For the past 4 months I've stopped irrigation and been using a hot and wet
towel. It works great. After waking up, before going to bed, and any time
my nose gets clogged or pressured or painful, I heat up a wet towel in
the microwave (as hot as my hands could tolerate), then hold it against my
nose. I blow my nose afterwards. I do this 5 to 10 times a day, and find
it works a lot better than having water in my nose, which was always
difficult to drain completely and the residual water tended to cause
problems. It also is more convenient than breathing from a humidifier,
which gives really hot steam.

I am far from cured, but my nose now feels open most of the time, and
totally clear ~ 20% of the time. I also have much less discolored mucus.
I had an acute flare-up in October, which went away after only two days,
with diligent steaming and some pseudoephedrine, and no antibiotics.
It used to last two weeks.

--Yu