BEST WAY TO CLEAN A BATHROOM

Once you have finished your harvesting, it is time to start working with them to get the most of its medicinal and magical properties.

- The first step is to clean the herbs thoroughly of dust, animal hair, insects and all kind of natural debris; don’t leave that work for tomorrow! If you don’t have time to do that the day you have harvested, take all herbs outside the bags and leave them on a table or floor where they won’t be a bother, away from pets and kids, over a mat of newspaper sheets or any other absorbent material.

- Once the herbs are clean, decide which herbs will be used fresh and which ones will be set to dry; fresh herbs are better to make smudge sticks, kitchen oils and vinegars for salad dressings, to mince and make frozen cubes of cooking herbs, and so on. All the work done with fresh herbs must be done as soon as possible, so do that work first.

- On the other side, dried herbs are the best for teas, tinctures, infused oils, incenses, etc. You can chop the herbs before or after they have dried, that is up to you; I prefer to do it first because the stems are softer to cut. Use trays lined with absorbent paper, or simply leave them on the floor over a mat of paper on an undisturbed, fresh and dark place. Do not dry them in the sun as the essential oils are highly volatile and the plants will lose power if sun dried. Once a day, turn the batch around for an even drying. Don’t discard the stems, as many plants contain more essential oils in them than in leaves or flowers.

- Sometimes, specially with wildharvested herbs, you will need to kill any bacteria/bugs living in them by oven drying. Keep your oven at the lowest temperature and leave the oven door slightly open for ventilation. After half an hour at around 50 Celsius degrees, bacteria or bugs will not survive and, though the plant’s power will be a little lower, it will be perfectly safe to ingest.

- Keep the roots aside and dry them separately, as the roots usually have the highest amount of water in the plant and need more time to dry than leaves or stems. As with herbs, you can slice/chop the root before drying or not as you prefer; again, I chop it first because most roots are almost impossible to cut when dry.

- Depending on your weather, herbs may take from 1 to 4 weeks to dry. Once they are crunchy and soft to the touch, they are ready to be placed in a glass or ceramic jar and labelled. Remember to add the date of harvesting, as you don’t want to use herbs that have been storaged for more than a year – you are not a butterfly collector, so USE what you have harvested! We used recycled and sterilized glass food jars, as amber/cobalt glass jars are really expensive; just keep them in a dark place, away from strong smells and, if possible, away from the kitchen.

(In the picture - Canarian Sage, Salvia Canariensis)

Shortly after we moved to New Mexico iRobot started making robots that could mop floors. This seemed like a great idea to us since we always seem to have dust blowing in through the windows or just being brought into the house with daily human and pet traffic. After five years of maintaining this mopping device I've learned a few tricks to keep it running with minimal expenses.

- You don't need to buy iRobot cleaning fluid. White vinegar works fine.

- A drop or two of essential oils (orange, mint, tea tree, geranium, etc) makes for a great clean room smell.

- Warm water will make for a smoother running robot

- The batteries will be a issue. I'm using a capacitive charger which can charge 1 to 5 batteries at a time. I run the batteries to zero between usage and take them all the way up to full with a low 150mA constant current charge overnight. While I have repacked the batteries with different chemistries (li-ion, ni-cd and nimh) my preference is towards buying pre-assembled 3rd party Ni-CD which seem to be the most robust.

- Ebay is a great source for used robots with "dead" batteries that sell for $10 - $30.