Natural Living
Natural Living
I'm a big believer in "do-it-yourself", and using basic natural ingredients for food, cosmetics and household needs such as cleaning supplies. It's all in an effort to try to reduce the amount of toxic chemicals I put in, on, and around my body and out into the world. Ingredients are the key.
Check out the Coach4HealthyLife blog for "do-it-yourself" ideas and natural ingredient recipes for food, cosmetics, and household needs.
Read the Ingredients!!
If you don't already do this, it's in everyone's best interest to read the ingredients list on everything you buy. If you're buying whole foods that have no ingredients lists, like fresh fruits and vegetables, that's great! But even items like eggs and butcher meats require some label reading in order to get the healthiest versions of them.
So let's say you're reading an ingredients list and you don't know what a word means. First of all, that's a sign that maybe it's not something you want to put in or on your body. But secondly, you should look it up. This is one of the benefits of having a smart phone. If you're in the grocery store, buying a container of... something... read the ingredients list and look up any words you don't recognize. Then you can use this information to determine whether you want to eat or drink that ingredient. If it's still too high-tech for you to understand, then talk to your favorite Health Coach (who also happens to have a chemistry/biochemistry degree)! ;-) But a good rule of thumb: if you don't recognize it, you look it up and still don't understand it, then don't eat it.
Household Cleaning Tips
Do you want some help with how to keep yourself and your home clean during the coronavirus / COVID-19 outbreak? Use the Contact Us page to contact the health coach for tips on making cleaning and sanitizing products if you're not able to find the products you need from in-store or online retailers.
Household supplies are a bit different since they don't have the same labeling requirements as food. So you're not likely to get a full list of ingredients, though the company may list a key ingredient that is what makes the product special. But here are your first healthy ingredients natural living tips. For cleaning, you can do pretty much everything that the commercial products do in a cheaper and healthier way by using basic ingredients that have been around forever. I'm not going to say these ingredients are not toxic or have other potential harms, but at least they've been around for a very long time without us all being warned to stay away for fear of imminent death. They also have multiple purposes so can help eliminate having so many bottles of cleaning supplies under your kitchen sink.
So here are some recipes for you:
Bleach and Water - 50:50 - use to clean and sanitize everything, such as toilets, bathtubs, shower walls, sinks, countertops, food stains on white fabrics, etc. This is in place of Lysol or other germ-killing products. I buy those empty industrial sized spray bottles from Home Depot to keep this mixture around. The key is to let it sit for a few minutes, then rinse or wipe clean. Bleach can be corrosive to materials, especially plastics, so you want to rinse it off. But letting it sit for a few minutes will do the job on germs and stains.
Vinegar and Water - 50:50 - use to clean glass, mirrors, windows, etc. This is the original version of Windex, but without all the additional ingredients that you don't need. To get a spot and smear free finish, wipe with a paper product such a paper towels or old newspapers. A chamois cloth or microfiber cloth will work as well, a long as it's fairly dry and not gunked up with dirt or grease. Get just plain white industrial vinegar. You can get a big jug of it at the grocery store, Home Depot, Walmart, Target, etc.
This mixture also works great for getting soap scum and hard water film off shower walls, toilets (that water line ring...), coffee pots, irons, etc. Just let it sit for a while to get the film off, but then rinse thoroughly with water.
Another great use for vinegar is to clean out your sink and tub/shower drains. Pour some baking soda down your drains, followed by vinegar (about a cup or so each). It will foam up like crazy. Just let it sit for a few hours or overnight, then rinse with lots of water. If you have a really clogged drain, it might take a few times of doing this to fully clean it.
We'll talk about all the amazing uses for Apple Cider Vinegar later. Check out my blog at blog.Coach4HealthyLife.com for all kinds of healthy info.
Murphy's Oil Soap and Water - 10-25% Murphy's to 75-90% water, depending on the strength you need. This is a great degreaser (stove, oven, microwave, counters, sinks, etc), laundry spot treatment for greasy food stains, hard floor cleaner, furniture cleaner, etc. Again, I just put it in a spray bottle and keep it around all the time. For cleaning the floor, since nowadays it's all the rage to have hard surface floors everywhere rather than carpet (and much cleaner too!), I just spray the floor area that I can reach, and mop over it with a microfiber mop. If you have spots of dried food on the floor, give it some extra sprays, let it sit, and scrub with the mop a little stronger. Then just toss the microfiber mop head in the wash!
Baking soda - There are so many uses for baking soda around the house too, such as the drain cleaner described above. But I also use it in the laundry as a fabric softener rather than using a fabric softener liquid that leaves who knows what kind of chemicals on your clothes and towels. I use about 1/2 cup per wash load. The other huge benefit of putting this in your wash load is that it eliminates smell from your laundry. If you work out and get your clothes sweaty (which, based on you reading this website, I hope you do!!), then you'll want to get that "boys locker room" smell out of your clothes. This will do the trick. And since I was talking about fabric softener leaving chemicals on your clothes, I also have a trick for the dryer rather than dryer sheets - Dryer Balls. Or you can just use new tennis balls. Basically, the idea is that the balls bounce around in the dryer, knocking into your clothes and breaking up the wadded up balls of wet clothing to help them dry faster, make the fabric softer, and reduce wrinkles that they may get while wadded up while drying. To reduce static-cling, make sure to take them out of the dryer a bit before they're completely dry. Use your moisture sensor on your dryer, or experiment with timing to help this work out correctly.