So I was reading an article today about the toxic dangers lurking in our homes, and how everything from the plastic we store our food in, to the off-gassing if that new couch. It had me looking around every corner of my once safe feeling home for the dangerous offenders.

Two things that caught my eye and sent me down the google rabbit hole of research was how your carpet is harbouring massive amounts of irritants. The other was the hazards of sewer gas leaking into the home.  I’ll leave the carpet issues for now (might just be time to rip it all out and replace with something a little easier to keep clean) and focus on the sewer gas issue. Why, you might be wondering sewer gas? It’s not like everybody’s talking about it – but we have a ground floor bathroom that has recently started to smell like an overflowing latrine – I know, gross. I think it might have something to do with it being the summer months because we didn’t have any issue when it was cooler.

So how does all of this fit in with voting your values? Glad you asked. I have a terrible propensity for procrastination, and this little stench problem has been going on for a month – that’s unacceptable and doesn’t align with my values of maintaining a clean and harmonious home for my family. My short term solution was to just keep the bathroom fan on and the door closed and just hope for the problem to go away – not cool.

Spotting (or rather smelling) a sewer gas problem is pretty easy – but what to do about it is another thing entirely. My first stop was the aforementioned Google – where a quick search reveals everything from replacing your entire sewer system to a simple baking soda rinse. We tried the baking soda method and sadly did not have any success. So we figured we would call around to some local plumbers and after a few misses found a local plumbing company that seemed to know what to do and were able to come over and have a look. To our relief, it was a cheap and easy fix. And frankly made me feel kind of silly for waiting so long to deal with what was an embarrassing problem. If you’re local and need a plumber I recommend the kind folks at Langley Plumbing Co. –www.LangleyPlumbingCompany.com

So that leads me to the Vote of the Day: Today I voted to act like an adult, taking care of issues that are disturbing my peace of mind.

Now to deal with those carpets…..