Tips for Giving Your Home a Healthy Living Makeover

We hope you enjoy this post from guest blogger Kimberly Button, founder of greenWell and editor of www.getgreenbewell.com.

For most people using homeopathic medicines, you make that choice because you want a more natural way of living that doesn’t involve chemicals. Same goes for organic foods, too. You want healthier products that don’t compromise your health when natural choices can work much better instead. However, it’s not just things that you swallow or apply to your skin that can have a dramatic impact on your health. Some of the common, everyday items in your home might be impacting your health in much the same way as the food that you eat or the medicines that you take. The good news is, though, you can instantly give yourself a healthy living makeover and remove even more toxins from your living environment by focusing on these five items:

1. Shower Curtain Vinyl shower curtains can release over 100 different types of VOCs (Volatile Organic Compounds) into the air when you open up a new curtain for the bathroom. Yikes!  That’s in addition to the mercury, lead and other heavy metals that can also be released off of a new vinyl shower curtain into your bath water. Prevent exposure to these unnecessary chemicals by choosing a plastic shower curtain made from PEVA instead. It looks just like vinyl, only is considered much safer. Better yet? Choose a cloth shower curtain liner to avoid any problems with plastics.

2. Candles You don’t have to give up the pleasing smell of aromatherapy from a candle in order to live a healthier, more chemical free life. You just have to pick the right kind of candle. Artificially scented candles have plenty of chemicals to recreate a certain smell, and you’re inhaling those chemicals as a candle burns and releases the fragrance. Why not just use the goodness of nature and buy candles scented only from essential oils. The smells are amazing, not to m ention healthier, too.

3.  Hand Soaps You’ve got to keep your hands clean, but you don’t need industrial strength chemicals to do it. Proper hand washing with hot water and soap kills germs. There are plenty of botanical-based anti-bacterial sprays and hand soaps using the killing power of plants, too. Just avoid anything with the chemical triclosan in it. This common anti-bacterial was actually first used in hospital settings, and there is now concern about endocrine disrupting properties and the formation of super bugs because of overuse of this chemical in so many everyday products.

4. Water Bottles Don’t unknowingly drink in harmful chemicals by having the wrong kind of water bottle. If you use plastic water bottles, be sure that the bottle states that it is BPA-free. BPA is a potentially hormone disrupting chemical that can leach out of certain plastics. Better yet, just stick to the time-tested basics of stainless steel (without a plastic coating inside) or glass water bottles so you don’t have to worry what might be added to your water that you don’t want in there.

5.  Air Filte rs No matter how hard you try, there will be residues of chemicals and other toxins that build up in your home each day, either from just the every day routines of normal life or products that you bring into your home. But they don’t have to linger. Change or clean your air filters often, according to manufacturer directions, so that the filter can properly capture these nasty little particles, and you won’t be breathing them in any more. It is definitely worth the time and money to take care of your home’s air filtration so that every single member of your family can breathe in fresh air.

Kimberly Button is the founder of greenWell, an eco-wellness consulting company in Orlando, FL, and the editor of www.getgreenbewell.com, which showcases the easy ways you can create a healthier home and a healthier life. Button is passionate about living a more non-toxic, eco-friendly life after dealing with major medical conditions in her childhood that only responded to a more natural way of living. She is a Green Living Expert for the national television program “Daytime,” as well as a frequent author and speaker on healthy and green living topics.