The past couple months I've really been reading up on health and more sustainable living. My mom has a lot of books she had bought this past year about homesteading and sustainable living so I have borrowed several of them. For the new year we are trying to use less chemicals in our house. I started thinking about how literally EVERYTHING we use has chemicals in or on it - hygiene products, cleaners, air fresheners, paint, furniture, food, etc One of the books I read said that synthetic chemicals first showed up in 1915, and now we have over 4 million of them! I don't have the money or energy to get rid of everything with synthetic chemicals, but we are trying to reduce the amount. Apparently there is a lot of research how these foreign substances have had some influence on the increase in cancer, disease, allergies, etc over the years. You may have see this posted this summer online or covered on the news several months ago. I re-read it recently and realized we still have several things in our house that are made with ingredients banned in much of Europe and Canada. Click here if you want to read (click through pics to read about each one). I just saw on the news last night that there is a petition demanding Mars company to use the natural dyes in their candies in the US since they do it for the other countries.
We're starting small...homemade and/or natural deodorant, soap, cleaners, toothpaste, and more organic food. I was so excited to see that Aldi has really increased their organic products! They have some organic produce, diced tomatoes, juice, cereal, and several other things. The line is called Simply Nature from Canada and is reasonably priced as far as organics are concerned.
We are also doing what we can to be less wasteful of energy/electricity and water. Partly to save money and because it's better for the environment. This winter we have set the thermostat to 67 degrees during the day. We bump it up some at night since Paxton's room is the coldest in the house and he doesn't keep covers on him. I have to admit I'm not used to this cold of a house. Luckily I have a lot of college sweatshirts that have missed being worn. Also, I measured that it takes about 2 gallons of water to wait for the water to come out hot in my bathroom (the farthest room from the water heater). That's a lot of wasted water every time we wait for it to get hot for showers or to wash my face. So we are reusing some of that water in our bathrooms toilet. I don't know how long I'll keep that up, but I do feel bad about how much water we waste considering so many people are dying due to lack of fresh water.
Here's to a healthier new year for the Bray family!
Disclaimer: While we are hoping to live and eat healthier we aren't going to let us consume us. We will still eat some fun, yummy but bad for you food - just want to eat less of it. I also read a great funny blog this week called Food is Not Your God to keep things in perspective.
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