Last week we heard from local mom Nicole Christensen, health & wellness advocate with Beautycounter, on her top four big picture tips to remove air pollutants from our homes. We hope your shoes are being left in the mudroom 😉. In this 3-part series we are looking at what it means to have clean, toxin-free homes and how to do this simply and not feel overwhelmed.
Unfortunately, many household cleaners have ingredients that are linked to cancer and hormone disruption and emit VOC’s – nothing we want in our homes. There’s a lot of green-washing in the industry as there’s very little regulation over these products and does organic and natural also mean safe for me to use and breathe in? Are all the ingredients organic or just some? At the end of the day how do we know what is safe for our households and families and can we get the cleaning over with so we can move on with life…#anyoneelse??
Nicole’s Top 2 resources for finding safer products:
1. Environmental Working Group (ewg.org)
EWG is a non-profit with breakthrough research and education and a free app and website you can search products and see their safety score, A through F. It’s so easy to use, you can search your existing products or look up an areas you’re considering switching to safer from the bathroom to the kitchen. The EWG Verified score is gold, where the product meets the strictest standards for health and transparency!
2. Mamavation (mamavation.com)
Mamavation is a community empowering women through eco-wellness research and product investigations, reviewing everything from food to mattresses and personal care products and outdoor pest-control. Each investigation breaks down products by ingredients and tells you who the bad, better and best brands are!
Nicole’s Top 3 areas of the house to clean safer:
1. Hardwood Floors: A lot of hardwood floor cleaners have ingredients that can be especially hard on our respiratory systems as we breath in these harmful chemicals. My favorite way to clean my hardwood (and tile) floors is with a steam mop. Bissell makes varying models that eliminate 99.9% of germs and bacteria simply with water/steam! The beauty of this is you’re also not having to buy new cleaners when you run out, so there’s a long-term savings cleaning with steam as well. *Do not buy scented deionized water/solutions, plain deionized water keeps it safe.
2. Laundry: Fragrance is a big problem ingredient. It’s protected under copyright law so companies don’t have to tell you what makes up the scent and most fragrances are made up of 100’s of synthetic chemicals many linked to hormone disruption and cancers. The chemicals in laundry detergent, fabric softener and dryer sheets adhere to your clothes, vent off in the air and rub off on your skin – your largest organ. There’s a lot of safer brands out there (use resources above) but being that we’re in Chicagoland and I love to support local, Meliora’s laundry detergent is MADESAFE Certified, Cruelty Free, they’re a Certified Benefit Corporation and their HQ is in downtown Chicago!
3. Bathroom: Look I’m all about safe, but the bathroom…I need some serious cleaner! If this is what you’re thinking, I hear you. I use three products when I clean my bathrooms and after a friend used my bathroom for the first time (pre shelter in place) she came out saying, “you’re one of those really clean people aren’t you?” which I took as a compliment, but I share to say that you can still get your bathroom clean without harsh chemicals. Again, you can use the resources above to find products you like that are safer, here’s what I use:
Toilet Bowl Cleaner: Seventh Generation Toilet Bowl Natural Cleaner
General Purpose Cleaner (for sinks/tile): Bon Ami Powder Cleanser
General Purpose Cleaner (for toilet seat/counters): Young Living Thieves Cleaner Concentrate
Some of these areas will be a process and you start to get used to different smells after you clean, etc. know that anytime we make changes there is an adjustment period. One of my favorite quotes from my CEO is “It’s progress, not perfection”. I’ve been on this journey for about seven years, cleaning without harsh chemicals and it didn’t all happen on day one, give yourself grace and what’s one area you’d like to “clean up”? You’ve got this! Next time we’ll look at some of the products we use on our bodies from bathing our children to applying makeup – as always, here’s to your health and a truly clean Spring!
Any questions in the meantime, Nicole can be reached at [email protected]
This post is sponsored by Nicole Christensen
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