How to Create a Healthy Home

A healthy home is essential for overall wellness – your living environment is a huge part of a healthy lifestyle! From air quality to non-toxic cleaning supplies, there are many different factors in making your house a healthy home. Check out these five components to help guide you to create a healthy home!

Holistic wellness incorporates several pillars of health. Nutrition and mental health are important, of course, but you shouldn’t overlook other aspects of a healthy lifestyle. While I've primarily built Grass Fed Salsa's reputation by helping people heal with the AIP diet, I’m equally if not more passionate about non-toxic living. This includes home wellness!

What does home wellness mean?

Home wellness is a concept that centers around the health of your home and how it contributes to your own health status. For instance, if you eat a ‘clean diet', but live in a moldy home filled with furniture off-gassing formaldehyde, you’re missing out on a key part of your health journey. (source, source)

For me, home wellness means creating a safer environment for me and my family to spend our time. As a society, we spend up to 90% of our time indoors. As the popularity of working from home continues to grow, it will become even more imperative that we are aware of the health of our home environment. (source)

I raise my daughter in my home, cook nourishing foods in my home, run my business in my home, and sleep in my home. Your situation is likely very similar. I need the environment that I’m spending the majority of my time in, and repairing my body in as I sleep, to be healthy. Otherwise the toxic burden of my environment will hinder the healing modalities I'm investing time and money into. (source)

That’s what home wellness is to me. I’d love for you to comment and tell me your unique definition! I’ve included the nitty-gritty details of how to make your home a healthy one in this article. Check it out and let me know–what do you score on the home wellness scale?

Two Phases of Non-Toxic Living

When it comes to detoxing of any kind, whether it's a detoxification diet or a home detox, you always need to consider 2 phases. Here's an analogy to explain the importance of the two phases. (source)

Imagine living with a hoarder as a roommate. Due to their resistance to let go of anything, your house is full of junk. When your roommate decides to move out, suddenly, your house stops filling with more junk. However, if you don't put in work to get rid of the junk the hoarder already brought into the house, it won't ever be ‘clean'.

In this example, the ‘junk' being accumulated is the toxins. You can stop putting toxins into your home and body, but if you aren't taking out the toxins that have been brought into it and are being stored there, you'll never truly be ‘detoxed'.

Phase 1: Stop bringing toxins in

The average home is, usually unintentionally, filled with toxins like chemicals, pollutants, and biological hazards (like mold spores, parasites, and pesticides that get tracked in on the bottoms of your shoes). (source)

All that may sound overwhelming, but you do actually have a lot of control over your home’s health simply by what you’re introducing into your daily life at home. Many people aren’t aware that the products they’re using and their lifestyle habits are contributing to the toxic load in their home. 

For example, conventional cleaning products are a common contributor to your home’s toxic load. Switching to a safer alternative is an easy way to stop bringing toxins into your home. (source)

Phase 2: Start filtering toxins out

Aside from reducing the amount of toxins you’re bringing into your home, you can also make your home healthier by filtering toxins out. Even if you reduce the amount of toxins you’re bringing in, you will still have toxins in your home. It’s pretty unavoidable in this modern world.

From furniture off-gassing to mold spores in your walls, household toxins are a fact of life. What you can control is the amount you bring in and the amount you do your best to filter out. This means including detoxifying products like air filters and beeswax candles in your home. (source)

5 Primary Components to a Healthy Home

Below I've shared the 5 primary components to a healthy home. These include choices you can make for phase 1: stop bringing toxins into your home, as well as some strategies and products you can bring in that help phase 2: reducing the toxins that are already in your home.

Furniture

You may not know that furniture plays a huge role in your home’s health. Modern furniture is manufactured with cheaper materials and finishes, which can cause a lot of off-gassing. These chemical emissions can pollute your air and quickly turn a healthy home into a toxic one. (source)

When purchasing furniture, go for pieces made with natural materials such as wood and organic cotton. Be sure you avoid furniture finished with stain repellants or fire retardants. Vintage furniture is a good option, but be sure it’s never been stored in a moldy area. (source)

Finishes

Much like furniture, building materials today are more toxic than you’d think. From paint to drywall to linoleum flooring, the finishings in your home make a huge difference to your home’s health. Often, pre-fab homes, mobile homes, or very newly built homes will be the worst offenders when it comes to toxic finishes. (source)

Also be sure to consider the little details like lightbulbs, fire alarms, and appliances. Some of these may contain toxic chemicals or emit unnecessarily strong EMFs.

Cleaning products

The products you use to clean your home go a long way to making your home a healthy one or a toxic one. Conventional cleaning products contain synthetic preservatives, disinfectant agents, and “fragrance” to mask the noxious smells of the chemicals. These products contain endocrine disruptors and irritants. (source)

Instead of reaching for that product that boasts its ability to clean “99.9%” of germs–often invalidated and unnecessary, anyway–go for cleaners made with safer ingredients.

Detoxifying products 

Include detoxifying products in your home’s wellness plan to help counteract some of the inevitable toxins! These are all great way to detox your home:

• Air filters (source)
• Air purifiers
• Water filters (source)
• Salt lamps (source)
• Beeswax candles
• Air purifying plants (source)
• Mineral based paint

Physical health of your home

Aside from external environmental toxins, your home’s health can be affected by physical issues. If your home’s bones aren’t stable, it affects everything else. Some physical issues to watch out for include:

• Mold (avoid excess moisture) (source)
• Pollutants (remove shoes)
• Ventilation
• Natural gas issues
• EMFs (source)

I hope this information empowers you to start making your home a healthy one! When you consider how much time you spend in your home, you'll see how important it is to detox your environment.

From furniture to mold and everything in between, there's so much that can impact your home's health–and YOUR health! Your living space should be a safe, healthy place for you to relax, heal, and rejuvenate. Check back soon, when I'll go over my top favorite ways to make your home healthy!

Other Healthy Home articles you'll love:

• Air Purifying Plants (for your Enneagram type!)
• Essential Oil Diffuser Blends
• DIY Detox Bath Recipes