Latest news with #DougMahoney
New York Times
27-05-2025
- Business
- New York Times
I Got My Clothes Coated With Insect Shield Tick Killer
Wirecutter's resident bug expert, Doug Mahoney, has written that he uses permethrin spray on his family's socks and shoes. In that article, he cites one study's finding that people who wore treated footwear were 74 times less likely to get a bite from a tick nymph than those who did not. 'I take the hint from that study and concentrate on the feet because it's impractical to treat the entire summer wardrobes of the six people in my immediate family,' Doug writes, adding that they spray the rest of their clothes and skin with picaridin as needed. That's a perfectly good approach. Personally, though, I get some peace of mind from knowing that my family has a few outfits that are as tick-proofed as any clothes can be — including socks, pants, T-shirts, and hoodies. These are the clothes we'll wear when we're in prime tick territory, pulling up weeds around the unkempt edges of the yard, say, or going hiking with the dog. I'll spend less time second-guessing whether we have enough protection. Insect Shield stitches or stamps an info label onto each item you send in for treatment. Liam McCabe/NYT Wirecutter Thomas Mather, PhD, a professor of public health entomology at the University of Rhode Island and a co-author of the study referenced above, says that fully grown ticks are more likely to hitch a ride above shoe level. 'The adult ones tend to climb up vegetation a little bit' in search of a large host, he says. 'Then you would want to have your socks and pants treated.' (Mather's TickEncounter program at URI has received funding from Insect Shield.) Ticks can also crawl around. I found one on my daughter's scalp this March, and that seemed like a good reason to treat a few shirts, just in case the shoes or pants didn't kill the ticks first. The same study that found the benefits of treated footwear also found that a treated T-shirt can reduce the likelihood of a tick nymph bite by about half. It's a nice bonus that our pesticidal shirts might stop some mosquito bites, too. Cost-wise, the Insect Shield mail-in treatment can be a solid deal compared to manually spraying a set of clothes. If you follow the directions on the Sawyer spray bottle, you use about $3 worth of permethrin spray to treat an outfit at home; you'll need to reapply the spray at least a handful of times throughout tick season, probably to the tune of $15 to $25 per outfit per year. I managed to fit roughly four outfits (four pants, three T-shirts, and three long-sleeves, with enough room leftover for a couple of pairs of socks) into the Insect Shield Your Clothes Easy Pack envelope, which cost $102 with an on-site discount code. (Without the code, it's $120.) So that's about $25 per outfit, in a price range similar to that of spraying clothes yourself across a full tick season, without any of the manual labor. I'm not convinced that the treatment will last as long as Insect Shield claims, but even if I get only one good year of protection (and I think I'll get more than that), it's a solid deal. Mather says that he sends clothes in annually for re-treatment, and Griffin of Insect Shield says that, as far as he knows, reapplication works well. Whereas I used Insect Shield's flat-rate, all-you-can-fit option, the company will also treat individual items for $9 each, or $13.50 for coveralls. That rate doesn't include shipping, as the Easy Pack does, but if you're sending a bunch of bulky items like adult-size pants or long-sleeved shirts made of heavy fabric, you might get more for your money with the per-piece rate. If you're treating a load of socks or kids' clothes, then the Easy Pack is probably the better value. Griffin says that every year Insect Shield treats upward of 50,000 items at the company's facility in North Carolina through its Insect Shield Your Clothes service, and it runs the gamut. 'We see shirts, pants, shorts, T-shirts, hats,' and of course lots of socks, he said. But the company doesn't treat underwear or shoes. It also doesn't treat clothes that can be only dry-cleaned or line-dried, or otherwise not tumble-dried. It can't effectively treat waterproof or water-resistant gear, either. 'It's just really hard to get the permethrin to bond well to those garments,' he said.
New York Times
28-01-2025
- General
- New York Times
I Never Thought This Would Happen. But I Can't Stop Talking About My Toilet.
A ground-floor bathroom is a unicorn in my neighborhood, where such a thing is rare among the early-1900s housing stock. After a long, arduous home search, we finally found one. However, the powder room had its quirks: In the 1990s, it had been converted from part of an existing porch, and it even had radiant-heat flooring—the luxury! Well, that powder room—which was really a poorly insulated box on stilts—broke a year after we moved in (frozen pipe). Then it became a glorified storage space for six years, through a pandemic that shot construction costs sky-high. Last summer, we finally bit the bullet: We rebuilt the porch into a well-insulated mudroom masterpiece, and we tackled the defunct bathroom, too. At the top of my wish list for the new bathroom was a toilet we never had to think about. The existing toilets in the house clogged regularly, spurring my husband to beg our children to eat more vegetables while he snaked the pipes. After careful consideration, we chose the Toto Drake, a beauty of a throne that my colleague Doug Mahoney has since named the top pick in his guide to the best toilet. We love the Drake so much that we've installed two more, to replace the easy-to-clog, low-flow monstrosities in the upstairs bathrooms. The irony here is that now, rather than never thinking about my toilets, I think (and talk) about them all the time. I tell people how much I love the Toto Drake at parties. I invite friends with their own renovation projects to come try it for themselves. Who cares about the carefully selected paint color, the flooring, or the vanity? Have you seen this toilet? When we were building our ground-floor bathroom, we wanted to ensure it would be as accessible as possible for our aging parents when they visited. After a bit of research, we found that the Toto Drake has models that meet the Americans With Disabilities Act's recommendations. That means this toilet, at 17.625 inches off the floor, is higher than average, so it's more comfortable for taller folks and for those who need a bit of an assist to stand up from a seated position. Since my kids are out of the toddler stage, I didn't worry about it being too high for them, and we always had a step stool to help them in the past anyway. The aptly named Tornado flush does an excellent job of keeping the bowl clean. Annemarie Conte/NYTWirecutter With a 1.28-gallon flush, the Drake meets water-usage criteria for all 50 states, but it doesn't feel like the low-flow toilets of the past. The design employs a two-hole swirly flush method that Toto named the Tornado. And it produces a flush that's strong and clean every time. Doug explained to me that this cleanliness comes from the toilet's aggressive flush. The water enters the bowl horizontally, in two large jets, and it actually swirls around the bowl eight times farther than a regular flushing toilet. We never have to worry about clogs or skid marks in the bowl, which is something my dear colleague Jon Chase experienced with his low-flow toilet. In the two bathrooms that had enough space, we chose an elongated bowl instead of a round one, since people with penises generally prefer the extra room. (This is one of those situations where I accept something as fact without too much inquiry. I care about my guests' comfort, but I don't really need to explore the details.) One important note is that the Drake comes in both 10-inch and 12-inch rough-ins, which is the distance between the center of the waste pipe and the wall. Although a 12-inch rough-in is now standard, homes built before the middle of the 20th century or those with smaller bathrooms may have a 10-inch rough-in. Regardless of your home's age, you should always double-check the dimensions to make sure the fixture will fit. We usually take photos of the products in use, but we made an exception in this case. Annemarie Conte/NYT Wirecutter This mid-priced beauty costs around $500. It's important to note that the price doesn't always include the cost of the toilet seat, and we had to buy the seat separately. (Some toilets come without a seat because many owners choose to add a washlet, which would render an included seat unnecessary.) The total was a few hundred dollars more than I ever expected to spend on a toilet, but it's still thousands less than the price of luxury commodes that sing, gently warm one's butt, or open and close automatically. The Toto Drake is readily available at big-box stores—which is ideal when you're renovating with a time crunch. This convenience was my favorite part of the purchase process: We didn't have to worry about special ordering or having to wait for our Toto seats, since we could pick them up from Lowe's (or have them shipped directly to our home for free in less than a week). Buying a toilet this way doesn't always work out—and getting one through a plumbing supplier gives you access to a fuller range of options. But it worked out great for us. The plumbers Doug interviewed for the toilet guide raved about the Drake for its quality, durability, and value. One told him that the Drake is the 'front-runner on a high-end, good professional toilet.' Another said, 'They may cost a little more, but you get what you pay for.' Doug added that plumbing message boards are clogged with people saying good things about the Toto Drake. 'It's rare to see that kind of universal enthusiasm for a product,' he told me. We've lived with these toilets for about six months. And we've hosted family gatherings where I smiled every time I heard a flush from the new powder room. Although the Drake hasn't yet seen the worst of what might come—norovirus, hangovers, or colonoscopy prep—I know it'll stand up proudly to the job. This article was edited by Katie Okamoto and Megan Beauchamp. A new toilet may save water and spare you some cleaning work. Here's how to know when it's time to make the switch, and our thoughts on what to get. Bidets baby your butt for a better bathroom experience. I found a spray-on solution to unsightly toilet-bowl markings in SpotLESS Materials Toilet Coating. As a bonus, it helps save water.
