Five Ways to Detox Your Home (You've Maybe Never Heard)

This year I've been on a slow and steady journey toward a cleaner, safer home. I've replaced harsh chemical cleaning products with green options like vinegar, baking soda, and hydrogen peroxide. We took the full leap and stopped eating GMOs altogether. I felt pretty good after making the switch, but after finding out how seriously yucky the products I had been wiping my counters with were, I was curious what else I could be unintentionally doing to risk my family's health. I've learned so much, so I thought I'd share!

Five Ways to Detox Your Home
(You've Maybe Never Heard)

1. Non-stick Cookware

This stuff is BAD for our health, friends. We switched from nonstick aluminum pots and pans to stainless steel earlier this year after learning about the dangers of Teflon (the coating). Read more from the EWG HERE.

2. Candles

This one was a pretty big shock to me, since I've been a candle addict for as long as I can remember and it had never crossed my mind that all those amazing scents in the Yankee Candle store and Bath and Bodyworks could be super terrible for my health. I switched to soy candles during pregnancy but I have since learned that they aren't always a safer option--the fragrance can still be toxic.

Luckily there is one option that smells delightful and can still make a room feel cozy: beeswax! Pure beeswax has a sweet, light honey scent and big bonus--it purifies the air! THESE are my current favorites. And if I'm dying for a different scent, I just diffuse essential oils.

3. Mattresses

This one is our most recent change due to the cost, but we've been researching and anticipating this purchase for a while. Did you know conventional mattresses are full of nasty chemicals and flame retardants? And that we spend 1/3 of our lives sleeping, therefore breathing them in? By the time I learned this, both Daniel and I had already been complaining about our mattress for several months and were hoping to buy something more comfortable soon. So I started researching comfy, nontoxic mattresses, and last week we took the plunge!

We purchased a My Green Mattress on Amazon and it came in earlier this week. I plan to dedicate an entire post to reviewing it soon! I will say it's made of organic cotton and wool, and we got a king so I feel like we're on vacation every night :) And I feel a lot more comfortable and relaxed now that I know we're getting safe, sweet sleep.

4. Beauty/Hygiene Products

I'm planning a full post on this, too, but I thought I'd go ahead and make the general statement--lots of makeup has formaldehyde in it, and antibacterial soaps are disturb the delicate balance of your immune system. There's a really cool website called Skin Deep that will rate the safety of your products for you--check it out! I've switched out everything we use to bathe, wash our hands, moisturize, and overhauled my whole makeup bag. Ladies, let me know if you have any specific questions makeup/haircare wise for my upcoming post!

5. Shower Curtains

Just say no to vinyl. You know the overwhelming smell of opening a new shower curtain and hanging it? Yeah, that stink is dangerous. Vinyl off gasses some pretty nasty stuff and showers are usually in bathrooms right off the bedroom, so between bathroom time and sleep time, we spend a lot of our lives breathing that air. Go with cloth shower curtains if you can!

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This might sound like I kind of lost my mind this year (and maybe I did, but having a babe will do that to you), but now that I'm responsible for another person's health, I only want the very best and safest products used in my home. I can't control what she is exposed to outside of our house, but since we spend most of our time here, I can try to be smart about what we surround ourselves with regularly!