I have a big head and have never understood this impacted wax you normies are always complaining about, so this Cavernous Canal Hypothesis actually makes a lot of sense to me.

Grampa tore his ear drum by using a metal screw...

My grandpa would just use the temples/end parts of his glasses to clean his ears...

Have you tried hydrogen peroxide?

I leave it sit for 23 seconds, then hit it with 1 Tbsp of baking soda and plug the hole.

It is, I hurt my ears several times every year, had to put medicine on it and everything, now I just go to a doctor once a year to do a professional clean up and it's all good.

You simply don't need to.

In fact, there’s a lot you don’t need to do nearly as frequently or aggressively unless there’s a specific reason for it. A common one is shampoo, where after a few days of letting it go back to normal your hair will be perfectly fine taking care of itself. I just rinse it every day and that’s been more than enough for many years.

I got my ears vacuumed the other day at the ENT clinic. Unfortunately I'm one of those people that gets a lot of wax build up. Copying the grown ups using cotton buds to clear the wax just meant I was constantly getting ear infections as a kid. As an adult, I'd get wax build up, I'd try olive oil as my GPs would always recommend, only that would make it clog up more and muffle my hearing. Then the only way to get that big plug of soggy wax out was either to fish it out with a bit of screwed up tissue or a cotton bud, or to blast it with the power shower to dislodge it.

I finally perforated my ear drum in September from an infection that went to the middle ear. Anyway, I got my ears vacuum cleaned on Thursday and was told by the ENT doctor to use a pharmaceutical grade olive oil spray (not drops) every day forever to stop the wax clogging. So let's hope that works.

I think I was given peroxide based ear drops once when I was 12 or so, but it made my jaw swell so much I couldn't even eat.

You really shouldn't insert anything into your ear canal unless you are a professional, and even then probably wouldn't recommend doing it on yourself.

If you need to clean your ears, there are products specifically made for that (no, q tips are not made for that). Hydrogen peroxide also works.

Q tips are wide as fuck to prevent people from injuring themselves easily i think. Really what you need is something thinner that has hook like properties and there are kits with those. Still gotta be really careful with that ofcourse. Make sure no people are around to jump scare you and causing you to accidentally ram that thing into your eardrums.

At some point i just bent a piece of wire into a loop to use that. (toothpick for scale) Thats not stainless steel tho so its gonna corrode.

But going to a professional once a year or so is probably not a bad idea either.

The cap of Bic pens!

Allows you to scoop and clean without the fear of going too deep (adults only).

I’m not a doctor, but they make ear cleaners that are more of a scoop shape. Imo q tips suck because you are trying to scoop with something that isn’t scoop shaped. The scoop allows you to get the earwax without shoving it deeper into the ear.

One thing to bear in mind is there are two earwax types. I can only speak for my type, which is sticky.

A squeeze bulb and warm water seem to do the trick for me.