Re: Waxy build-up
For the love everything you hold sacred, DON'T... DO. NOT. DO. THIS.
My story: Wax build-up first identified some 50 years ago, causing my hearing to be considerably impaired. Went to GP - was told to use olive oil and to duck myself when taking a bath to flush my ears out.
It worked - for a while, but the wax eventually came back, and was a constant irritant for the next n years.
Later on in life, while having my morning shower, angling my head so that one individual jet of water was directed straight down my ear seemed to work... for a while. Trouble with that idea was that it cleaned my ears out completely... and ear wax, in normal amounts, is a normal (even necessary) thing, intended to trap any particulate stuff that might enter the ear canal.
With no ear wax to speak of, even bits of floating dust were an extreme irritant - enough to get me started on using cotton buds. That worked for a time too, but...
Next stage started because I found cotton buds to be too flexible, I wanted something more rigid, something that felt like it was doing something, and so... 'kitchen matches' - the ones with a long stalk.
Overall result: 'Otitis Externa' - ear canals continually exuding a clear liquid that irritates when it dries up on reaching the open air, causing more scratching, more damage, more scratching and so on, and also leaving some fairly unsightly stains on bed pillows.
These days, I have to keep things under control with neomycin. I use a preparation that goes by the name of 'Otomize' - an ear spray that appears to work nicely.
There's an old wives saying about not putting anything smaller than your elbow into your ear. That's a bloody stupid way of saying something that's obvious in my opinion, but it's very stupidity is what keeps the concept in mind.
Don't mess with your ears, people - they're just too damn fragile