Five Ways to create a Healthy Home in Bardwell Park
Have you ever thought of your home as being healthy or unhealthy? While the principle of a healthy home may be new to some of us, it is gradually getting popularity with house owners. A healthy home can include a variety of elements from building products utilized to build your home to using non-toxic cleaning products. Below is a list of 5 ways to assist you in developing a healthy home environment.
1. Clean Air and Circulation:
Here are some little known facts about the air inside many of today’s homes:
Indoor air contaminant levels may be 2 to 5 times higher than the contaminant levels outdoors.
Indoor air contaminant is one of the leading environmental concerns today.
Australians spend approximately 90% of their time inside.
Indoor air contaminants such as tobacco smoke, pollen, mold, dust, and animal dander have the capability to create asthmatic and allergic reactions.
Listed below are a couple of ways to improve the quality of your indoor air:
Consider an Indoor Air Purifier. You can also install exhaust fans in bathrooms to help get rid of wetness and chemicals from your home.
Update the air filters on your heater with the pleated filters that catch smaller particles. Change the filters routinely as recommended by the manufacturer’s guidelines.
You can also use indoor houseplants to help in cleansing your home’s air. For instance, Boston Ferns cleanse formaldehyde from the air. According to environmental experts, formaldehyde is a colorless, strong-smelling gas. When present in the air at levels above 0.1 ppm (parts in a million parts of air), it may trigger watery eyes, burning feelings in the eyes, nose and throat, nausea, coughing, chest tightness, wheezing, skin rashes, and allergic reactions. Formaldehyde can be found in insulation, particleboard, paper products and many cleaning products.
2.Dust-proof Your Home:
Dust your rooms and knickknacks routinely with a moist cloth.
Dust your hardwood, tile, linoleum, and laminate flooring routinely with a dust mop or a vacuum made for hard flooring.
Vacuum carpets, carpets, and upholstered furniture routinely. Consider buying a vacuum cleaner with a HEPA (high-efficiency particulate air) filter. A HEPA filter can getting rid of a minimum of 99.97% of all particles that are 0.3 microns or larger. In addition, consider using a bag-less vacuum to avoid the direct exposure of dust when you change a bag.
Frame pillows, mattresses, and box springs in an airtight, dust-proof cover.
Dust/clean ceiling fans routinely to make sure they are not releasing dust in the air each time you run them.
Replace dust-collecting blinds and long drapes with window shades or washable curtains.
3. Use Natural and Non-Toxic Cleaning Products:
One way to assure that the fragrances in your home are tidy and fresh is to prevent using harsh cleaning products, which can create fumes that may remain for days. Try using natural active ingredients such as baking soda, vinegar, soda water, and lemon juice.
For instance, to make a natural glass cleaner, combine:
2 teaspoons white vinegarone quart of warm water
Mix ingredients together and pour into spray bottle. Spray on surface and wipe dry.
4. Fill Your Home with Natural and Earth-Friendly Products. Below is a small list of environment-friendly products available on the marketplace today:
Organic cotton towels, linens, clothes
Mattresses bediing, pillows
Cork flooring, wool carpet
Sofas, chairs, ottomans
Toys and games for all ages
Pet products
Soap and laundry detergents
Organic candles, home décor accessories
5. Use Safe, Non-Toxic Interior Paints that have extremely low VOC (volatile organic compounds) contentno formaldehydelow smell
Try using any of the above suggestions to create a healthy home environment. Although the idea of a healthy home is fairly new to many, there are numerous resources available consisting of books, articles, and websites, where you can find extra info.
If you need environment cleaning services in Earlwood, Bardwell Valley, Bexley North, Turrella, Arncliffe, Bexley, Banksia, Clemton Park, Canterbury, Kingsgrove and Bardwell Park, call us now!
100% Natural, Chemical Free At Home Dry Cleaning Methods
Perchloroethylene, much better known as perc, is utilized by 80 percent of dry cleaners in Australia as a solvent to clean clothing that are “dry clean only.” Regardless of its effectiveness, using this chemical has been linked to a variety of health negative effects and has recently come under heavy public scrutiny. With heavy regulation from relevant agencies, professional dry cleaners are looking for the use of a safer chemical– liquid carbon dioxide– to provide a green laundry alternative. At-home dry cleaning kits such as are offering the choice of budget-friendly & environmentally safe dry cleaning, that lowers the energy-burning, waste producing processes that the professionals use.
The primary step to green dry cleaning is replacing harmful chemicals with natural cleaning products. Perchloroethylene (perc) is a synthetic chemical that is made from a reaction between ethylene and chlorine. Like many syntheitic chemicals, it positions a risk to our health. Perc is a central nerve system depressant. Direct exposure to it can happen in the workplace or in the environment when it is released into air, water, land, or groundwater. It can also take place when people use products consisting of perc, spend time in dry cleaning facilities that use perc, live above or adjacent to these dry cleaning facilities, or bring dry cleaned garments into their home before they are appropriately aired out. Short-term contact can trigger dizziness, headaches, nausea, and inflammation of the skin, eyes, nose, and throat, while long term direct exposure poses greater dangers, including liver and kidney damage and cancer.
Liquid carbon dioxide
Liquid carbon dioxide (CO2) appears to be the most practical green dry cleaning solvent to replace perchloroethylene. It is cheap, plentiful, naturally occurring and can even be recycled from the industrial wastes from the manufacture of chemicals such as ammonia. Most significantly, direct exposure to carbon dioxide has no health negative effects. The only downsides for dry cleaning with CO2 are that it does not clean as well as perc does and the machinery needed to use it is extremely costly, hence a higher cost is passed on to the customer.
A virtue of environmentalism is moderation. That being stated, green dry cleanind is best accomplished if you do not dry tidy at all or limit the use ofprofessional dry cleaning by using at-home dry cleaning kits for garments with smaller spots and stains or that need to be freshened. Professional dry cleaning is a large process that uses a great deal of energy and produces a great deal of waste in the form of powder residue, sludge and wastewater. If the dry cleaner is still using perc (it is still allowed in the majority of states), these substances are hazardous. At-home dry cleaning includes no greater than a cleaning cloth and your dryer. There are no harmful chemicals involved and no waste.
While perc is the most reliable dry cleaning solvent, using natural cleaning products and at-home dry cleaning can only be beneficial to our health and our environment.
Green Cleaning Gets a Boost with the Ultimate Cloth
No one would argue that there’s a growing awareness about the impact that we, as people, have on the environment. While much of the media’s focus has been on greenhouse gas emissions and the ways we can lessen our carbon footprint, less attention has been paid to the impact that conventional cleaning products and methods have on our health and on the environment. Although chlorofluorocarbons have long been recognized as contributing to the exhaustion of the earth’s ozone layer, and have been largely eliminated from customer products, conventional cleaning products continue to have a destructive impact on the environment. To that end, there has been a wave of “green cleaning” products entering the marketplace.
Traditional Cleaning Products
Most traditional cleaning products contain a variety of potentially harmful chemicals, in part because they are largely unregulated and in part because there are few labeling requirements. For instance, many cleaning products contain phosphates (which are also a main element of many fertilizers), which can infect water and rob lakes and rivers of oxygen. Similarly, many cleaning products with dyes and scents contain phthalates, and most integrate other organic substances into their formulas. Together, these chemicals can have unfavorable results on the neurological functions, respiration, and reproductive organs of people and wildlife. Our use of a number of different cleaning agents at the same time (a window cleaner, a basin cleanser, and a toilet bowl cleaner, for example) can intensify the products’ impacts on our health.
Green Cleaning Products
In reaction to the growing concern about the chemicals in cleaning products and their unfavorable impacts on our health and on the health of our world, green cleaning products are being promoted. Some companies that make green products ban certain chemicals, and others make it a point to totally divulge all ingredients on labels. What they do not tell you, however, is that it’s absolutely possible to have a clean home without using any cleaning products at all. Cleaning without products may take a bit more elbow grease, but water alone will do the trick.
Why Water and a Cloth Functions Just as Well
For the environmentally conscious, one of the best cleaning tools is a cloth – some would say the ultimate cloth – that uses mirafiber to produce a streak free, spot free, lint free, and dust free finish. Utilizing this kind of cloth means that you do not have to use paper towels, which contribute to the waste that adversely impacts the environment. Moreover, this ultimate cloth is usually guaranteedto last 5 years, making it extremely environment-friendly. Since it’s washable and bleachable, it can be utilized over and over again on virtually any surface, from windows and glass to stainless steel and Corian. Generally, you just damp it, wring it, clean your surface, and walk away. This ultimate cloth saves time, saves money, and, most significantly, assists in saving the earth.
Don’t forget that we are based in Earlwood, Bardwell Valley, Bexley North, Turrella, Arncliffe, Bexley, Banksia, Clemton Park, Canterbury, Kingsgrove and Bardwell Park