Tag: healthy

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Floor Cleaner That’s Better for the Environment

The floors in your home handle a lot of foot traffic and if you have pets, you can also add paw traffic to the load that floors handle. It’s no wonder that floors can be tough to keep clean.

Besides foot traffic, there’s human hair, pet hair, dust and anything tracked in from the outside that can build up. Plus, you also have to take care of any accidental spills and make sure you get up liquids that stain the floor. Some stains get ground in and can be tougher to get out if you didn’t know they had occurred.

It’s easy to buy into the belief that using a steam cleaner is the only way to truly clean carpets. And you might also think that chemical cleaners are the best product to use on wood or tile flooring, but you would be wrong.

Cleaners have too many dangerous chemicals to use in your home and the water used after a chemical steam cleaning ends up in the sewer system, while the non-biodegradable containers end up in the landfill. Not only are these chemicals bad for you and the earth, but they don’t do the best job at cleaning.

You want floors that are safe and clean enough to walk barefoot on and you also want floors clean enough for your children to be able to sit on or crawl on if you have little infants learning how to navigate the world.

Starting with carpets, you’ll first want to use an organic stain remover. You’ll find organic stain removers that don’t have any fumes, so there’s no odor for you and they don’t have any toxins so they’re great for the environment, too.

Once you’ve gone over any stains on the carpet, you can apply the carpet cleaner. Most organic cleaners are concentrated so a little can keep your carpets looking new all year long.

Even if you use a carpet cleaning machine that doesn’t use heat, organic carpet cleaners will still work for you. Some of the carpet cleaners can be specially mixed in a small dish and used as a stain remover, so you can even skip the pretreatment of stains depending on the brand you get. Look for cleaners that have soap bark and great smelling scents like sage.

For tile floors, get a cleaner that’s multi-purpose and contains linseed oil. This is safe to use on marble flooring as well. If you have hardwood flooring, make sure the organic cleaner you buy specifically lists hardwood flooring, because not all organic ingredients are suitable for hardwood.

Some organic cleaners will contain vinegar and an essence, which are good for cleaning and shining wood floors. For any floor polishes that you use, make sure they’re vegetable based.

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4 Tips to Reduce Chemical Exposure in Your Children

Children are the most precious asset in this world. They are vulnerable, and require your protection. As they grow up, some of these children will become scientists and come up with new discoveries and advancements. Others will become the doctors and nurses that will take care of you as you grow older. No matter what they grow up to do, they all deserve to be given the best start in life.

As a parent, you do everything you can to keep them safe and healthy. You install baby gates and monitors, make sure they eat their fruits and vegetables, and make sure they get enough sleep.

Many parents are aware of the necessity to reduce the number of chemicals that their children are exposed to. After all, children are more vulnerable to chemicals as their bodies and minds are still growing and developing, and they tend to spend more time on the floor crawling and putting their hands in their mouths.

You may have already taken some steps, such as including more organic foods into their diets. This is a great start, and in what follows, are a few more tips to reduce chemical exposure in your children.

1. Switch to non-toxic cleaning products –

Stop using harmful chemicals to wash your floor, clean your carpets and bathtubs, and even clean the dishes or your baby’s high chair. These chemicals will eventually make their way into your children’s bodies.

In addition, use safer laundry detergents, stain removers, and fabric softeners. Look for products that do not contain the known carcinogen, formaldehyde.

2. Do not clean toys with certain commercial disinfectant products –

Some companies advertise their cleaning agents and disinfectants by showing that they can be sprayed or wiped on children’s toys. This can be a sure way to increase your children’s exposure to chemicals, if there are harmful chemicals in the product. Instead, hand wash them with simple dish soap and water. If you feel the need to disinfect something, you can do this after cleaning with soap and water. There are some natural thyme disinfectants that have been proven to be powerful at killing germs.

3. Do not use tick and flea collars on your pets –

It is surprising that these collars are even still made. If they are made to keep ticks and fleas away, they are definitely laden with chemicals. So any contact your pet has with you, your children, and other surfaces in the house (such as your pillow), can mean contamination with chemicals.

4. Vacuum often

If you can afford it, it is better not to use carpet, and instead have wood or tile in place. This is because carpet tends to trap dust, which contains chemicals that are either in your home (such as fire retardants) or have been tracked in from the outside (such as pesticides from your lawn).

However, if you do have carpet, be sure to vacuum frequently and get into all the corners and along the baseboards too. Make sure that your vacuum has a HEPA filter as this will ensure that the dust stays in the vacuum rather than being recirculated into the air.