My hubby just got back from six months in Florida and he is having a very hard time with the dry AZ air. Since it's winter, we also have the heat on and that makes the air dryer still.

I remember in my childhood in NY we used humidifyers in the winter, or when I was sick. Does anyone use these these days? What kinds do you use? Or are there inexpensive tricks to come up with some home solutions that add air humidity?

Do houseplants help?
Open containers of water?
A desk fountain?
Aquarium?
Look for used humidifiers at good will?


One thing we are doing tonight is boiling some water in an electric tea kettle for dan, in the bedroom, so there will be some nice hot steam added to the room for a while.

Do you use humidifiers and when? What kinds?

I have three humidifyers in my home. One in our family room, one in the main part of the house and one in our bedroom.

You can get a humidifyer at Walgreens or probably any drug store that are pretty cheap. That is the kind we have in our bedroom. What I don't like about those is that they are on and that is it. My other two have a off on that is triggered by the % humidity.

Something else that is pretty cheap is a vaporizor. I also have a vaporizer in the bedroom for when my sinus problems flare up.

What is a vaporizer?

And what part of the world do you live in - is it dry there normally?

I have not used one of these since coming out west and neither has my family. No one i see in the west uses them, even though it is desert-dry. So i have forgotten they even exist.

I just want my hubby to be more comfortable. I love it out here but it is too dry for him (among other things).

I use a humidifier. It also has an ioniser & it helps with my allergies.
I bought it when we had our last kittens.
It's a plug-in electrical thing.

But I also use plastic containers, which can be filled with water and hooked onto radiators, or placed near other heaters.
Some are specially made, but any container can work.
The water evaporates into the air because of the heat.

So you can buy expensive devices, or just use old containers.

I am guessing you do not have kids. A vaporized is either a cool vaporizer, or a warm vaporizer. I personally prefer the warm vaporizer. It is a device that warms water and adds warm water vapor in the form of steam to the air.

I live in Oklahoma. It is not normally dry here, but in the winter because it gets cold here, once we turn on the heat the air in the house gets really dry.

Jilly - how do you heat your house? When we had a floor furnace we kept a pan of water on the grate of the floor furnace. Also when I had a stand alone heater in the bathroom, I used to keep a pot of water on top of that. Both of these will add moisture to the air.

We pump about four gallons of water into the air everyday with our humidifiers. It is so beneficial for sinus problems, dry skin, dry hair and static electricity. Good luck.

Jilly - you husband is not only having trouble with the dry air, he is also having trouble with the 4K elevation. The elevation he will adjust to in a week or so.

Jilly, when I'm home I keep a pot of water simmering on the stove. It's the cheapest way to go.

Another thing, if you're going to buy something. Make sure it's a ceramic one. Apparently, other ones are bad for birdies. (or do you have birds?)

Thank you for your advice and ideas, BLR and PDM! I like the idea of placing a pot of water on the floor furnace. We use propane.

Right, no kids, none planned. LOL. But I do seem to remember now those vaporizers from my childhood. Do they still sell those? I will keep a look out for a vaporizer and/humidifier in the thrift stores.

I think we need to have a few plants in Dan's office - any advice on which plants might put more humidity into the air?

At least I do not mind the dry air. For me this is normal air.

Tweetymom, that is interesting about ceramics and birds. I used to have parrots, cockatiels and finches, when i was younger. My husband does not like birds, so i am now birdless.

I will go simmer some water right now! maybe even add some potpouri scent to it.

BLR, you are totally right also about the elevation. I didn't even think of that! He should adjust a little but he says he realy liked the 'soft' air of Florida, where he was living for six months. I would like to recreate some of that comfort for him in our home if possible.

We have three humidifiers running right now and are looking into getting at least one more. As soon as winter hits here the air gets VERY dry and my boyfriend will literally wake up with a bloody nose because the skin got so dry in there. It would be unhealthy for our pets for the same reason, with their delicate little membranes.

Our humidifiers all auto-sense when to go on and off, so they only go on if it gets too dry.

You can get a humidity gauge for maybe $3 at your local WalMart. I would suggest getting one and seeing what your humidity level is to start with, so you know what you're dealing with!

I do have a desk fountain on my desk, but that is for stress, not for humidity. There are many times I am in here for 18 hours in a row just working - working - working and the fountain helps a bit with that.

Thanks for the info, Lisa. The normal humidity range in AZ is extremely low, and worse in the cold winter when the heat must be on. It does take some getting used to, and I really don't mind it.

But I think with Dan being so miserable here, i want to do what I can to make him comfortable.

In what rooms do you keep your humidifiers? How often do you have to fill them? Are they really loud?

I imagine your fountain does provide *some* moisture. I did mention getting one to Dan and he said they are too loud. So we'd have to find a really quiet one for him. He is very sensitive to machine sounds.

I hope your fountain helps you be less stressful! What kind of desk fountain is it? I am picturing something very Zen for you.

Well, we have managed to work out a solution that works for us - we keep a large pot of water (with a little bit of potpourri liquid) simmering. It seems to help the house keep a bit more humid. It seems to be enough for the hubbie.

We have experimented with a variety of humidifiers to find quiet ones. We have three downstairs - one in the kitchen, one in the living room and one in the office. Upstairs we have two - one in the bedroom and one in the hallway.

I am also sensitive to noise and we went through several fountains before we found one that I both liked visually and which has no pump noise. There are many "whisper" pumps out nowadays that are silent. Aquarium owners helped make that happen

I'll post a photo soon!

Wow, that is five humidifiers? Do they require a lot of refilling with water and filters and such? It sounds like a lot of work.

I will tell dan there are silent fountains out there. It would be nice to not have to use something that uses up our expensive propane.

Yes five humidifiers. I think Bob fills each one every few days. He's in charge of that

If you go to a pet store you can see all the whisper quiet pumps they have nowadays, for fish tanks. That is in essence what runs a fountain.

Oh, I wanted to add that after I take a bath, I let the water sit in the tub overnight to evaporate into the house. It also seems to help, and provides a way to sort of 'reuse' the bath water.

That's a great idea Jilly!

Thanks, PDM. It really makes a difference.

An update on the using a pan of water on the stove: we've had to toss the pan we were using. Sometimes all the water evaporates and we end up with a hot burning pan. Even with the best of intentions to keep an eye on it, this happened, ever so often.

Also it uses up a lot of propane, which is not cheap.

Yes stoves rank right up there with dryers in terms of huge energy users. So that is probably very inefficient, to use a stove to vaporize water. It would probably save a ton of money to use an actual vaporizer which is designed to do that. Or just leave pots of water lying around

Plants are great. They actively give water out into the atmosphere over time. You do have to water the plants of course

Also, don't use a dryer! Hang your wet clothes around the house. That is a great natural humidifier and will save you tons of money by not running the dryer.

I like that idea of hanging wet clothes. Excellent idea. We do leave the tub water out as long as possible. Plants we won't get until we are sure we know where will will be living.

I found a tiny potpourri crockpot for $1.50 for dan's office at my thrift store. He loves it. We fill it with water and cinnamon scented oil, and he leaves that to run. It barely gets hot, which is perfect. It helps his sensitive eyes a lot.

You could get just a few herb plants for the windows, sometimes even the smallest greenery makes a bit emotional difference.

That's great that the crockpot is a cheap wonderful solution!

Can you paper his walls with pictures of green places and make him a virtual oasis in there?

LOL, he has actually papered over his window with black so no outside light can get it. Weirdo.

I bet I can find him a low light plant as a gift, like lucky bamboo, for his desk. That might help. Good idea!

If he has made himself a cave then it really doesn't matter WHERE in the world he is, he could be in an underground chamber. So in that case it doesn't matter if the area he's in is green or brown

I've asked him that. I think he is a curmudgeon who can't be pleased. Or maybe he wants to annoy me by hating my chosen area. He says that is not the case, so i am forced to believe him.

In any case, he says i can keep living out here but he won't be coming back to visit as it's "unbearably ugly."

No logic here.

Every person certainly has the right to feel the way they wish about things. So I would never say that a person's point of view is wrong.

I have been trying to imagine if there was a place I would simply never want to go. So - thinking outside the box - say there was a dog slaughter facility in the Philippines. Say that - legally - all day long they slaughtered dogs. Now say for some reason Bob decided to set up a house there right in the center of it all. Every time I went to see Bob, I would be surrounded by dogs being slain.

I could understand telling Bob that I simply had to refuse to see him there. That I loved him dearly, and I really wanted to see him, but that something deep inside me prevented me from going to that location. That I hated having to make that choice but that it would disturb me for the rest of my life to have to do that.

So. I can see the situation being *possible*. I can see there being a situation - albeit a very unlikely one - which would cause me to have that feeling.

From there I suppose it gets into a "degrees of pain" issue. If Bob simply got an apartment in New York City - a location which is way too loud and busy and scary for me - it would bother me a lot to see him, but I would struggle through it.

"From there I suppose it gets into a "degrees of pain" issue. If Bob simply got an apartment in New York City - a location which is way too loud and busy and scary for me - it would bother me a lot to see him, but I would struggle through it."

That is exactly it. He has told me her would be struggling and unhappy if he had to come out here each year. He said he does not feel it would be worth it.

In any case, he liked the bamboo plant idea.

On one hand the idea of "worth it" bothers me, emotionally. You are a couple.

But then I come back to the dog-slaughter house idea. So I can acknowledge, intellectually, that the possibility does exist.

For me, the idea of Sedona equating to a dog slaughter house seems really far fetched. But that then has me judging how another person feels internally, which would be wrong.

To me the New York City example is a far more similar example. I would not like the noise, the crowds, the pollution, the feeling of intense nervousness I would have. I would be nearly petrified. But I would find a way to do it. But I admit I would also really want him to choose somewhere else that was not so scary for me.

I am struggling to figure this out myself. Dan is inscrutable.

I would not want to visit anyone in a dog slaughterhouse either. Or in an area that I had to deal with malaria, or an area with civil unrest. That would be tough to 'want' to return to.

But this place is gorgeous! And quiet. Tons of wildlife and streams and wide open skies. That is how I see it, at least. Obviously his mileage varies. He wants trees, and grass. Those things are at a premium in the high desert.

As far as the 'worth it' - this is as disturbing as it sounds. He has said he does not get as much out of the relationship as I do, that he doesn't particularly want to be in a relationship at all.
He wants to be utterly free, to not have to compromise or run anything by anyone ever. We've talked about the "captain" thing, and we decided it;s really more like "dictator" that he is. He says he does not like to share and can't play well with others.

But on the other hand, he gives me as much leeway to do whatever in life I feel like doing. I could take off tomorrow for Mars and he'd kiss me bye and say have fun, see you later.

I talk to him about how marriage isn't an island of one, but in truth he agrees he just wants to be his own island.

All I can think of to do is learn how to accept this, or leave him. He'd be fine with either choice, but doesn't like me being in-between.

I agree completely that I would find it hard to see Sedona in any way as a "hostile to me" place. But again, we cannot change him so if he honestly says he feels that way, we have to take that.

There seem to be several main options here.

* Stay with him, follow him. Become an army wife, travel around with him, always on the go, to places he finds to be attractive. This would seem to be most places in the US except the southwest? A portion will have hiking. A portion will be flat. What you should do in this case is get a large map and have both of you mark out the places you DO want to go. See where they intersect.

* Stay with him, but don't follow him. Again, make the map. See what your most ideal location would be that still falls within his range. You might come up with somewhere you really love that still is OK with him. You set up base there. he roams around and comes back to you as a home base. You get stability, and visits, as well as periods of solitude. He gets to explore.

* Do not stay with him. You can set up your home base wherever is the ultimate most ideal for you, build a community, and go from there.

Okay, thinking this through. Love the map idea. So far I am liking a compromise between the first and second options.

WHY I want to stay with this man is beyond me, but I still do.

we love people for all sorts of reasons - there's always going to be some sort of incompatibility. He loves green. You love brown. There are much more serious issues than that which people work though

Back to humidifyers - i think the little potpourri pot is working nicely. let's see if he takes it into the RV. That will be the real test.

Yes I definitely think a balanced humidity mix is important in every environment. Too dry and it hurts your skin. Too wet and it causes mold. So finding that balance is key.

It's been so wet here these last two months that we haven't thought about dryness so much.

I suppose if I lived back east I'd want a dehumidifier. I remember growing up in New York and dealing with humidity. I always feel dirty when it's even the slightest bit humid.

I guess people adjust usually, to where they live.

Once we have people living on space stations, they can just set the atmospherics for perfect ranges of human temperature and humidity. I bet a lot of people would enjoy that.

On one hand I really enjoy the seasons and the temperatures and so on. I think it's healthy for us to experience those ranges.

On the other hand, when the basement gets covered in mold and we are scraping fungus off our motorcycle boots, I think it's time to get a dehumidifier running