5 Ways to create a Healthy Home in Lavender Bay
Have you ever thought about your home as being healthy or unhealthy? While the idea of a healthy home might be new to a few of us, it is steadily gaining popularity with property owners. A healthy home can include a number of elements from building products used to construct your home to utilizing non-toxic cleansing products. Below is a list of 5 methods to help you in producing a healthy home environment.
1. Clean Air and Circulation:
Here are some little known facts about the air inside many of today’s houses:
Indoor air contaminant levels might be 2 to 5 times higher than the contaminant levels outdoors.
Indoor air contaminant is among the leading environmental issues today.
Australians spend up to 90% of their time inside.
Indoor air toxins such as tobacco smoke, pollen, mold, dust, and animal dander have the capability to create asthmatic and allergic reactions.
Listed below are a few methods to improve the quality of your indoor air:
Consider an Indoor Air Purifier. You can also set up exhaust fans in bathrooms to assist eliminate moisture and chemicals from your home.
Upgrade the air filters on your heating system with the pleated filters that capture smaller particles. Change the filters frequently as recommended by the manufacturer’s directions.
You can also use indoor houseplants to aid in cleansing your home’s air. For instance, Boston Ferns clean 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 might trigger watery eyes, burning sensations in the eyes, nose and throat, queasiness, 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 frequently with a damp cloth.
Dust your hardwood, tile, linoleum, and laminate flooring frequently with a dust mop or a vacuum made for hard flooring.
Vacuum carpets, carpets, and upholstered furniture frequently. Consider buying a vacuum with a HEPA (high-efficiency particulate air) filter. A HEPA filter can eliminating a minimum of 99.97% of all particles that are 0.3 microns or larger. In addition, consider utilizing a bag-less vacuum to avoid the direct exposure of dust when you change a bag.
Encase pillows, mattresses, and box springs in an airtight, dust-proof cover.
Dust/clean ceiling fans frequently to make sure they are not launching dust in the air each time you run them.
Change dust-collecting blinds and long drapes with window shades or washable curtains.
3. Use Natural and Non-Toxic Cleaning Products:
One way to ensure that the fragrances in your house are tidy and fresh is to avoid utilizing harsh cleaning products, which can produce fumes that might remain for days. Try utilizing natural components such as baking soda, vinegar, soda water, and lemon juice.
For instance, to make a natural glass cleaner, mix:
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 little list of environment-friendly products available on the marketplace today:
Organic cotton towels, linens, clothing
Mattresses bediing, pillows
Cork flooring, wool carpet
Sofas, chairs, ottomans
Toys and games for any age
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 utilizing any of the above suggestions to create a healthy home environment. Although the concept of a healthy home is fairly new to many, there are numerous resources readily available consisting of books, articles, and sites, where you can find additional information.
If you need environment cleaning services in McMahons Point, North Sydney, Milsons Point, Kirribilli, Waverton, Dawes Point, Kurraba Point, Millers Point, The Rocks, Neutral Bay and Lavender Bay, call us now!
100% Natural, Chemical Free At Home Dry Cleaning Methods
Perchloroethylene, much better called perc, is used by 80 percent of dry cleaners in Australia as a solvent to clean clothing that are “dry clean only.” In spite of its effectiveness, using this chemical has been connected to a range of health side 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 option. At-home dry cleaning kits such as are offering the choice of budget-friendly & environmentally safe dry cleaning, that reduces the energy-burning, waste producing processes that the professionals use.
The initial 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 nervous system depressant. Direct exposure to it can take place in the office 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 properly aired out. Short-term contact can trigger lightheadedness, headaches, queasiness, and inflammation of the skin, eyes, nose, and throat, while long term direct exposure poses greater threats, 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, abundant, naturally occurring and can even be recycled from the industrial wastes from the manufacture of chemicals such as ammonia. Most importantly, direct exposure to carbon dioxide has no health side effects. The only disadvantages for dry cleansing with CO2 are that it does not clean as well as perc does and the equipment needed to use it is extremely costly, hence a greater cost is passed on to the customer.
A virtue of environmentalism is moderation. That being stated, green dry cleanind is best attained if you do not dry tidy at all or limit the use ofprofessional dry cleaning by utilizing at-home dry cleaning kits for garments with smaller spots and stains or that need to be refreshed. Professional dry cleaning is a big 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 utilizing perc (it is still allowed in many states), these compounds are harmful. At-home dry cleaning involves no greater than a cleaning cloth and your clothes 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
Nobody would argue that there’s a growing awareness about the effect that we, as people, have on the environment. While much of the media’s focus has been on greenhouse gas emissions and the methods we can lessen our carbon footprint, less attention has been paid to the effect that conventional cleaning products and approaches have on our health and on the environment. Although chlorofluorocarbons have long been recognized as contributing to the depletion of the earth’s ozone layer, and have been largely removed from customer products, traditional cleaning products continue to have a detrimental impact on the environment. To that end, there has been a wave of “green cleaning” products getting in the market.
Traditional Cleaning Products
Many conventional cleaning products contain a range of potentially harmful chemicals, in part due to the fact that they are largely uncontrolled and in part due to the fact that there are couple of 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. Likewise, many cleaning products with dyes and scents contain phthalates, and most integrate other natural substances into their formulas. Together, these chemicals can have negative effects on the neurological functions, respiration, and reproductive organs of people and wildlife. Our use of a number of different cleaning agents at once (a window cleaner, a basin cleanser, and a toilet bowl cleaner, for instance) can intensify the products’ impacts on our health.
Green Cleaning Products
In response to the growing concern about the chemicals in cleaning products and their negative impacts on our health and on the health of our world, green cleaning products are being promoted. Some companies that make green products prohibit certain chemicals, and others make it a point to completely divulge all ingredients on labels. What they don’t tell you, however, is that it’s absolutely possible to have a clean home without utilizing any cleaning products at all. Cleaning without products might take a bit more effort, but water alone will do the trick.
Why Water and a Cloth Functions Just as Well
For the environmentally mindful, among 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. Using this type of cloth means that you don’t have to use paper towels, which contribute to the waste that negatively impacts the environment. Additionally, this ultimate cloth is usually guaranteedto last 5 years, making it decidedly environment-friendly. Since it’s washable and bleachable, it can be used over and over again on essentially any surface, from windows and glass to stainless-steel and Corian. Generally, you just wet it, wring it, clean your surface, and leave. This ultimate cloth saves time, saves money, and, most importantly, assists in saving the earth.
Don’t forget that we are based in McMahons Point, North Sydney, Milsons Point, Kirribilli, Waverton, Dawes Point, Kurraba Point, Millers Point, The Rocks, Neutral Bay and Lavender Bay