready (this is going to be a lot easier to finish with a roller instead of a brush), and cover it with your paint.

Paint the ceiling with the roller, just be careful with ceilings that have a textured surface. In those instances, you may need to get the brush out so you can get color into any nooks and crannies.

Paint the Walls Next

Pretty self-explanatory, get your roller or brush and make long vertical strokes to apply your paint evenly. Make sure you begin at one corner of the room and work your way over, two feet at a time. One very important thing to keep in mind here is to go slow. Go at a leisurely pace, otherwise if you go too fast you could end up splattering the paint.

Cleanup

When you’ve finished all of the walls and trim, all there is left to do is pick up your drop cloths, refurnish the room, and clean your rollers and brushes. Voila, you’re done!

 

If you continue to drink excessive amounts of soda and juice, you may find yourself seeking out an emergency dentist sooner rather than later. It’s no secret that soft drinks such as soda and juice are chock full of sugar, which can have an adverse effect on otherwise normal healthy teeth.

We all like to enjoy soda and other sugary drinks from time to time, but for those of you who consume it on a regular basis, you could potentially damage your smile.

The Biggest Threat to Your Teeth

Sugar is usually the big threat that is most often mentioned when it comes to keeping your teeth healthy. But sugar is only one component of a larger and more damaging threat. Consuming soda and juice allow for the sugar to interact with the bacteria that already exists inside your mouth and the result is the formation of acid.

Acid is the true threat that can have a serious impact on the health and well-being of your teeth. When this acid is present it can be devastating to your teeth. Every time you take a drink of soda or juice you are triggering that combination and the reaction can set off an attack on your teeth that can last for nearly a half hour.

Think about that, each gulp results in your teeth being exposed to acid for almost one-half hour. That means two swigs of soda can put your teeth under attack for nearly an hour. Just two! Imagine what an entire 16 ounce can of Coca-Cola can do to your teeth.

Now consider how many times you drink soda in a day. Two? Three? What about in a week? What about other sugary drinks? Perhaps you don’t have soda every day but you consume other sugary drinks like juices or energy drinks. In one week, you are exposing your teeth to an incredible level of acidic reactions that can harm your teeth in significant ways.

Tooth Damage

Acid that comes from sugar and bacteria combining with one another can be highly effective at eroding the enamel of your teeth. Juices and energy drinks aren’t as powerful as soda in wearing away the outer protective coating of your teeth, but the impact all three can have on the condition of your teeth is staggering.

If your enamel is damaged, your tooth is a whole lot more vulnerable to the other major way that soda and juice can ruin your teeth.

Cavities

That’s right, once the enamel is damaged and the tooth vulnerable to attack, the tooth can start to be riddled with cavities as the dentin and composite fillings start to become eroded. This damage can be tough to repair as well as painful and expensive to boot.

If you aren’t practicing good dental hygiene by brushing and flossing regularly, you are nearly doubling the risk of developing cavities in your teeth. So, if you must drink sugary soft drinks, try to limit your consumption and be diligent about cleaning your teeth three times a day.

Your air conditioner isn’t used to heat the home. For that you need to go with some form of heating, and these days, more homeowners are choosing radiant heating alternatives to make their homes warmer and more comfortable during those chilly winter months.

So, what is radiant heating you ask? It’s a form of heating that brings the heat directly to one of the many surfaces throughout the rooms in your home. These can include your floor, your walls, or even the ceiling. The heat is supplied by way of radiant transfer which allows for the heat to rise from the surface through which it is emanating. This process is accomplished through infrared radiation.

Considering this is a very different form of heating your home, should you install radiant heating to keep you and your family comfortable? Let’s examine the many benefits that come with it:

Greater Efficiency

Everyone is looking for the best way to save on their utility costs. Radiant heating can be the solution to that problem as this form of heating is often far more efficient than baseboard alternatives or forced-air systems.

When you decide to install a radiant heating system, you’re either going with an electrical power system or a water-based option. Both versions are highly effective for heating your home through the floor. Through the former, electricity is used to heat the wiring under the floor while the latter relies on hot water run through pipes. In either case, your heating system will be a lot more efficient than the other choices on the market.

Fewer Allergic Reactions

Since warmth is generated through pipes, wires, or panels in the floor, walls, or ceiling of the room, there is a drastically reduced risk of sending allergens and contaminants into the air. That’s because the heat is radiant and doesn’t contain any particles to get blown through your home like you might be facing with forced-air systems with ductwork.

Easy to Operate and Maintain

Perhaps one of the most popular reasons why homeowners just like you install radiant heating in their homes is because these systems are extremely easy to operate and maintain. In fact, you will be expected to do next to nothing in order to keep the system functioning smoothly at all times.

Most radiant heating systems also come with long-term guarantees spanning decades, and you can hook up your radiant system to any programmable thermostat just as you would a more conventional system.

Even better, you won’t be calling in hvac repair crawfordsville to have the system inspected every year. This type of heating doesn’t need be tuned up and radiant systems don’t break down very often. In the event something does to go wrong, you have that guarantee to back you up.

As for that heat you’re feeling, you will never need to worry about getting burned by a hot surface or a sharp edge like you might with a radiator or baseboard heater. All you feel is warmth, no accompanying discomfort or injury.

When your AC system is freezing up, it’s usually time to call your AC repair company. But that can get costly and inconvenient, especially if you are encountering malfunctioning problems in the dead of summer. No one wants or needs that kind of hassle, so it only benefits you to educate yourself in the ways you can identify and diagnose issues before they turn into costly problems to solve.

Among the most common contributors to a failing air conditioner is the potential of it freezing over. The challenge is knowing what’s causing the unit to freeze up because there are more than a couple of issues that could cause this to occur. Any time you see frost accumulating on any of the components of your unit, you could be facing a serious problem, one that might very well have you paying high repair or replacement bills.

What to Do If You See Frost

An air conditioner is designed to produce cold air, so what’s the big deal about a little frost growing along the exterior of your compressor? Frost is an indicator that something is amiss with your air conditioner unit and you need to check it out as soon as possible.

If you continue to run your air conditioner while it freezes up, you could be putting the entire system at risk for major damage. So, if you find that your air conditioner is freezing up, you need to shut it down and stop running the unit immediately. Now let’s try to figure out why it’s happening.

Interrupted Air Flow

Any air conditioner only runs properly when it has uninterrupted air flow moving through the system. If that air is blocked for any reason, the water inside can start to become frozen to the evaporator coil, forcing the temperature of the coil to drop below the freezing point. The trick here is to find what is blocking your system’s air flow.

In most cases, the source of the problem is a dirty air filter. This is why it’s so important to change out your air filter every two to three months, depending on how often you use the system. Failing to swap out your filter can cause thousands of dollars of repairs. What makes this so tough to swallow is that most air filters cost about $20 for a pack of three.

Running the System in Low Temps

Sometimes you end up operating your air conditioner during the day, when it’s hot, but forget to shut it off at night, when the outdoor temperatures drop. That can cause frost to develop on the unit, especially if you are running it when the thermometer reads below 60 degrees outside.

A programmable thermostat can help you avoid frost from developing due to low temperatures. That way you can set the device to turn off your AC at a certain time and you won’t need to remember to do it manually.

Low On Refrigerant

Lastly, check to see if your system is low on refrigerant. Without that vital component, your AC can’t absorb heat and frost will start to develop due to the unit freezing over. But keep in mind, refrigerant is not a consumable item so if you are low, there could be a leak.

When it comes to talking about healthy habits for seniors, the weather must be part of the conversation. Seniors face a lot of challenges when the temperatures drop and the air turns freezing cold. This is the time of year when cold and flu season pose significant health risks and the shorter days can increase the emotional and psychological issues that seniors must contend with.

Contaminated land is caused by various factors, and without being effectively cleaned up, it can cause knock-on damage to surrounding ecosystems. Let’s look at some key things to know on this topic.

You’ve said ‘yes’ and called all your relatives, and now a big question pops up ‒ have you set the date? Here are the three most important things to consider.