Features

NEW YORK — After the German shepherd Rumour won the top prize at last year’s Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show in New York, she had her first litter of puppies and retired from competition, like many female show dogs. 

By contrast, most top male show dogs can keep competing for years, and it is no coincidence that they also win “Best in Show” in the prestigious annual competition far more often than females, breeders and handlers said as they prepared for this year’s show, which opens on Monday, February 12 in New York. 

“Now she won’t show again, she’s done,” said Gail Miller Bisher, a spokeswoman for the Westminster Kennel Club, referring to Rumour. “But males can keep going. They can be used as stud and continue showing and keep their coat and keep their shape of body and all that.” 

Female dogs, known in pure-bred circles as “bitches”, have snared Best in Show at Westminster 39 times since the award was first given in 1907. Males, known simply as “dogs”, have been victorious 71 times, almost twice as often. 

A dog’s peak age for competition is three to five years old, which also happens to be prime breeding age for females, said Kimberly Calvacca, a professional handler and breeder from Westbury, New York. 

The Best in Show winner crowned on Tuesday night takes home a trophy. But the real reward is the increased value on the breeding circuit, which is one reason victory can end a female’s competitive career. 

“People don’t like to campaign females because they don’t like to jeopardise their breeding programme,” said Calvacca. “Males can be used to stud anytime, and still show and breed at the same time.” 

As a consequence, females are less likely to compete at Westminster, the second-oldest US sporting event after the Kentucky Derby. Ahead of this year’s opening day on Monday, there were 1,220 female competitors and 1,699 male challengers enrolled in most categories, including vying to be named top dog on Tuesday at Madison Square Garden. 

A female competitor’s “heat” cycle brings changes in temperament and hormones that can also hurt its chances of winning the world-renowned show for pure-bred canines. 

Many handlers and owners will not show a female during its cycle, which comes about every six months, because “they’re moody”, said Wendy Kellerman, a handler and breeder from Hauppauge, New York. 

Depending on the breed, a female dog in season will shed her coat, leaving her less impressive looking than male peers. Those kinds of changes can knock her out of competition for months. 

“Some people say, ‘I don’t want to be bothered with that, I’ll go with a male,” said Calvacca. 

Betty-Anne Stenmark, the sole judge of this year’s Best in Show competition at Westminster, said appearance was important when it comes to picking a world champion. But she denied that the cards are stacked in favour of males. 

Stenmark said each sex has a “50-50 chance” of winning and judging can be highly subjective, depending on a judge’s experience. 

In the end, a male Best in Show winner can bring a bigger payoff than a female because a male can breed many times, and even have its sperm frozen, while females can produce only so many litters and puppies, said WKC’s Bisher. 

“The males obviously have an easier go of it, whereas the girls having a litter is stressful for everybody,” she said. 

Children who play with second-hand plastic toys may be exposed to unsafe levels of chemicals like lead and cadmium that have been linked to developmental problems and organ damage, a UK study suggests. 

For the study, researchers tested 200 second-hand plastic toys they found in homes, nurseries and charity shops. Toys included cars, trains, action figures, puzzles and blocks — all of which were small enough to be chewed by young children. 

They discovered high concentrations of hazardous elements including antimony, barium, bromine, cadmium, chromium, lead and selenium in many building blocks, figures and items of jewellery that were typically either yellow, red or black. 

Even at low levels, these chemicals can be toxic to children who are exposed to them over an extended period of time, especially when kids chew on toys. 

“The findings confirm the presence of relatively large concentrations of chemicals which have since been restricted or banned, including the brightly coloured pigments cadmium sulphoselenide and lead chromate,” said Andrew Turner, an environmental health researcher at the University of Plymouth. 

“The study also found evidence of large quantities of flame retardant residues in some neutrally coloured toys,” Turner said by e-mail. “These residues are likely derived from the recycling of electronic waste.” 

To assess the amount of chemicals in the toys, researchers used what is known as X-ray fluorescence spectrometry, a process that scientists often use to determine what chemicals are in rocks, minerals, sediments and fluids. 

Researchers also did additional tests designed to simulate stomach conditions by putting toys in a hydrochloric acid solution. Under these conditions, several toys released quantities of bromine, cadmium, or lead that exceeded limits permitted under toy safety regulations in Europe. 

Young children are particularly susceptible to the health impacts of these chemicals because they have faster metabolisms than adults, and more rapid growth of organs and tissues. 

While regulations in Europe and elsewhere have banned or limited use of many chemicals in toys, children may still be exposed by playing with something passed down through the generations or picked up at a yard sale or second-hand shop, researchers note in Environmental Science and Technology. 

Parents may not be able to tell toys are dangerous just by looking at them, the study found. 

For example, red and yellow Lego bricks from the 1970s looked similar to Legos from the 1990s, but the older versions contained cadmium that was not present in the newer ones. 

The study was not a controlled experiment designed to prove whether or how exposure to certain chemicals might lead to health problems. Researchers also did not systematically compare the chemical content of older versus newer toys. 

Still, the findings suggest that parents should be cautious about plastic toys because they may contain harmful chemicals that may leech out easily when kids chew on them, said Dr Luz Claudio, an environmental health researcher at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City. 

“The stricter regulations that limit chemicals in toys do not apply retroactively to older toys,” Claudio, who was not involved in the study, said by e-mail. 

As much as possible, parents can try to give kids alternatives to plastics, whether it is plush toys or books to play with or frozen fruit wrapped in cheesecloth to teethe on, Claudio advised. 

“As a mother, I understand that our children live in a plastic world and are surrounded by potentially hazardous chemicals,” Claudio said. “I think that if parents become aware of the issues, they will come up with alternatives to protect their children.”

Flu shots may be especially important for older women who are socially active, a study from Japan suggests. 

In a study of people over age 65, unvaccinated women who regularly participated in two or more social activities were twice as likely to report a flu infection as those who did not participate in any such activities, the study authors report. 

At the same time, women who were vaccinated had no additional risk. 

“It has been thought that vaccine effectiveness is relatively low in elder persons... but our research shows some meaning for older adults,” said lead study author Dr Yugo Shobugawa of Niigata University in Niigata, Japan. 

Worldwide, the flu affects 3-5 million people annually and can result in 300,000 to 650,000 deaths, according to the World Health Organisation. In industrialised countries, most of these deaths occur among adults over age 65 who develop secondary infections such as pneumonia. 

“Effectiveness of the influenza vaccine varies by season because circulating strains vary and are gradually evolving,” Shobugawa told Reuters Health by e-mail. “However, this suggests a need for further efforts to promote vaccination, particularly among socially active elders.” 

Shobugawa and colleagues analysed data for more than 12,200 men and 14,000 women over age 65. They examined the association between flu infection and social participation in volunteer groups, sports groups, leisure activity groups, senior citizen clubs, neighbourhood associations, cultural groups, nursing care or health promotion groups, local events and grandchild-rearing support. 

Among men, social participation was not associated with developing the flu, and it did not vary among vaccinated or unvaccinated men. 

Respiratory disease, however, nearly doubled a man’s chance of getting the flu, regardless of whether he was vaccinated or unvaccinated. 

Vaccines may help reduce the spread of infection among social groups, the study authors wrote in the journal BMJ Open, and when no vaccine is available, non-pharmaceutical precautions such as respiratory hygiene and cough etiquette could help as well. 

Although social participation increases social contact and the risk of flu infection, that does not mean older adults should stop participating in their social activities, they added. 

“Social participation has been linked to healthy aging and the maintenance of functional independence in older individuals,” said Dr Yukinobu Ichida of the Doctoral Institute for Evidence Based Policy in Tokyo, Japan. Ichida, who was not involved with this study, has researched social participation and self-rated health among older adults in Japan. 

“Our findings suggest that participation in the community improves self-rated health,” Ichida said. “Investing in that community infrastructure to boost social participation may help promote healthy aging.” 

Parents of kids with food allergies often engage in behaviours that could trigger an allergic reaction in their child, a survey found.

Almost half of parents of kids with food allergies reported at least one risky behaviour, such as not carrying epinephrine autoinjectors or not reading food labels.

These behaviours are likely due to knowledge gaps and misconceptions, as well as possible financial barriers, according to Dr Julie Wang of the Jaffe Food Allergy Institute of Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City and her colleagues.

Wang’s team conducted the survey to better understand food allergy management behaviours and attitudes in their patients’ households.

”During our patient visits, we routinely counsel families about food allergy management to reduce the risk of allergic reactions. However, we noted that in some cases, our patients experienced allergic reactions that were associated with risk-taking behaviour,” Wang told Reuters Health in an e-mail.

“It is important to understand the barriers patients and their families face in managing their food allergies,” she said.

As reported in The Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, Wang and her colleagues surveyed 100 English-speaking parents of children ages six months to 18 years, who had previously been diagnosed with food allergies and who came for follow-up visits at an urban allergy clinic.

Parents were asked about potentially risky food allergy management behaviours. For example, Wang said, ”Risky behaviours include parents giving their child the allergic food to see if the child is still allergic and not always being prepared with emergency medication, epinephrine autoinjectors, in case allergic reactions occur.”

Over 70 per cent of the kids had experienced food allergy reactions in the previous year, with almost 40 per cent reporting at least three reactions. 

About one in four children had been treated with epinephrine at some point. About one-third had been treated in an emergency department and about 5 per cent had been hospitalised in the past. 

The researchers found a correction between risky behaviours and having at least one food-induced allergic reaction during the past year. In addition, parents of kids with multiple food allergies were more likely to report risky behaviours than parents of kids with one food allergy. 

About 11 per cent of the parents gave allergy-inducing foods to their kids because they did not have time to read ingredient labels, and 7 per cent said the cost of food was a barrier to avoiding those foods. 

Nearly one in four parents said they intentionally exposed their kids to the food allergens to see if they were still allergic or to “treat” the underlying allergy. 

“This article highlights the barriers families in an urban setting face when dealing with food allergies and stresses the need for us to better educate our patients and their families about food allergies,” said Dr Rushani Saltzman, an allergist at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia who was not involved with the study. 

“There were some concerning points raised in this study: 10 per cent of respondents did not know how to eliminate allergic foods from the diet and 14 per cent of respondents were confused about which foods to avoid. Furthermore, only 58 per cent of respondents reported carriage of their epinephrine autoinjectors at all times,” Saltzman said in an e-mail. 

“It is imperative that all allergists and healthcare providers who see patients with food allergies take the time with each visit to review food allergen avoidance and label reading to avoid accidental exposures to food allergens,” she said. 

In addition, families must be provided written food allergy action plans to recognise signs and symptoms of an allergic reaction, said Saltzman. 

“In-office training for families on the proper use of epinephrine autoinjectors... is equally important,” she said. 

Currently, strict food allergen avoidance remains the only proven therapy for treatment of food allergy, Saltzman said, although researchers are experimenting with ways to modify the body’s immune response to substances that trigger allergic reactions. 

“If families are concerned about a possible food allergen, then consultation with an allergist is recommended for further evaluation,” she said. 

I know it is an irritating habit, but whenever I am driving past any large billboard, I tend to read out whatever is written on it, in a loud and lucid manner. It can be the name of a shop, a road sign, an advertising slogan or even a plea to vote for a particular political party, I simply announce it clearly, as I whizz past it.

In a new and unfamiliar town, this turns out to be quite a useful undertaking because the moment I come across the same self-broadcasts repeatedly, I realise for certain that I am lost. After which I have to make the necessary amendments but when the journey is long, some of the innovative names printed on the boards inevitably become a source of amusement.

For instance, in one stretch of the highway in North India, there are several restaurants with the same name. Believe me, it is true. One is called “Lucky”, another one is “Lucky Deluxe”, the third is “New Lucky”, and the fourth one is “Pure Vegetarian Lucky”. Not to be beaten by any of these, the fifth eatery is known as “Air Conditioned Vegetarian and Non Vegetarian Lucky”. What is most astonishing is that they all have their own set of loyal clientele and are almost always full. It must be because of their lucky charm, so to speak. 

Several years ago, if you took a train to New Delhi, about a few kilometres before reaching the destination, bright graffiti would start appearing on the walls that were adjacent to the railway tracks. Most of the scrawled messages would implore you to visit a particular Marriage Bureau for arranged matrimonial alliances. Alternating with this, were hand-painted advertisements, praising the importance of one particular dermatologist who had the cure for every possible skin and sexually transmitted disease you could think of. As children, my siblings and I would rattle off the names on the list in a singsong manner, having no clue about the ailments they implied. Our hapless mother would try to shush us, but we were unstoppable and provided much merriment to the other travellers.

With the arrival of affordable airlines in my home country, all this came to a sudden halt but as more folks populated the cities from nearby rural areas in search of a better livelihood, a fresh crop of problems arose. And as usually is the case, a number of new solutions followed, the most interesting being the sudden appearance of a “quarrel therapist”. 

Quite recently, the minute I spotted a catalogue that was glued to a pillar, I began to read it aloud. In block letters it stated that if there was any conflict in one’s family, discord between the parents or children, marital tension, siblings bickering, neighbours fighting, in-laws giving one a hard time, friends backbiting or one’s boss or colleagues being unreasonable or disagreeable, in all such scenarios, one should call the printed number — urgently!

I was enthralled because there was nothing better than having all my real and perceived grievances resolved in one go.

“Don’t plan anything tomorrow,” I instructed my husband. 

 “We are going to a quarrel therapist,” I informed. 

“To resolve our quarrels,” I continued. 

“But we have none,” he protested. 

“Yes, we do,” I said. 

“No, we don’t,” he said. 

“Yes, we do,” I insisted. 

“No, we don’t,” he insisted. 

I stopped to take a deep breath.

“Let’s go quarrel with the therapist,” my spouse suggested.

LOS ANGELES — Sony’s “Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle” managed the rare feat this weekend of regaining the No. 1 spot in North American box offices on its seventh week out, industry figures showed on Monday.

Taking in $10.9 million for the three-day weekend — as competition with football’s Super Bowl depressed ticket sales — “Jumanji” became the first film since “Titanic”, in 1998, to win a February weekend following a nationwide release in December.

After holding top spot for three consecutive weekends, the film closed out January in second place.

The family flick, starring Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, Jack Black and Kevin Hart, follows a group of teens who find themselves transported inside the video game world of Jumanji. Its domestic cumulative take of almost $338 million makes it only the third Sony film to reach that mark.

Fox’s “Maze Runner: The Death Cure”, which won the box office last weekend, finished second with $10.5 million from 3,793 locations. The weekend’s sole opener, Helen Mirren’s horror-thriller “Winchester”, launched in third with $9.3 million at 2,480 venues, topping modest expectations which had been in the $6 million to $8 million range.

Overall domestic business was typically modest for a Super Bowl weekend with $92 million overall, according to comScore, as studios remain reluctant to open major titles during the frenzy surrounding the pro football championship. The lowest recent Super Bowl weekend came in at $86 million in 2014, when the third weekend of “Ride Along” led with $12 million.

The 2018 box office has remained close to even with last year thanks to “Jumanji”, with $1.06 billion through Sunday, down 0.5 per cent from last year at the same point.

“’Jumanji’ gets the MVP box office award for Super Bowl weekend with a stunning late run ascension to the number one spot as ‘Maze Runner’ adds to its total and ‘Winchester’ enjoys a bit of counter programming success amidst a sea of Oscar contenders over what is a typically slow moviegoing weekend,” said Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst with comScore.

“Maze Runner: The Death Cure”, the third and final installment of the “Maze Runner” series, stars Dylan O’Brien as a young man trying to survive in a dystopian universe. It declined by 58 per cent from its $24 million opening. The film’s release was delayed for a year due to injuries that O’Brien sustained on the set in 2016.

“Winchester” centres on a real-life house in San Jose, California. built by Sarah Winchester (Mirren), the heiress to the Winchester firearms fortune, over 38 years beginning in 1886. The mansion, which stands seven stories tall, contains hundreds of rooms and is meant to be an asylum for vengeful ghosts.

Fox’s seventh weekend of “The Greatest Showman” finished fourth with $7.7 million at 2,588 sites, posting the lowest decline among the top 10 films at 18 per cent. The Hugh Jackman musical has turned in an impressive $137.5 million in 45 days.

Fox’s seventh weekend of “The Post” came in fifth with $5.2 million at 2,462 sites for a $67.2 million domestic total.

Entertainment Studios’ Western drama “Hostiles”, starring Christian Bale, followed in sixth with $5.1 million at 2,934 locations, giving it $20.8 million after two weeks in wide release.

“12 Strong” ($4.7 million), “Den of Thieves” ($4.6 million), “The Shape of Water” ($4.4 million) and “Paddington 2” ($3.3 million) closed out the top 10.

Drinking scalding hot tea is associated with an increased risk of oesophageal tumours in people who also smoke and drink alcohol, two habits that already make many cancers more likely, a Chinese study suggests. 

Among Chinese adults who drank at least one beer, cocktail or glass of wine daily, those who also consumed burning hot tea every day were 5 times more likely to develop oesophageal cancer than people who drank tea at any temperature less than once a week, the study found. 

For current smokers, drinking scalding hot tea every day was associated with roughly twice the risk of oesophageal cancer as consuming tea less than weekly. 

“Keeping away from both tobacco and excessive alcohol use is the most important means for oesophageal cancer prevention,” said study co-author Dr Jun Lv of Peking University Health Science Centre in China. 

“Under this increased risk of oesophageal cancer from smoking and drinking alcohol, if people like drinking very hot tea, the risk of developing cancer will be synergistically higher,” Lv said by e-mail. 

But by itself, drinking hot tea does not increase cancer risk, Lv said. 

China is among the countries with the highest incidence of oesophageal cancer, researchers note in the Annals of Internal Medicine. Because tea drinkers in China, especially men, are more likely to drink alcohol and smoke, previous studies have not offered a clear picture or whether burning hot tea might be an independent risk factor for oesophageal tumours. 

While some prior research has suggested tea may help protect against tumours in the digestive tract, other studies have shown repeated consumption of very hot food or drink might damage the oesophagus and help tumours take hold, the researchers note. 

For the current study, researchers examined data on 456,155 adults ages 30 to 79 who completed questionnaires about their smoking, alcohol and tea habits. 

At the start of the study, none of the participants had cancer. Researchers followed half of the participants for at least 9 years. During the study, 1,731 people developed oesophageal tumours. 

People who drank scalding hot tea, consumed excessive amounts of alcohol and also smoked had more than five times the risk of oesophageal cancer than individuals who did not do any of these things. 

The study was not a controlled experiment designed to prove whether or how the temperature of tea might impact the risk of oesophageal tumours. 

Another limitation is that study participants reported on their own smoking and drinking habits, and their reports could be unreliable. Researchers also only had data on tea consumption from one point in time, when people joined the study, making it impossible to know how changing habits might have impacted the cancer risk. 

“People probably do not estimate their tea temperature perfectly, and this is one of the main limitations of the study,” said Neal Freedman, author of an accompanying editorial and a researcher with the Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics at the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Maryland. 

“Drinking tea at a lower temperature should not be considered as a replacement for smoking cessation and limiting alcohol intake,” Freedman said by e-mail. “Nevertheless, accumulating data suggest that drinking very hot tea may also increase the risk of oesophageal cancer, and it may be prudent for people who drink very hot beverages to wait until it cools down a bit before drinking, whether or not they also smoke cigarettes or drink alcohol.” 

Fathers who show signs of depression may be more likely to have kids who show signs of depression, especially in their teen years, according to a new study in the United Kingdom and Ireland.

Previous research has shown an association between maternal depression and adolescent depression, but few studies have looked for links between fathers’ and kids’ depression.

“Men are less likely to seek treatment than women, so it is important to encourage fathers to seek healthcare services,” said study coauthor Dr Gemma Lewis of University College London.

Depression risk increases around age 13, and about three-fourths of adults say their mental health problems began during their teen years. 

“The priority should be the treatment of depression in both parents, irrespective of their gender,” Lewis told Reuters Health by e-mail. “Fathers should also be involved in any family-based interventions to improve the prevention of teenage depression.”

Lewis and colleagues looked at data from two programs that have followed children since the early 2000s — the UK Millennium Cohort Study and Growing Up in Ireland. Altogether, they studied more than 6,000 Irish two-parent families and nearly 8,000 UK two-parent families.

When the kids were seven to nine years old, and again when they were 13 or 14, family members completed questionnaires that measured their depressive symptoms.

The research team found that every three-point increase in paternal depressive symptoms (with possible scores ranging from 0 to 24) was associated with an increase of about a third of a point in adolescent depressive symptoms (on a scale of 0 to 26). In Ireland, the influence was stronger for daughters than sons. In both countries, it did not matter whether the paternal caregiver was biologically related to the child.

Notably, the association of fathers’ and kids’ depression and the association of mothers’ and kids’ depression were similar in strength.

“I think that lots of people will be surprised that depression in fathers is as important to the child’s risk of depression as depression in mothers,” Lewis said.

Future studies should look at additional genetic and environmental factors that influence why fathers’ depression may increase the risk in their kids, she added. Researchers should look at different types of families as well. In this study, for example, all fathers lived with the child. The effects of depression may vary if parents are separated. 

“We need to start the conversation with men and fathers about the potential risks to their mental health and the impact they can have on their families,” said Dr Lisa Underwood of the University of Auckland in New Zealand, who coauthored a commentary that was published alongside the authors’ report online November 15 in The Lancet Psychiatry.

By Jessica Pruitt

Fashion Blogger 

Whether you’re a packrat or a minimalist, cleaning out your closet is a job and a half. All those decisions, all those trousers you have to try to squeeze yourself into, the new layer of clothing carpeting your bedroom floor… Fortunately, you can clean out your closet and even keep it that way with these tips!

How to get started

Ever since Marie Kondo published her take on all things organisation, closet cleaning experts have been recommending that you start by removing absolutely everything from your closet. If you have not cleaned out in years, this is a solid approach. It forces you to evaluate every item, rather than just skimming off the top, and gives you the chance to make your closet shiny and new (no more dust bunnies, lost socks and T-shirts from your university days hiding out behind your winter coats).

If you have moved on to the “maintenance” stage of closet organisation, instead remove any items you do not feel 100 per cent sure about keeping and pile them onto your bed. If you need some extra motivation to clean out, go shopping! It is easier to let go of the items you no longer love when you have some great new pieces to replace them with.

Use it or lose it

This is my personal favourite method for cleaning out your closet. Start by pulling out any items you are on the fence about — whether they’re in the never-worn-it, bored-of-it or forgot-I-had-this category. Hang them on a curtain rod or shower rod or tie a scarf on the hanging bar in your closet to set apart your maybes.

Over the next week, challenge yourself to wear each one of these items. Try mixing them up by adding a belt, a layering piece, or even just wearing a different pair of shoes. Best case scenario, you come up with a bunch of interesting new outfit combinations and discover some new go-tos. Worst case scenario, you kind of dislike your outfit for the day. But hey, even this is a win because you will be able to toss the offending item in the giveaway pile without hesitation.

Get your friends involved

It’s no secret that we all get by with a little help from our friends, so when it comes to cleaning out your closet, do not do it alone! Invite a group of your closest friends over to help. Have each person pick out their least favourite item in your wardrobe and style it into an outfit. Then, do a runway show of these looks, first setting your friends up with sharpies and paper so they can vote Olympic ice skating-style.

The scarf method

To get a head start on your cleanout, tie a scarf onto the hanging bar in your closet. Then, every time you wear an item, hang it back up on the other side of the scarf. This is a low maintenance way of figuring out which items you actually wear.

Ask yourself 

tough questions

Now for the fun part. Turn on a playlist of your favourite tunes and start trying clothes on. For each item, consider the following questions: 

1. Does it still fit? If not, get rid of it!

2. Have I worn it in the last year? Be real with yourself. Unless it’s a special occasion item, you probably will not wear it if you have not put it on during the year.

3. Is it still my style? You’re constantly evolving, so why should not your closet follow suit? Be honest with yourself about whether or not you will actually wear this item again. Style it into an outfit so you can get a real sense of how you will wear it.

4. Is it damaged? If so, will you actually repair it? Or will it sit in a “fix me” pile for another year?

Give your 

closet some love

Now that you love everything in your closet, treat the space with some well-deserved respect.

•Store everything in plain sight, since you’ll be more likely to wear items if you can see them. This means no more overcrowded dresser drawers!

•Hang lightweight items and fold heavy items like sweaters and denim on open shelves in your closet

•Invest in some nice new hangers — either wood or slim velvet ones. Using a set amount of nice hangers is a good way to limit yourself. When you run out of hangers, you know it is time to clean out again

•Separate your clothing into categories like casual/weekend and dressy/workwear and sort by colour

Sort it out

Once you have decided on the pieces you are going to clean out, sort them into three piles: sell, store and donate. You can try to sell any items that are still in relatively good condition at www.facebook.com/groups/AmmanExpatSale/. Store any items that are out of season and that you do not plan on wearing within the next three months. Everything else can go in the donate pile to drop off at your favourite non-profit.

Reprinted with permission from Family Flavours magazine