The How to Get Rid of Things Blog

An update on the topic of how to get rid of acne has been a long time coming. The previous version of this article was woefully inadequate, so I axed most of the content and replaced it with good content, real content. No fluff here, just plain and simple advice about how to treat acne before it becomes a problem, and which methods are used to treat acne when home acne remedies and natural acne remedies can’t control it anymore. I imagined this article as an overview to the topic of acne and the various topics concerning acne that we’ve covered in the past. You may remember such articles as how to get rid of blackheads, how to get rid of pimples, how to get rid of acne scars, how to get rid of blemishes, and how to get rid of oily skin: all articles that have been put below the larger acne article in the heirarchy of importance and hopefully treatment for acne. Without further ado, I present to you a link to the new and improved “how to get rid of acne” article.

Do you ever look in the mirror and feeling like just crawling back under the covers instead of showing your face to the big, bad, beautiful world? I think in our current culture of advertising and fashion magazines and skeletal, airbrushed models, it’s hard not to feel in insecure about our appearances once in awhile. And, of course, who doesn’t want to Get Rid of Blemishes? Getting beautiful skin, however, is a delicate business; your skin is a very sensitive organ and attacking it with harsh cleansers and chemicals can just make the problem worse and damage your skin in the long run. So check out our new page, How To Get Rid of Blemishes for practical, realistic advice on how to treat your skin.

My choice of topics is starting to get a little weird lately. Why did I decide to write an article about getting rid of acne scars? Good question. Actually, there have been a few requests for this page, because people read the how to get rid of scars and wonder if acne scars and regular scar are treated the same way. Well, when it comes to over-the-counter treatment of scars and acne scars, no. But when it comes to surgical/medical treatments, yes; they’re pretty much treated the same way. You have four options, for the most part (not including the obvious advice found in “how to get rid of acne“): laser resurfacing, dermabrasion, chemical peels, and microdermabrasion. They vary with regard to the extremity of the treatment, but they all center around the fact that if you remove a layer of skin, a newer, smoother, younger layer will replace it. Simple stuff. But there are some neat natural acne scar treatments out there, mostly in the form of oils (Lavender, Frankincense,  Helichrysum) that are applied to the skin after the majority of acne has become inactive.

I put this article in the Personal Hygiene section because I didn’t feel like acne scars were considered a health problem, more of a cosmetic problem, really–with the exception of that woman in the headline image. Guh!

Ringworm. Who thought of that name? It’s not even a worm! It’s a fungus. I suppose, perhaps, that scabies and similar mite and worm infections had something to do with this one, but you’d think someone would set the record straight and fashion a new name for the problem. So, how do you get rid of a ringworm? You shower, you wash your hands, and you put a little Lamosil on the ring-like rash that pops up. I guess you can pour (or smear) some bleach on the stuff, and that’ll kill it, but seriously–you could caterize it and that would kill the fungus too. If you’re going to do this one right, do it with something that’s proven to be a safe antifungal medication, or something close to medication, like tea tree oil. You can’t go wrong with tea tree oil. That stuff is an Australian miracle juice. It’s holy water for fungal and bacterial skin infections. Need to be getting rid of ringworm? Here’s your ticket.

Funny how when I look for images of razor burn I find a book called “Razor Burn” which is, apparently, a “romentic” novel. Did you catch the spelling there? Yeah, I guess I didn’t get the fact that it was a novel about gay men from the picture of two gay men in a shower on the cover. They insisted that they spell it out for me.

Gay erotica novels aside, I always thought that people knew how to get rid of razor burn; I mean, it’s not a rocket science, right? Well, apparently there are some things you need to know. Chanel aftershave is against the rules, much to my chagrin. Shaving backwards is also a no-no. And anything else that you might consider shaving creatively is out the door as well. This is a very strict and meaningless process, shaving. You must not deviate from the prescribed to-do list unless you want people to look at you and see a baboon’s ass.

What does carpentry have to do with shaving? Read the article and find out.

I’ve been wondering how to get rid of canker sores for quite sometime now. I can’t tell you I have a lot of canker sores, or that I get them all the time, but when I do, they’re usually on the tip of my tongue and they hurt like hell. Well, I went and done me some of that there researching they talk about in school and what I came up with is found in this article. True, there isn’t a cure for canker sores, and perhaps there never will be–you’d think they’d have found it by now–but there are methods you can employ to reduce the number of canker sore episodes you experience and the length of time you have to endure a canker sore. Local anesthetics, antibacterial mouthwashes, yogurt, and SLS-free toothpaste are your frontline defenses. The rest is a matter of folklore and gimmicks.

Once again I’ve strayed from the path of writing my thesis to bring to you a matter that is of great concern to teenagers across America: how to get rid of a hickey. I hate hickies. Hickeys. And hicks for that matter! Nevertheless, curious teenagers want to know how to remedy a hickey, and this article will teach them that: 1) you can’t really get rid of a hickey so much as you can hasten its departure, and 2) there’s a lot of hormone induced nonsense being said about the removal of hickeys, hickies, hicks–whatever–on the internet. That being said, I hope you enjoy “how to get rid of a hickey.” I decided to put it in hygiene because I don’t think a hickey qualifies as a “health issue.”

Yeah, so after I got my hernia surgery–not this one but the one before this, when I was seven–they told me that I couldn’t get out of bed for a week. Have you ever been seven years old and in bed for a week? It was a more terrifying proposition than the surgery itself. The only reason I stayed was because I was scared that if I moved or got up, that my guts would come spilling out of my stomach. I don’t think that’s an irrational fear, especially when you’re seven and the doctor tells you that the reason you had to get surgery was because your guts were coming out where they shouldn’t be. It was terrifying. I don’t have those scars anymore and my guts didn’t fall out, but I do have this scar from a few years ago from my third hernia surgery. Sure, I didn’t get rid of it. It’s still there, but I didn’t know then what I know now–which is how to get rid of scars, sort of.

I’ve added an encyclopedic entry for Boric Acid where I attempt to describe the benefits of this amazing substance. Boric acid can be used to not only kill common household pests like roaches, fleas, bed bugs and earwigs, but it can also be used as an antiseptic to help treat athlete’s foot and even a vaginal yeast infection. Pretty cool stuff. Just don’t inhale it or swallow it by the spoonful.

I was peeking around the net and realized that there was an acne issue I hadn’t yet covered, something very close to my heart: how to get rid of blackheads. I really did spend quite a bit of time in front of a mirror picking away at blackheads in my formative years. Maybe it’s because I was too obsessive, or maybe it’s because I had more blackheads than other kids my age, or maybe–just maybe–it was because I was scared to death of girls and their obsession with facial blemishes. Was it that maniacal to project their fears onto myself, securing my place in the pecking order by squeezing every last blackhead out of existence? I didn’t think so. Maybe I was wrong, but I think the fact that Natasha picked me is proof that I wasn’t.