Does your gold jewelry need to be cleaned? Many people realize the need to occasionally wash their jewelry but are reluctant to do so.

They fear that washing it the wrong way at home could lead to permanent damage. But they don’t want to spend money to get it professionally cleaned every few months.

Luckily, there are several steps you can take to thoroughly wash your precious gold jewelry and leave it sparkling clean. 

Better yet, this DIY remedy can be done from practically anywhere! Here is how to clean gold jewelry, as well as several vital pieces of information on the subject.

What to Avoid Using

As previously mentioned, fear is a huge reason people don’t clean their gold jewelry as often as they should. 

They’re afraid that one false move with the wrong substance can permanently damage their prized jewelry.

However, there are only a few substances that pose a legitimate threat to your gold rings. As long as you refrain from using hand soaps and chlorine to clean the gold, you should be okay. 

Many soaps should be avoided because of the extensive list of substances found within them. Dawn dish soap is effective because it has basic ingredients. So much so, that they use it to clean wild animals as well.

Chlorine is a bit more obvious than a chemical to avoid. Chlorine can discolor your jewelry, giving it a faded color that you can’t get back.

That’s why many people recommend taking your ring off whenever you’re in a swimming pool or cleaning around the house with a bleach solution.

Invest in a Jewelry Cleaner Kit

Just to be clear, this isn’t the first step in your DIY gold jewelry cleaning routine. It’s more of an alternative jewelry cleaning option for those that don’t want to hand wash each piece of gold jewelry that they own.

This is a great option to use for those of you that have several pieces of jewelry that you’d like to clean at one time. 

You can also use it to wash several other items around the house. Things like eyeglasses, mouth guards, coins, toothbrushes, and waterproof watches can also be taken for a cycle.

It’s a cost-efficient option, running at only $54.99, which allows you to repeatedly clean your items around the house with zero hassle.

If you’re going to be cleaning a lot of jewelry, then be sure to consider this as a personal assistant to keep your rings, necklaces, and bracelets shining beautifully!

How to Clean Gold Jewelry Yourself

For those of you out there with only a piece or two of jewelry, you might want to do the gold jewelry cleaning yourself.

It’s also helpful to know in case you’re out of town and need to perform an emergency cleaning of your ring or necklace.

Here are the concrete steps towards how to clean gold jewelry and give it a timeless shine.

1. Mix Dish Soap and Warm Water

First things first, get a bowl that’s comparable in size to the amount of jewelry that you’ll be putting in it. You might as well clean all of your jewelry while you’re at it, right?

Start by filling the bowl up with warm (not too hot) water about halfway up the height of the bowl.

Next, be sure to pour dish soap into it and mix everything together. If you feel like your jewelry needs an extra-deep clean, then feel free to throw in club soda as well.

It’s very important that you do not use hot water. The high temperature can cause diamonds to crack.

2. Soak the Gold Jewelry

Now that you’ve stirred up the water and dish soap together, it’s time to place your jewelry inside. 

If you’re adding more than one piece, be sure that a) all the jewelry is gold and b) all the pieces are spread apart from each other, not piled on top of one another.

Once you’ve placed it inside the water, let it soak for 25 to 30 minutes for it to thoroughly clean the different crevices of your jewelry.

3. Scrub the Jewelry

After the 30 minutes is up, take each piece out one by one and gently scrub at it with a soft-bristled toothbrush. 

Scrub it along any crevices or nooks that you see, such as the spacing between pairs of diamonds or different indents in your rings. 

Be careful not to scrub for too long. Scrubbing each piece of jewelry should take no longer than one minute each.

4. Rinse and Dry

Directly after you scrub each piece, you’re going to rinse them under the sink. But, before you do that, be sure to cover the drain so you don’t accidentally drop it. Place the jewelry pieces in a strainer and rinse them under running water. 

Once again, make sure that the water isn’t too hot or too cold. The significant change in temperature can cause your diamonds to crack.

After you’ve rinsed the pieces of jewelry under the water for a minute or so, take a dry towel to them, dapping at them to dry them off. 

Let them air dry for 4 or 5 more minutes, then your jewelry is ready to be put back on and shown off to the world!

Clean Your Gold Jewelry with These Steps

As you can see, the process of how to clean gold jewelry isn’t difficult or even time-consuming.

Just be careful and diligent while following each step and you’ll have your gold jewelry looking as good as new!

Be sure to browse our website for more articles on jewelry care, as well as many other helpful topics!

In one study, 41% of patients reported experiencing night sweats sometime during the previous month. Excessive sweating while sleeping is more common than you think. While common, waking up sweating could indicate a more serious health concern.

Unsure when to be concerned about night sweats? Keep reading to discover the causes of night sweats and when to see a doctor.

Determine if your night sweats are a symptom of an underlying condition with this helpful guide. 

Common and Serious Causes

How many blankets you sleep with and how warm your bedroom is could both cause night sweats. However, if you wake up sweating and notice your pajamas and sheets are wet, you might want to speak to a doctor.

Here are a few common causes of night sweats to consider.

Medications

Many medications list night sweats as one of their side effects. These medications often include antidepressants, steroids, pain relief medications, and medications for diabetes.

Hormones

Many different hormone disorders can cause sweating and night, including:

• Low testosterone
• Carcinoid syndrome
• Hyperthyroidism
• Menopause

In fact, over 80% of women experience hot flashes during menopause. You can learn more about menopausal night sweats to determine if menopause is the cause.

If hormonal issues are causing your night sweats, you might also experience headaches, weight changes, or energy fluctuations. 

Stress and Anxiety

Stress and anxiety are both normal. While both are mental health concerns, they also cause a number of physical symptoms, including sweating.

If stress and anxiety are causing your night sweats, you’ll likely experience:

• Mood swings
• Difficulty concentrating
• Unexplained aches and pains
• Weakness
• Feelings of dread
• Sleep issues
• Digestive issues

It can help to determine what’s causing your stress and anxiety to ease your night sweats.

Infections

Serious infections are sometimes accompanied by night sweats as well. You’ll experience a lack of appetite, weakness, weight loss, and fever. If these symptoms last for more than a few days, call your doctor right away.

Sleep Apnea

If you stop breathing while sleeping, you likely have sleep apnea. This condition is often accompanied by night sweats, exhaustion, and headaches. You might have difficulty focusing, too.

If you think you have sleep apnea, speak with a doctor right away. Sleep apnea can cause severe complications if left untreated.

Cancer

Night sweats are sometimes a symptom of cancer. You might also experience chills, fever, or unintentional weight loss. Body weakness and pain in the chest, bones, and stomach are common, too. 

When to See a Doctor

Still unsure when to be concerned about night sweats? You should see a doctor right away if you believe you have an infection, sleep apnea, or cancer.

You should also see a doctor if you experience:

• Chronic or bloody coughing
• Diarrhea or stomach pain
• A very high fever
• Localized pain

Your doctor can help the underlying condition that’s causing your night sweats.

Don’t Sweat It Out: When to Be Concerned About Night Sweats

Try not to stress. Instead, know when to be concerned about night sweats to get the help you need. Remember, night sweats can indicate a serious concern.

Don’t delay speaking with a doctor.

Visit the Health and Fitness section for more helpful tips. 

With the coronavirus pandemic still in effect, a trip to the grocery store still isn’t what it used to be. Some stores are preventing families from bringing more than 2 people total to shop. Other stores are placing rules on what shoes can be worn inside and what specific directions you can or can’t shop in.

Aside from all of these restrictions to overcome, there’s still the concern of catching the virus while out and bringing it home to friends and family. To prevent grocery-shopping hardship, many people are turning towards ordering groceries online. 

Now that ordering groceries through apps online is popular, it’s also a bit more difficult to navigate. If you’re new to these apps, then you’ll want to continue reading below. Here are a few tips on how to order your groceries online with ease! 

1. Order in Advance 

When ordering your groceries, it’s best to order them in advance. When do you need your groceries to arrive? What time does the app say they’ll arrive when ordering with that specific delivery window?

Whatever these times say, expect some delays. With the virus still affecting the world, many people are using these online grocery ordering apps. This means that the apps are being crowed with more users than normal. 

All of these users can slow down the process, but it won’t be an issue for you, as long as you plan for these delays accordingly. 

2. Plan to Be Home

The great thing about ordering your groceries this way is that you don’t have to take the time out of your day to go to the grocery store and shop for your items yourself. It gives you more time to focus on other things and stay healthy as well.

Although you now have the freedom to get other things done while someone else is doing your shopping for you, it’s still a good idea to be home when your groceries arrive. You don’t want your freezer or refrigerator items to be left outside and depending on where you live, you might not want any of your other items to be left out either.

Issues with the weather, wildlife, and thieves can all be avoided if you’re home when the groceries are delivered. 

3. Know Your Delivery Slots

Knowing when to grab a delivery slot is essential during these hard times. As mentioned before, these apps are being flooded with more users than normal. Because of this, it’s more difficult to find delivery slots. 

To ensure you get a delivery slot during the time you need, you might need to check and refresh the page on a consistent basis. Some people have noted that the best time to grab a slot is around midnight. 

Another good tip is to set an alarm on your phone to remind you to check for a slot. If you keep up with it, you’ll find what you need.

4. Create an Organized List

Creating an organized list for your shopper is a good way to ensure you get everything you need as quickly as possible. Imagine going to the grocery store with a list created by someone else and items from different departments are randomly placed on the list in no order at all. 

You’d have to go down one aisle, grab what’s on the list, and then go back down the same aisle again for a different item placed lower on the list. Not having your items organized by category can make the shopping trip take much longer than needed.

Remember, grocery stores right now have restrictions on which directions you can shop in and such. Keeping all similar items together on your list will help your shopper and will get your items to you quicker. 

5. Consider Grocery Pickup

Having your shopping list delivered to you is convenient in many ways. Another option to consider is picking up your groceries outside the store. When choosing this option, you’ll still have only one person doing your shopping for you and handling your items. 

When they’re done, they’ll bring your groceries out to your car for you. You’ll be given a time slot of when your groceries should be available. That’s the time to make sure you’re in the parking lot and ready to get your items.

6. Explore Several Options

Deciding on the right service might take some time as there are plenty of options to choose from. For example, you can choose to have your groceries delivered through a Kroger online order or from the store itself. 

Each option has its own guidelines, fees, restrictions, and benefits. The best thing to do is research all available options and choose the one that’ll work best for your specific needs. 

7. Don’t Forget to Tip

Once you decide on the right service for you and place your first order, don’t forget to tip. Tips aren’t included in your delivery fee and shoppers look forward to receiving them. Remember, your shoppers are taking the risk to leave their own homes and possibly expose themselves to the virus for your order.

Be kind and thank them with a generous tip. 

Be Prepared When Ordering Groceries Online!

If you’re planning to use an app for ordering groceries online, be sure to keep these tips in your back pocket! With these helpful tips in mind, you’ll be ordering groceries through online apps like a pro!

For more topics similar to this one, be sure to visit us regularly.

It’s three in the afternoon and you haven’t gotten anything done at work. You lost track of time and got way off task. It sounds like you could benefit from creating some kind of to-do list.

There’s only one problem with to-do lists. It’s too easy to pencil something new on to it and overwhelm yourself. That’s why you should use a sticky note instead of a piece of notebook paper. 

You can’t fit as many tasks on a sticky note so you can stay on task without exhausting yourself. Want to know more about how to use sticky notes to keep yourself productive? Check out these quick hacks.

1. Bookmark Pages 

You bookmarked every page of your textbook that you need to study for your big test tomorrow. When you pick up the book to get started, every scrap of paper falls out of it. You knew you should have dog-eared the pages. 

The only reason you didn’t is that you’re renting the textbook. That’s why personalized sticky notes make a great bookmark alternative. They contain just enough adhesive to stay in place without damaging the pages. 

2. Create To-Do Lists 

What started as a four-task long list quickly turned into a ten in a matter of hours. This is the problem with using a computer program or a large piece of paper to write down your to-do list. There’s too much temptation to add things to it. 

Over time, this will lead to a loss of motivation because you feel like no matter how much you chip away at your list, you’re not getting anywhere. Try as you may, there are only so many tasks that you can add to a sticky note before you fill it up. 

Starting with the most important tasks and descending to the less crucial ones, create a daily to-do list. What won’t fit on the sticky note can be put on tomorrow’s note. 

Remember the idea isn’t to write small enough to jam pack the note with stuff. Keep the workload manageable. 

3. Jot Things Down That You Want to Remember 

You’re getting dressed when you’re struck with random inspiration out of nowhere. Finally, you know how you can fix up that pesky plot hole in the novel you’re writing. 

You make a crucial mistake. You don’t write down the idea before you go to work and by the time you get home, you’ve forgotten it all. Keep a stack of sticky notes on your desk for times like these. 

If you have a big idea but have to be somewhere soon, write it down on a Post-it and stick it to something on your desk. Now you have something you can refer back to later.  

4. Annotate Text

Writing down comments in the margins of a textbook is a good way for you to study and take in information. If you’re renting the book, however, you might be a little hesitant to write in it. 

You can use sticky notes to make your annotates instead. The adhesive back allows you to place the Post-it wherever you want in the book and it will stay there. 

Pro-tip, keep it to one point a sticky note vs writing down an entire paragraph. It’ll be easier for you to go back and study it later. 

5. Color Code Tasks 

Color coding is too good of an organization tactic for you to buy your sticky notes in only one color. You can use them to make highlights in a textbook without using actual ink. 

You can break your schedule up into categories such as subject and priority using colors as well. For example, green sticky notes could symbolize things you need to get done ASAP, and blue ones could represent tasks you can wait on.   

6. Brainstorm New Ideas 

There’s a huge problem at work right now and you’re trying to think of a solution to it. Believe it or not, you can find it by using sticky notes. 

When you have an idea, write it down and post it on the wall where you can see it. If you want to get really organized, you can color-code your ideas. When you have your choices out in front of you like this, it makes it easier for you to make decisions.  

7. Prepare a Timeline 

If you’re storyboarding a script or writing a book you can jot down events on a series of sticky notes and put them in a timeline of sorts. 

The reason why you want to use sticky notes for this is that you can make alterations to the timeline by simply moving the notes around. 

8. Studying  

Sticky notes are a great method to use for studying. If you’re taking a language class, you can use them to label things around your house in the language that you’re studying. 

Until you get the hang of the language, add the translation of the words on the sticky note as well. Over time you’ll no longer have to have the translations there as a safety net.  

How to Use Sticky Notes for a More Productive Day

Are you bad about losing track of time and going off task? You can get yourself back on track and it will only cost you a few bucks. Sticky notes can be used for studying, creating project timelines, brainstorming, creating to-do lists, and annotating text. 

You can take things a step further by separating your thoughts into categories and colors. Use this guide to learn how to use sticky notes and start taking advantage of this versatile tool today. 

Using sticky notes isn’t the only way you can stay organized at work. Check out our blog daily for more business tips. 

You’re thinking about donating bone marrow? That’s great!

About 18,000 people need a bone marrow transplant every single year, so donating bone marrow can be very critical in saving someone’s life. 

But you may have questions about being a bone marrow donor.  

For those looking to be a bone marrow transplant donor, we’ve compiled a list of the seven most frequently asked questions about bone marrow donation risks.

1. What Are the Side Effects?

During a bone marrow transplant, bone marrow is taken from the donor and transferred into a recipient where new stem cells are cultivated. Bone marrow is a soft, fatty tissue found inside the bones. It is most commonly extracted from the:

• Brestbone

• Hip

• Skull

• Ribs

• Spine

These bones all contain stem cells that produce white blood cells, red blood cells, and platelets. White blood cells work hard to fight against infections whereas red blood cells carry oxygen throughout the body and help eliminate waste from the body’s tissues and organs. Platelets allow the blood to clot.

The bone marrow is collected from the donor, while under general anesthetic. During the bone marrow donation, you are put in a sleep-like state using a combination of inhaled gases and intravenous drugs. Most side effects come from the anesthetic. 

After the procedure, you will likely experience side effects such as:

• Fatigue

• Back pain

• Hip bain

• Muscle pain

• Headache

• Bruising at the incision site

Expect side effects to last anywhere from a few days to several weeks. Additional side effects from the anesthesia can include mild nausea, vomiting, and a sore throat. Most donors are recommended to take pain relievers for the discomfort. 

Click here to learn more about bone marrow donation options. 

2. How Long Is the Recovery Time?

Bone marrow donation is a surgical process. It is typically an outpatient procedure and you’ll return home the same day as the operation. Most people only stay in the recovery room for about an hour.

Many people who donate are able to return to their usual routine just a few days after the donation. Your bone marrow will replace itself four to six weeks after the procedure.   

3. What Is the Pain Level of the Procedure?

Because the donation process is done under a regional or general anesthetic, you won’t feel any pain during the procedure. After donating bone marrow, people experience different levels of pain. 

The bone marrow is extracted by injecting a needle into the back of your pelvic bone with two separate perforations. This procedure will often leave the donor sore. 

Some describe the pain as an ache on their hips or backside, while others say it feels like a strained muscle in their back. Sometimes donors report difficulty sleeping. Aches may last up to several weeks. 

4. Can I Expect Medical Complications Related to the Donation?

No medical procedure is risk-free. Always be upfront with your health care provider about pre-existing medical conditions and have an open dialogue about donating bone marrow to make sure you’re a good candidate. 

About 2.4% of donors experience serious complications due to damaged bones or anesthesia.

If you donate through organizations like Be The Match, you are covered by medical and disability insurance for medical complications directly related to the bone marrow donation. Both the donor and patient are also monitored by a safety committee. 

5. What Is the Time Commitment?

The average time commitment for the bone marrow donation process is 20-30 hours over a four-to-six week period. This does not include travel time or overnight stays. The actual bone marrow donation will take one to two hours.

Almost 40% of donors will experience travel time throughout the bone marrow donation process. 

It is important to attend information sessions that provide resources to help you understand your responsibilities as a donor. Determining donor suitability with a simple blood test or cheek swab at the beginning of the process is critical. 

Online registration to be a bone marrow donor takes less than ten minutes! 

6. Is It Harmful for Me to Lose Bone Marrow?

About 5% of your total bone marrow cells are collected during the procedure. It is not harmful to lose bone marrow in this small quantity. Your body will naturally replace the lost bone marrow over the next several weeks.

Donating bone marrow does not weaken your immune system or body. The average individual will donate approximately one quart of bone marrow, a fraction of the total bone marrow your body contains.

During the donation process, the bone marrow is filtered to remove particles of bone or fat. In addition to the bone marrow, red blood cells are also taken and later given back to the donor via an IV in the recovery room. 

7. How Is My Personal Information Handled?

There are millions of donors on the registry. Privacy and confidentiality is a high priority for bone marrow donation organizations like Be The Match or the National Marrow Donor Program. Personal information is never shared with government agencies or companies.

Genetic type information obtained from your blood test or cheek swab and personal identifying information are stored separately to ensure your privacy. 

Your genetic type information helps match donors to recipients. The closer the match is, the higher likelihood the bone marrow transplant will be successful. 

Bone Marrow Donation Risks

Considering to be a bone marrow donor can be a stressful process. Curb your worries by being aware of the bone marrow donation risks. Always consult your health care professional before making the decision to become a donor. 

Remember, if you are a good candidate, you could be the answer to saving someone’s life!

Want to see more posts like this one? Check out the rest of our blog to learn more!