Top 5 Tips to get you started on your Beautiful Healthy Home journey

What a great run of talks this week @los_social_ltd on #instalive. They are all on Emma’s Insta page to watch again and I have been blogging about each and will continue to do so till I have worked through all the talks. But today was my turn. I really enjoyed presenting and I hope some of you found it interesting. But if you prefer to read than listen, here’s what I said….

At the start of the week, Rachel from The Life Enricher did a presentation on nutrition and touched on the 4 pillars of health : food, sleep, movement and stress levels. 

And it is true, what we choose to eat and how often we exercise can have a positive effect on our health. We also heard from Charli at Snuzzze yesterday which confirmed that quality and length of your sleep helps you get the most out of your day and it can help with stress levels. So that’s the 4 pillars of health covered. 

But is it!? I believe there is a 5th element - not so much a pillar but it’s the all encompassing environment - everything that surrounds us has an effect on both our physical and mental well being. 

The key elements that make up interior design are very much based on this idea - that what we do to our surrounds can impact us both positively and negatively. So it is really important for us to get the best out of our indoor spaces. Such as colour theory which Charli touched on, where certain colours and patterns elicit a response from the brain. So a busy wallpaper is not good for a bedroom. There’s Feng Shui which in its simplest form looks at the placement of objects and the relationship between them, the energy they give and the people that are moving around them. There’s other key areas to interior design such as flow, spacial awareness, organisation and functionality of a space - not to mention light, air and temperature. 

But where my focus lies at the moment, is in the products that you bring into your home and are living beside. Where our furniture, bedding and textiles used to be untreated woods and natural fibres, we are now increasingly exposed to harmful chemical gases - invisible chemicals that are embedded in a lot of the products we buy. These are compounds that have the ability to evaporate or vaporise at room temperature. So the smell of your toilet cleaner. The smell of a new car. Your dry cleaning or new bed sheets smell. They all off-gas. And frustratingly we end up breathing these Volatile Organic Compounds or VOCs in daily.

But it is not just the airborne chemicals we need to consider.  There are obvious ways we all add toxins to our body - through alcohol, smoking and a diet full of processed food. But there are other chemicals in our indoor environment we are less aware of. There are chemicals in your shower gel, loo cleaner, air freshener and laundry detergent. Not forgetting your bedding, clothing, footwear, candles, electrical and DIY products - they all contain chemicals of one sort or another. Some of those touch your skin, others enter the atmosphere as VOCs.

The build up of toxins in the body is known as the toxic burden.

At Beautiful Healthy Home I truly believe our indoor environments have become a giant mixing bowl of invisible chemicals we are unwittingly interacting with on a daily basis. And I believe these chemicals are causing illnesses such as cancer, diabetes, asthma and skin conditions later on in life.  My mission is that everyone’s home should be as free as possible from toxic chemicals while still reflecting your own personal style. But there is no quick win. This is about making small, reasonable changes to your own indoor environment, slowly and comfortably. Changes that suit you.

But how did we get to this point of such chemical invasion in our lives?

So here’s a potted history on synthetic chemicals. They have been around since the 1800s but the chemical industry didn’t really take off until post World War 2 in the late 40’s and 50’s when there was a great need to improve food production. Another global war was waged but this time it was an agricultural one against pests and insects. 

At the same time, the synthetic chemicals industry began focusing on creating innovations that would make life easier - enter non-stick, easy-clean, tupperware, disposable plastics and so on. And the consumers in the 50’s who had lived through rationing and a war were desperate for a better quality of life. They lapped both up. And each decade saw further advancement and further consumer demand. We, in the West, are very fortunate to be living in the time we are, as we are all enjoying the huge advancements in technology, medicine, travel along with a never ending supply of food and consumer goods. Products that do make our lives in many ways, much easier compared to the lives of our grandparents.

However, these chemically laden products have also brought a health crisis. Poorer health is down to the toxic build up of chemicals within our own bodies. 

Welcome to the Plastic & Synthetic Chemical Age. 

It does sound pretty frightening, doesn’t it? But we can’t turn away from this. Ignorance is no longer bliss.

So what can we do? Well frustratingly these chemicals have entered our lives quietly and without warning through both unregulated industries and mass marketing campaigns pushing the ideology that buying these products will make our lives easier. And they have done, but what is the alternative?

Well, thankfully there are alternatives and that’s where Beautiful Healthy Home comes in. 

My top 5 tips for a beautiful healthy home are:

ONE: swap out your regular products for natural ones: we have a growing selection of skincare, homewares and candles on our site and I am introducing cleaning products soon. So come shop with us. And our range will be expanding over the coming months. If you are not sure what the alternatives are, keep an eye on my blog as I am posting ideas on there each week. 

TWO: we all need to stop choosing products solely for its aesthetic qualities or fragrance - What do I mean by that? Well, we have all become conditioned to buy whatever it is we like or want or need without any consideration as to the back story of the product. We see something that appeals to us, we buy it. We have to look beyond the label and we have to think about the product’s impact upon our own health and that of the planet. Charlotte Rosewood Financial Planner pointed out in her talk on Wednesday, that we can be smarter with our money by finding out what companies behind the brands are doing. We can choose to invest in sustainable supply chains. We can choose to invest in ethical companies that take care of the environment. Just be careful of green washing. We can ask ourselves - how was this made? Where was it made? What was the environmental impact when it was made? and transported here?

THREE: take small steps. Choose one product a week or a fortnight or even a month. And make a conscious effort to buy the alternative. Did you ever kick yourself for forgetting to bring your cotton carrier bag with you to the shops to save on plastic? Is that now just second nature and you don’t go anywhere without one? Well that was a habit you changed. 

So change one product and over time you can build on that change. Here at Beautiful Healthy Home we have done a lot of the hard work for you. We have carefully curated a range of household products that are eco friendly, non-toxic and sustainable -  which not only look and smell wonderful, but have as little negative impact as possible upon your health or that of the planet’s.

FOUR: Start using your nose. It is one of the 5 amazing senses we have and it too often gets forgotten. Yet it is vital for our own personal survival. It helps us taste when things are off. It gives us a warning when there is danger - such as smoke from a fire, or leaking gas. So it is no surprise to realise that scent is a huge selling factor with laundry detergent and household cleaning brands. Over the decades we’ve all become accustomed to (and I would go as far as saying conditioned to) the scent of ‘pine fresh’ or chemical ‘lemon zest’ as part of our indoor environment. We have been aggressively marketed at, to believe that our spaces and our clothes are not clean until they smell of these…… ‘Lenor’ ‘Cif’ ‘Fairy’ ‘Persil’ ‘Daz’ ‘Harper’ ‘Flash’. The list is endless. 

We all know how these smell right? And many of us will have family favourites. Brands we were brought up with as children and brands we continue to buy today through nothing more than family loyalty. But do you really know what’s in them?? The UK government and the European Parliament Council have numerous regulations in place that require cleaning manufactures and suppliers to comply with labelling requirements. Labels must identify the hazardous chemicals and explain what the hazards are and how to avoid them. but that does not force manufacturers to list all of the ingredients. If you have a known allergy to a fragrance or surfactant  - just because it is not listed doesn’t mean it is not there.

So the good news is the market has been flooded with eco brands recently so you have a much wider choice. Again just be aware of potential green washing and look behind the label. 

FIVE: My fifth tip is to have fun. Enjoy your own process to a Beautiful Healthy Home. There is no right or wrong way. It took me about 2 years to work through and replace the cleaning products and bathroom essentials in my home and I am still not fully there yet. But I am enjoying the fresher air in my home. I know when something is off gassing as I can now smell it so I remove it. I open my windows and doors frequently to get the air moving and I only use soy wax candles and essential oil room diffusers. I feel proud that I am not contaminating my family. But there is still so much to be done in my own life and I will be expanding into other areas with Beautiful Healthy Home too. So watch this space!

Stick to my 5 top tips and see how you go. And if you have any questions or want any advice, just DM me and I will come straight back. 

You all truly deserve a beautiful healthy home because your home’s the world.

Zoë x

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