I guess because I live in San Jose, CA, a standard locale for metro-polluted air, allergies are an ongoing problem for me. I purchased one of those Ionic Breeze air cleaners in 2001. I don't think Sharper Image considered how dirty the air where I live could be when they stated "simply wipe down the array every week or two".

While it started out just fine and would only start making its little popping and fizzing noises after a week or two, after three years of trying to clean the air in my bedroom, my poor cleaner was popping, fizzing and crackling all the time. It was really grumpy. :) No matter how often I did it, cleaning the collection array (the insert) and making those little glass beads glide along the wires just weren't sufficient to keep it happy.

I was about to toss the whole thing out. But after remembering how much I paid, I figured I'd hold onto it and see if there was something I could do to restore it. After using the following simple items, I think I restored my cleaner to be as good as new (or at least close).

• a little patience
• a small Phillips head screwdriver
• lots of Q-tips
• a small piece of 1000 grit sandpaper

I thought other folks would like to know what I did, since when I went searching online for some info about these things, all I could find were ads. So here's what I did to restore my Quadra.