When is progress a setback?  What are acceptable risks?  What price are we paying for our obsession with laziness and speed?

A commercial today might as well read like this:

“No time on your hands?  Tired of your clogged sink?  NO PROBLEM.  Pour this highly toxic chemical in your drain and let it sit for 10 minutes.  This not only eats away grungy hair, but it releases harmful toxins that may likely send you into shock or give you unexplainable cancer one day.  But, HEY, this is TODAY!  And today, you don’t have time for such petty concerns.  Give us 10 years of the end of your life and we’ll save you 15 minutes every 4 months – GUARANTEED or your money back.”

Several years ago, we broke free and took a stand. No more chemical cleaners in the house.  Well, not 100% gone, but probably 95.4% gone.

We still keep chlorine bleach but we also alternate with hydrogen peroxide bleach.  We keep window cleaner but we water it down in a separate bottle.  And we don’t spray for bugs so much to my wife’s chagrin, we occasionally have ants.

What’s the big deal I say?  Ants aren’t so bad.  In fact, we homeschool and I think having ants fulfills a biology credit.  Those little suckers are amazing to watch!

Plus, it’s pretty simple.  No food crumbs left behind - no ants.  No matter how clean we are, with 5 kids, we’re going to get a few ants from time to time.  What I don’t want is those suckers tracking in pesticide for our 2 year hold to be handling.  And trust me, this girl will and does handle them.  It is not uncommon at all for her to walk into the room holding a prize by the legs proclaiming -“pider!”

By the way, fear is a learned behavior, but that’s for another day.

So, the lesson is this: we have more access to both medical knowledge and care than any other time in history.  Yet cancer rates continue to rise.  Why?

YEAR   NEW CASES   DEATHS*

2002   1,284,900      555,500
2004   1,368,030      563,700
2006   1,399,790      564,830
2008   1,437,180      565,650

*from the American Cancer Society

At what point do we realize that cancer just might be a poor-man’s or rushed-man’s disease?  At what point do we realize that feeding and caring for massive population growth requires preservatives and toxins that just might - oh my what a coincidence - curb population growth?

From a big picture, macro level (i.e. Government), it makes sense to have acceptable levels of death by toxins, cancers et al.  After all, it is a strain on our global economic systems to have population booms, unemployment and poverty.  What would it be like if 2.5 million people didn’t die each year in the US alone?

But nobody lives on the macro level.  Nobody want’s cancer nor do they want it for their loved ones.  So here’s an example of how we ‘survive’ by not playing the macro, mainstream advertising game and by living without chemicals in the house.

About 2 weeks ago, I grabbed a bucket and a few old towels and hit all 3 bathroom sinks.  It’s this simple, removed the drain trap (ample info on Google), stuffed a rag in the pipe coming out of the wall to keep fumes out, then I took the parts to a working sink and cleaned out the trap.  The main bathroom sink was the worst so I started there - I always like to do the hardest job first.  Oh by the way, It’s also a good idea to do this 2 hours before or after a meal.

I use an old bottle washer to clean out both the trap and the pipe down through the sink – just remove the stopper and swab away.  Put it all back together, run water and test for leaks then the real test – pull the stopper, fill the sink with water the pull.  Ahhhh, record time.  That’s how a drain should work.

No expensive chemicals.  No harmful toxins released in our house.  It wasn’t the most apetizing thing I’ve seen, but who cares?  For 3-4 months, our drains will work perfectly.

See?  Soap and water still works.

Save yourself and your kids – get rid of those chemicals.  It’s a great way to teach kids how sinks work and hey, in these (or any) economic times, it’s a great way to grow your net worth.