If I had believed cleanliness is next to godliness, I would not have gotten along very well with my parents when I was growing up. You see, they were not the neatest of people. We lived in a dusty, dingy farmhouse in the middle of nowhere. I would not say that the house was unsanitary growing up, but it wasn't exactly clean. Both my parents worked, and no one wanted to sweep every single day. You had to if you wanted to keep the dust out, so we put up with the dust as a constant companion. It is strange how much times have changed since I moved to the city.

Nowadays, we have a whole house filter. The concept didn't even occur to me when I was a kid. I don't know if they were recently invented or not, but my wife insisted on getting us one. I have to say that I do enjoy the whole house water filter quite a bit. You see, although the water is softer than where I grew up, it is still not very good quality. There are some reports that drainage and run off have actually contaminated it with traces of heavy metals! We had a long discussion about it, and we concluded that whole house filters were the only way we could protect the kids from the dangers. Although they are expensive to install, and the replacement cartridges still cost a pretty penny now and then, it is still worth it.

When my wife decided to get a whole house air filter, however, I thought that she was going a little bit too far. I do get respiratory infections from time to time, and my kids have allergies, but I didn't think it had to do with air quality. With the whole house filter, however, my infections are less frequent, and when they do occur, they did not last for very long. My kid's allergies tend to be much less severe even during the spring, the time of year that used to be peak allergy season. Our whole house filters use up a fair amount of electricity, but not nearly as much as I would have expected. And with the benefits of having a whole house filter, it seems worth paying a few extra dollars each month.

I just hope that this is not a sign of things to come. I would like to think that we are not heading towards a day when everyone needs to have a whole house filter to clean the water they drink and the air they breathe just to get by. That is almost too horrible to imagine!