Perspectives

Dear Heloise: I don’t like garbage smelling in my kitchen trash can either, but putting trash or garbage in the freezer until trash day, as someone suggested, sounds gross to me. What I do is put a trash bag on a hook (you can buy stick-on hooks) in my trash can outside. Each day, I put whatever is smelly in it and just close it up when it’s full or when trash day comes.

Dear Heloise: I wanted to write in concerning the husband and wife in Florida who wanted to keep neighborhood children out of their pool. When we moved into our first home and found out my wife was pregnant, my mother was insistent that we fill the pool and sent us stories of children drowning. Instead, we purchased a permanent electric pool cover. When it was closed, the family could stand on it without it sinking. We kept it closed unless we were using the pool, and it required a code to open and close it.

Dear Heloise: I always thought that I just needed to clean the filter in my small air conditioner unit monthly with a vacuum until I read the user manual for it. After removing the front panel, I realized that more extensive cleaning needed to be done; there was quite a bit of dust and grime in there. A 6-minute video helped me give it a safe, deep cleaning using household materials.