I always find that when I get back from a holiday, the first thing I want to do is arrange another one. It’s just so nice to have a vacation planned to look forward to. With this in mind I have spent most of today browsing websites and trying to decide on a destination for our next vacation. I always thought that Hawaii would be a little out of my price range but I came across a site with some reasonably priced rental homes www.hawaiianbeachrentals.com

The website has several thousand rental homes all based in Hawaii. It includes a range of holiday homes from hotels and apartments that offer bed and breakfast to much larger self catering apartments and cottages. Personally, I was interested in renting a cottage from the Kauai vacation homes section. I came across a very nice 3 bedroom apartment that caters for up to eight guests and has access to a shared pool.

So often when looking at accommodation on the internet I am put off making a booking because of a lack of pictures of the accommodation. The Hawaiian beach rentals site includes a whole gallery of pictures of each rental home showing it both from the inside and out as well as essential information on what is included in the rental home. In all I found it to be an easy to navigate website which gives a lot of information about each property. I haven’t made a booking yet as I am still deciding on dates but watch this space.

I have always trusted the supermarkets when it comes to buying food, assuming that it is fresh when you purchase it but this article has made me think again. The BBC’s Whistleblower programme (to be screened tonight) sent some reporters undercover in branches of Tesco and Sainsbury’s after an anonymous tip off from some members of staff.

What they uncovered makes for some distressing reading for the consumer. Staff at both Sainsbury’s and Tesco were found changing the sell by date on food, by simply deleting the old one and replacing it. I regularly use items when they have passed their sell by date but that’s because I know the dates are used mainly to cover the supermarkets, and that the items are fresh when I buy them, well at least I thought they were. One staff member even admitted to mixing batches of food, taking a few slices from a fresh batch and some from an older batch in order to resell it. In addition to this temperature checks on the fridges, which should be closely monitored, were regularly faked by staff, and surfaces and meat slicers were left uncleaned. To be fair the reporters were sent to just two branches of the supermarkets but these measures were mainly used in order to cut costs and seemed a part of normal working practices. It makes me wonder how widespread they are.

Having four cats I find one of the worst jobs is cleaning out the litter box. It needs doing a twice a day and sometimes even more often. It can also be an issue when we want to go away for a few days. Whilst it is easy to find people to come and feed the cats, not many people want to clean the litter tray. With this is mind I have been investigating some alternatives to the basic litter tray.

I came across the Littermaid. This handy device is an automated self cleaning litter tray. The litter tray itself has a large open design enabling and includes an automated cleaning rake. Basically what happens is the cat uses the littermaid. When the cat exits the tray it triggers the sensors, setting the timer for the cleaning cycle. Ten minutes after the cat has left the tray the cleaning cycle starts and the rake moves the clumps of waste into the receptacle. If a cat should enter the tray before the tem minutes is up then the timer simply resets itself and waits an additional ten minutes before starting the cleaning process, meaning that there is no risk of cats becoming trapped inside during the cleaning cycle. All of the collected waste is deposited in the disposable plastic trays.

To clean the littermaid you simply need to remove the sealed plastic trays which are sealed to close in any bad smells. The disposable trays are available to purchase separately but you can always line them with plastic bags to prolong their life. The littermaid is also available in several sizes to suit different households, such as the LitterMaid LM900 Mega which is designed for people who have four or more cats. This model features a larger tray area to hold more litter and the disposable trays are also deeper to hold more waste.

In all it’s a very good idea and should cut down greatly on the time spent cleaning the litter tray. It also means that when we have other people looking after the cats they would only have to replace the plastic tray every couple of days rather than cleaning the litter tray itself which is a much more pleasant experience altogether.