6 Easy First Steps to Detoxing Your Home Air QualityNew Title

Detoxing is mostly written about in with regards to your body, skin, and even hair, but don’t forget about your where you live! The environment where you eat, live and sleep should be one that is clean and fresh. I am a big believer that home should be a sanctuary, as much as possible, in every sense, including a place for our bodies to recover from our exposure over which we have no control in the outer world. Here are some tips for lowing the toxins in your home by cleaning up the air quality for little or no money.

Open your windows daily

As we have gotten better at weatherproofing out homes, they have become increasingly airtight. While that is great for reducing wasted energy, it’s not so great for your indoor air quality. There are frequently things in our homes that release toxins into the air. One free way to improve the inside air is to open your windows a crack for a little time each day at least. If you live in the right climates, you could leave a window cracked more often. If it’s fire season near you and the air is bad, it’s not a great idea, but for most of us, most of the time, it’s a simple habit to develop. 

When I lived in Switzerland for a year with a family, they opened the windows and even hung the comforter/duvet half out the window for half an hour every morning to freshen things up. The sunshine poured in and was all over the bedding. It left everything smelling great. Yes, even in the winter. Though obviously in a seriously cold days you might want to open the windows less wide for less time!

Action: open those windows daily as much as makes sense for the temperatures outside.

Ditch the Air Fresheners

Don’t you love when doing good for yourself not only doesn’t cost you anything but actually saves you money? This is one of those upgrades. Air fresheners are hugely popular but the scents are considered trade secrets so we can’t know what’s in them unless some organization does some digging. Which was done by the Natural Resources Defense Council. They found unlisted phthalates in 86% of tested samples, including ones listed as ‘unscented’ or ‘all natural’.

Action: If you really love a scent in your home, consider buying a diffuser for essential oils.

Upgrade Your Candles

If you like to use candles in your home, whether for the ambiance, scent, or heat they provide, you may need to re-think the types of candles you use. Standard candles are made from a petroleum by product, paraffin, which releases benzene and toluene into the air when burned. Unfortunately, many of your regular scented candles have additives that you probably don’t want to be in the air of your home where your family and pets live. Instead, try to use natural candles like those made of soy or beeswax and watch to make sure any scent comes from true essential oils and not from parfum, fragrance or natural scents. Those are marketing speak for chemical smells and often contain phthalates, a class of chemicals that are both common and problematic.

Action: Be done with the old candles and source ideally pure beeswax, or soy. Watch out. There is no regulation at this time about how much beeswax constitutes a beeswax candle so its common to mix a bit of beeswax with lots of paraffin and call it a beeswax candle.

Use More Natural Cleaning Products

Another thing you want to start changing is what you choose to clean your home with. Naturally, having a clean home is part of detoxing it, but if you are using bleach and a lot of harsh mainstream chemicals, you are only adding more toxins into the air. Instead of doing this, start switching to natural and organic cleaning products. You can use apple cider vinegar, plain distilled vinegar, baking soda, and many other natural items to clean most areas of your home. Baking soda is great for pet stains and deodorizing, while lemon and vinegar are perfect for disinfecting. You should also ditch the dryer sheets, as they really are not necessary and again, filled with those artificial smells that do our health no favors. 

And beware of greenwashing if you decide to buy a nontoxic cleaning product. There are great ones out there, and there are a lot that market themselves as clean but still have issues. Watch for how they are scented at a minimum. Parfum, fragrance and similar words all describe chemical fragrance that likely contains phthalates (yucky family of chemicals that mess with your hormones).

Action: read the labels if you continue with ready-made cleaners. Explore the idea of using DIY recipes or eCloths or Norwex cloths which are great bacteria killers. I use both in my house and love them.

Dust and vacuum weekly

Ok, some of you do this, but not everyone. Most of us have some piece of furniture or electronics or maybe many of both, that shed toxin containing dust. By using a damp cloth to dust regularly, and a vacuum that is really well sealed and filtered, you can remove this from the house. It’s especially important if you have babies or kids, be they fur babies or human babies, as they are lower to the ground and inhale more per pound of body weight than we adults do, putting them at greater exposure. These low to the floor and ground loved ones are closer to where the dust collects and lick and breath more of it in.

Action: damp mop and dust weekly. Vacuum weekly with a well-sealed vacuum. If you smell dust when you vacuum, you may be recirculating the chemicals you are trying to remove.

Upgrade and change your heating and AC filter

Depending on what your outdoor air quality issues may be, and what toxins may be in you in home air, one of the easiest things you can do to clean up the air is to change your filter, and likely upgrade it too. By changing it more often, it allows your system to be more efficient moving the air, which is good for your pocketbook. If you upgrade the quality of your filter, you can pull more out of the air. Look for one that cleans 2.5PPM sized particles from the air (which is wood smoke and general air pollution from outside), as well as VOCs. With a great filter, your whole house is getting an air filter, though specific rooms may still want their own.

Action: Buy a higher end, more effective filter for your home heating and cooling system.

Add Indoor House Plants

Plants don’t just add a decorative element but can actually help cleanse the air in your home. Many live plants not only cleanse the air of impurities but help to get rid of formaldehyde and other volatile organic compounds that might be in the air. Volatile organic compounds are the harmful chemicals the leach out of everything from paint to furniture, new car smell to chemical cleaners. It is good to have at least one house plant in each bedroom, the living room, kitchen, and other common areas. 

Be careful with your choices and placements as the plants that are good at detoxifying their environment are often also toxic to our fur babies. 

Action: Pick some plants that are a fit for your place!

Click HERE for the link to the list.

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