Organise and plan ahead as much as you can, even if it is not in your nature. Keeping a Foods Diary for the week ahead is a help for shopping and catering, especially if you have more than one household member on a special diet.

Do not go shopping for food when you are really hungry or withdrawing from a food. You are much more likely to buy forbidden things, break your diet or eat naughty snacks. Go shopping just after a big meal.

For running a rotation, if you tolerate frozen food well and you have a freezer, you can cook casseroles, sauces, purees or bakery in batches and freeze the surplus, labelled for each day of the rotation. This will help avoid food wastage, and save buying and cooking small amounts every few days. Use colour code labels for each day of the rotation. Frozen vegetables, although expensive, can save a lot of waste. Divide up fruit juice cartons and freeze them in portions for one day of the rotation.

Do not forget when working out a rotation diet to include things which can be eaten as snacks or fillers. These are particularly useful for babies and children. Use nuts, dried fruits, fresh fruit, seeds, rice-cakes, rice puffs, rye crispbread, oatcakes.

If running a rotation diet for people taking packed lunches to work or school, try to work out lunch menus which look as normal as possible. It helps psychologically to cope with a special diet if you are not too conspicuous in public.

Put herb teas or strange juices in thermoses. Mixed salads are useful, as are oatcakes, rye crispbread, ricecakes, and wholefood crisps.

Use colour codes if you are running a rotation diet. Use red jars and labels for Day One, and so on. Alternatively, keep separate shelves or cupboards for each day of the rotation and colour code them. Then you know that on a given day you can reach into that jar or that cupboard and eat anything in it. Particularly useful for hungry children just home from school.

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Start from zero. Put in the room only what you actually need to have. For most people, at first, this is a bed and a light. Start from that base, and then add to it. For testing and elimination purposes, move anything not essential out temporarily. Reintroduce them one by one to see if they cause a reaction. Only put in what you really want to have and things that are important to you for decoration and pleasure. Have the minimum of furniture and objects. If you put things in that are made of materials that can upset you, make sure they are not new and are well aired off. If you have a radio and clock, make sure they are aired off. If you have veneered chipboard furniture, for instance, it will probably not be a problem once it is a few years old and has gassed out the fumes. Keep pictures to a minimum, and make sure they do not smell. If you have toys, air them off and wash them well.

Keep things elsewhere if you can. Do you need to have all your clothes in your bedroom, for instance? Could you not keep them in cupboards or drawers elsewhere, in a passage or in the bathroom? Do you need a bookcase or toy shelf actually in the room? Keep toiletries and cosmetics in the bathroom cupboard or in another room. Do make-up in the bathroom or elsewhere. If you do keep things in the room or by the bed, keep them covered up in drawers or behind a cupboard door. Put things away when they are not in use. Put books and magazines in a drawer overnight and keep their number to a minimum.

Once you know what you react to, if you find that things already in your bedroom (such as the bed, carpet, curtains, bedding, furniture, or even building and decorating materials) upset you even when aired off, it may help to go further and replace them. Ban things that upset you from your oasis. Make your own rules about what comes into it. If you do not want perfumes, aftershave or hairspray in your oasis, or tobacco smoke, then people may have to stay outside, or change clothes or shower before entering. If you do not want polish or detergents, keep them out. Negotiate with family and housemates, but stick to your conditions if they are important to you. Be prepared to have to retreat to your oasis when other people do what they want to, elsewhere.

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Masonry paints

For exterior walls, it is not possible to find a masonry paint which is free of fungicide. If you have to use one, get someone else to apply it for you. The following are water-based acrylic masonry paints: Dulux Weathershield Fine Texture Masonry Paint or Dulux Weathershield Masonry Paint, Sandtex Matt and High Cover Smooth Acrylic, Crown Stronghold and Smooth Stronghold, and B & Q Textured Masonry Paint and Smooth Masonry Paint. The Sandtex paint has very low levels of fungicide and small samples are available from them for the matt paint. As an alternative, you can use a cement-based masonry paint, such as Snowcem Cement Paint.

Metal paints

For metal paint, you can use any exterior or interior water-based gloss paint, as above, provided that the metal has been properly primed. Livos sell Duro metal primer which is linseed oil-based, and can be used on iron and any other metals. You can obtain a water-based metal primer from B & Q, Dulux, Green and International Paint but it cannot generally be used on iron. It will cause the iron to rust unless the metal is very clean and totally free of any rust or corrosion. Water-based metal primers are thus best used only on non-ferrous metals such as zinc, aluminium, brass or copper.

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There are three basic types of air clearing and filtering device:

• air purifiers

• ionisers

• air filters and cleaners

There are also built-in, and radiator systems, discussed below.

Air Purifiers

Air purifiers are on sale in many High Street shops. They are small electrical devices, relatively cheap (about £15 at 1992) and work by drawing the room air in, and passing it through a thin fabric filter and over a perfumed insert. They are sometimes called fragrancers or vapourisers. Their main function is to mask smells and they are not very effective at removing either particles or vapours. They are generally of little benefit to people with allergy or sensitivity, and the fragrances can upset the chemically sensitive.

Ionisers

Ionisers work by producing negative ions. Dust and other particles have a positive electrical charge and are often suspended in the air. The negative ions from an ioniser neutralise the positive charge and the particles from the air are attracted to the walls and floor. The air is thus cleared by particles being attracted to other surfaces, not by them being filtered or removed. Ionisers do not remove chemical fumes or vapours.

Studies carried out on the effectiveness of ionisers in reducing the level of airborne allergens have failed to produce any evidence that they actually help allergic respiratory problems. The National Asthma Campaign does not endorse them. However, people who use them often do feel that they bring benefit. In March 1992, a Which? survey of 130 people who wrote to the magazine about ionisers reported that slightly more of them ‘thought that their ioniser helped them, compared with those who thought it had not’. Which? tests also found that ionisers can clear cigarette smoke much more quickly than allowing the smoke to disperse or settle naturally.

One major drawback of ionisers is that the dirt clings to walls behind furniture and around the edges of furniture and objects. The dirt is often greasy and difficult to clean, creating permanent dark marks for which the only solution is to redecorate – a serious disadvantage if you are chemically sensitive.

The simplest ionisers are relatively cheap (from £25 at 1992 prices), light and portable. They are usually of hard plastic cases which do not upset the chemically sensitive once aired. Ionisers are also often built into other filtering devices (see below).

The Which? survey (March 1992) found that a number of makes of ioniser did not actually produce ions on test. The Pifco 1072 (£25) performed best on their tests.

Ionisers are readily available from electrical shops and wholefood shops. They are also available by mail order from the Air Improvement Centre, Allerayde, The Healthy House, The London Ioniser Centre and Medivac.

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