Home may be where the heart is, but it’s also a potentially damaging place for your mind and body. You’re probably unaware of the toxins – both physical and emotional – that float around your space.
But with a bit of careful clean-up, you can refresh your space for a clearer, healthier 2020 and beyond. Here are six ways to do it:
1. Clean Out the Pantry
Start your detox by limiting your access to foods that don’t serve your body. Remove unhealthy options from your pantry and your fridge to make way for more nourishing options. On that note, try and incorporate more colorful fruits and veggies into your daily routine. Tack a salad onto your dinner menu, for instance, and choose a rainbow of toppings to boost your vitamin and mineral intake. Now that you have room in your fridge, you can stock up on all the healthy, tasty goodies your body craves.
2. Try Feng Shui
A cluttered home won’t be a productive one. With too much visual stimuli, you will find it hard to focus on one thing. Studying the tenets of Feng Shui can help all of that — and change the flow of energy so that it’s calm instead of chaotic.
If you want to Feng Shui your living room, for instance, you have to follow a set of guidelines that will help make it a truly relaxing place. Start by selecting a room with at least two exterior walls, away from the center of your home. There should be ample seating so that the entire family can sit comfortably. Feng Shui dictates that pathways should remain open, too — no furniture jutting out into the walkway.
The right setup will make you feel calmer and happier about your home. If you’ve been stressed about such a topic before, then this is a vital step for detoxifying your mind in the new year.
3. Clear the Air
Feng Shui deals with the negative energy you can’t see — now, let’s talk about the actual, tangible toxins in your home. Indoor air quality can have a huge effect on you and your family, especially if you suffer from allergies or asthma.
To remove such irritants as dust, mold and other indoor pollutants, start by replacing the filter in your HVAC unit. This film may seem flimsy, but it plays a vital role in the cleansing of your home’s air. It gathers the particles you don’t want to breathe — that is until the filter becomes too full. If it doesn’t have room to catch anything else, guess what’s floating around in the air?
You can take further steps to improve air quality, too. Regular dusting and house-cleaning efforts can reduce these toxins. Opt for all-natural solutions, whether you buy them in a store or whip them up at home. Either way, they won’t release unsafe-to-breathe toxins into the air.
4. Filter Your Water
Perhaps you only trust store-bought water to be toxin-free and tasty. If so, you’re wasting a ton of single-use plastic to drink your required daily intake of H2O. Instead, consider installing a water filter in your home or swapping out your fridge for one with a built-in dispenser. Either way, you’ll have the option to fill a glass – a toxin-free material, by the way – with fresh, clean water. No need to waste material, and no need to worry that what you’re drinking will harm your body in any way.
5. Go Fragrance-Free
A fresh-smelling home isn’t equal to a detoxified one. In fact, filling your home with artificial fragrances can be damaging to the indoor air quality — a far cry from the environment you’re looking to cultivate.
If you want your home to smell fresh, try an all-natural solution. For one thing, you can throw a few cinnamon sticks into a pot of boiling water and let the sizzling aroma fill the air. Or, you might try an essential oil diffuser. Add a few drops of lavender or lemon to a vat of water and let the machine turn it into a gentle mist. The sweet fragrance emitted is all-natural and smells just as good as a faux fragrance.
6. Cut Down on Energy Usage and Waste
Your home may be toxic not just to you, but to the planet upon which it sits. For one thing, you and your family might be wasting energy in your daily lives. As one example, check the lightbulbs that you use in your home. Old-fashioned, incandescent bulbs use six times the energy of LED bulbs, and they last for a mere 1,200 hours, in comparison to the LED’s 25,000-hour lifespan. If you’re choosing old-school bulbs, then, you’re wasting energy and putting more waste into the landfill — time to detoxify.
On that note, your home may be producing other toxic waste that ends up in the environment. If your family doesn’t recycle, make a point to start a bin ASAP.
It can take up to 1,000 years for a piece of plastic to decompose. You may be pushing recyclable plastics through to the landfill, meaning they’ll be clogging up the place for the next millennium. So, set up a trash-sorting station in your home to prevent these reusable materials from going to waste.
Detox and Feel Your Best
It doesn’t take much to transform your home into a happier, toxin-free environment. This goes for both mental and physical irritants — a few simple steps, and you’ll have an abode that brings out the best in you and your family. You have the tools to do it, so all there’s left to do is get started and see for yourself.