Five Ways to create a Healthy Home in Waverton
Have you ever thought about your home as being healthy or unhealthy? While the idea of a healthy home might be new to some of us, it is gradually gaining popularity with homeowners. 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 help you in producing a healthy home environment.
1. Clean Air and Circulation:
Here are some little known realities about the air inside many of today’s homes:
Indoor air contaminant levels might be two to 5 times higher than the contaminant levels outdoors.
Indoor air contaminant is among the top environmental concerns today.
Australians spend up to 90% of their time inside your home.
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 ways to improve the quality of your indoor air:
Consider an Indoor Air Purifier. You can likewise install exhaust fans in bathrooms to assist eliminate wetness and chemicals from your home.
Upgrade the air filters on your heater with the pleated filters that capture smaller particles. Change the filters regularly as recommended by the manufacturer’s instructions.
You can likewise use indoor houseplants to assist 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 might trigger watery eyes, burning sensations 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 regularly with a wet fabric.
Dust your wood, tile, linoleum, and laminate flooring regularly with a dust mop or a vacuum made for hard flooring.
Vacuum carpets, rugs, and upholstered furniture regularly. 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 bigger. In addition, consider using a bag-less vacuum to avoid the direct exposure of dust when you change a bag.
Enclose pillows, mattresses, and box springs in an airtight, dust-proof cover.
Dust/clean ceiling fans regularly to make sure they are not releasing dust in the air whenever 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 clean and fresh is to avoid using harsh cleaning products, which can produce fumes that might stick around for days. Try using natural 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, clothing
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 very low VOC (volatile organic compounds) contentno formaldehydelow odor
Try using 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 including books, articles, and sites, where you can find extra info.
If you need environment cleaning services in Wollstonecraft, McMahons Point, North Sydney, Lavender Bay, Greenwich, Crows Nest, Milsons Point, St Leonards, Northwood, Kirribilli and Waverton, call us now!
All Natural, Chemical Free At Home Dry Cleaning Techniques
Perchloroethylene, better called perc, is utilized by 80 percent of dry cleaners in Australia as a solvent to wash clothing that are “dry clean only.” Regardless of its effectiveness, the use of this chemical has been connected to a series of health adverse effects and has recently come under heavy public scrutiny. With heavy regulation from relevant agencies, professional dry cleaners are seeking the use of a more secure chemical– liquid carbon dioxide– to provide a green laundry option. At-home dry cleaning kits such as are offering the option of economical & ecologically safe dry cleaning, that reduces the energy-burning, waste producing processes that the professionals use.
The first 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 presents a hazard to our health. Perc is a central nervous system depressant. Direct exposure to it can take place in the work environment or in the environment when it is released into air, water, land, or groundwater. It can likewise occur 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 correctly aired out. Short-term contact can trigger dizziness, headaches, nausea, and irritation of the skin, eyes, nose, and throat, while long term direct exposure poses higher risks, 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 adverse effects. The only disadvantages for dry cleaning with CO2 are that it does not clean as well as perc does and the equipment required to use it is very expensive, thus a greater rate is passed on to the consumer.
A virtue of environmentalism is moderation. That being stated, green dry cleanind is best attained if you do not dry clean 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 freshened. Professional dry cleaning is a big process that utilizes 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 harmful. At-home dry cleaning involves no greater than a cleaning cloth and your dryer. There are no harmful chemicals involved and no waste.
While perc remains the most effective dry cleaning solvent, the use of 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 impact that we, as human beings, have on the environment. While much of the media’s focus has been on greenhouse gas emissions and the ways we can minimize our carbon footprint, less attention has been paid to the impact that traditional cleaning products and techniques 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 eliminated from consumer products, traditional cleaning products continue to have a damaging 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 possibly harmful chemicals, in part because they are largely uncontrolled and in part because there are couple of labeling requirements. For instance, many cleaning products contain phosphates (which are also a main component of many fertilizers), which can contaminate water and rob lakes and rivers of oxygen. Similarly, many cleaning products with dyes and scents contain phthalates, and most integrate other natural compounds into their formulas. Together, these chemicals can have negative results on the neurological functions, respiration, and reproductive organs of human beings and wildlife. Our use of several different cleaning agents at once (a window cleaner, a basin cleanser, and a toilet bowl cleaner, for example) can exacerbate the products’ results on our health.
Green Cleaning Products
In response to the growing concern about the chemicals in cleaning products and their negative results on our health and on the health of our planet, green cleaning products are being touted. Some companies that make green products ban certain chemicals, and others make it a point to fully disclose all ingredients on labels. What they don’t tell you, however, is that it’s absolutely possible to have a clean home without using any cleaning products at all. Cleaning without products might take a bit more elbow grease, but water alone will do the trick.
Why Water and a Cloth Functions Just as Well
For the ecologically conscious, one of the very best cleaning tools is a cloth – some would say the ultimate cloth – that utilizes mirafiber to produce a streak free, spot free, lint free, and dust free finish. Utilizing this kind of fabric means that you don’t have to use paper towels, which add to the waste that negatively affects the environment. Additionally, this ultimate fabric is generally guaranteedto last 5 years, making it decidedly environment-friendly. Because it’s washable and bleachable, it can be utilized over and over again on essentially any surface, from windows and glass to stainless steel and Corian. Essentially, you just damp it, wring it, clean your surface, and walk away. This ultimate fabric saves time, saves money, and, most importantly, helps save the earth.
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