Sun Lamp for Seasonal Health

For years since I moved to the Pacific Northwest, I have tried various methods of light therapy in the cold, dark winter months. And I’m pleased to share with you a setup that actually works at a very attractive price.

What I’ve Tried

My earliest attempt was a CFL full spectrum bulb. I bought one while living in the dormitories at college around 2009, and used it in my desk lamp.

cfl full spectrum bulb test vs other methods

Read to the end to discover the the 100-year old lost technology that ranks 5 out of 5 suns! 

I’d hoped it would wake me up in on sluggish mornings during the winter months where it was so difficult to get out of bed and to class. The idea is that unlike standard indoor bulbs, the spectrum of light emitted more closely resembles natural sunlight.

Continue reading

Chicken Egg Washing Machine Review – “The Little Egg Scrubber”

At peak efficiency, our hens lay 95 eggs daily. Eggs must be washed for sale, so to save time we clean them in batches of 400 at a time every few days. It still takes over an hour to wash all those eggs (9.85 seconds per egg), so we’ve been hunting for an inexpensive egg washing machine for years.

We built two versions of the bubbler egg washer, but they often broke eggs and did not clean the eggs to sellable condition. And since it has to be used outside, the egg bubbler is not useful in winter.

Most of the tabletop egg washers we researched cost over $1000, or are cheap but do not offer significant time savings. Some are cheap and fast, but do not clean the eggs well.

Then a reader posted a link to his new product,The Little Egg Scrubber.  We asked if he would like us to test the unit, in exchange for writing this review. He agreed.

Continue reading

[Review] 3 High Quality Emergency Survival Kits

I bought an emergency kit last year for my car. It gave me “peace of mind” and all that warm fuzzy marketing crap – but I ran into a problem when I actually had to use some of the stuff from the kit during a camping trip.

Specifically, my kit had one of those hand crank flashlights – and the lever part was so crappy that the handle broke off after -literally- two minutes of use.

Good thing I only had a midnight toilet emergency and not a real emergency.

Lesson learned, I’m all about quality over quantity in my emergency survival kits from now on. In fact I have a trick for identifying a low quality emergency kit:

emergency kit with tons of water

When half your kit by weight is cheap as dirt packets of water, you’re not looking at good value for money.

Continue reading

The “Easy Mosquito Trap” that Doesn’t Work – Plus one that does

Want to trap tons of mosquitoes? Click here to jump directly to some mosquito traps that actually work!

I’m sure you remember when this 2 liter pop bottle mosquito trap went viral on every channel of the internet. Finally, a solution to those pesky little vampires that we all deal with every summer!

ineffective-mosquito-trap

According to the tutorial, all you need for a mosquito genocide is a 2 liter bottle, cut in half with one half inverted, some brown sugar and some yeast. This contraption is supposed to bring mosquitoes in from miles around to happily dive into the sugar water and die.

There’s just one problem – it doesn’t work.

Continue reading

Mouse Trap

bucket mouse trap with rampEver heard the phrase “build a better mouse trap?” Well that’s phrase is now obsolete because there is no better mouse trap than this!

The bucket mouse trap catches many mice in a single trap and does not need to be reset between mice. It’s also so simple to make that you probably already have all the parts needed lying around your garage.

Never purchase commercial mouse traps or poison again!

Continue reading