Are you making your home more toxic?
I am a true believer in living as non-toxic as possible and therefore I seek to make the best choices I can for those things that are within my control (which is a lot!). This includes the substances I put on my body, in my body, and what I bring into my home. Today I’ll share with you my household cleaning choices.
The right tools
First, I think good cleaning tools can go a long way and reduce your need to buy products, which saves money, conserves water, and minimizes adding wastes to our environment. I use E-Cloths a lot and really love them. I have the Glass and Polishing cloth for windows and mirror which works with just water and I use the General Purpose cloth for everything else. For tougher jobs I use a regular cleaning brush that I’ve had for many years.
Healthy cleaning products
My #1 most useful and favourite cleaning product is Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soap! This stuff is really magic and they claim there are 18 uses. I’m not sure what all 18 are, but you can use it for all-purpose cleaning, laundry, dish soap, body wash, shampoo, and even toothpaste to name a few. I use it all over the house to clean surfaces, scrub the tub and toilet, or mop. It comes in lots of great scents and is organic, fair-trade, biodegradable, vegetable based. Apparently this is the top selling brand of soaps in North America! Who knew?
Something I’ve recently come to love is Nature Clean Oxy Stain Remover powder. I use it in the laundry for whitening, brightening, and stain removal, but I have also recently started using it to clean, as it works really well in the shower/tub and the toilet. I mix it with the Dr. Bronner’s soap and scrub the surface, then let it sit for a while before rinsing. This gets things very shiny clean!
Most of the time, these two products are enough for everything, but sometimes I like to use a spray cleaner, especially in the kitchen and bathroom if I’ve been procrastinating and haven’t cleaned in a while… Right now I’m using Parsley Plus spray, which literally has 3 ingredients! I kind of like the odd, parsley-like scent to this product and it works really great!
Stop the germ warfare!
You may notice I don’t use any sanitizing or specific germ-killing products… For day-to-day life, I think these things are overkill and in fact prevent natural and useful immune “education.” Our bodies are incredibly well-designed to protect us from everyday exposure to pathogens like bacteria, viruses, etc. In fact, regular exposure to these things is incredibly important for our immune systems to develop and function properly. This is especially true for children, who are programmed to get themselves as dirty and grimy as they can! Basic good hygiene (like hand-washing), reducing the unnecessary spread of germs (like sneezing/coughing into your sleeve instead of all over the person next to you), and supporting the immune system (by eating healthy, getting enough rest, and dealing appropriately with illness) works with our body’s natural balance to keep us healthy. Exposure to man-made toxins and pollutants is far more disruptive to health than exposure to normal environmental pathogens!
There are some people who get sick easily/frequently and for those individuals it is important to investigate the causes behind that increased susceptibility (whether it be dietary intolerances, immune imbalance, overwork, energetic imbalance, unusual exposure, etc) and address that in order to solve the problem. This is what naturopathic medicine is all about!
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