A Healthy Living Room
There are a number of easy steps you can take to vastly improve the degree to which your living supports you and your family's optimal health, and transform a standard, traditional living room into a healthy living room. Among the most economical and beneficial are the following:
• Promote good air quality: Install a ceiling fan to use year-round--cooling the house in summer and warming it in winter while keeping your lungs (and the rest of you) healthy and strong. Install screen windows to open in finer weather and increase the freshness of the air circulating through the room. You can even consider putting in a window fan for those balmiest of days. The health benefits from good air quality in the home are extensive and include disease prevention, and stronger respiratory, cardiovascular, nervous, and immune systems (at the very least).
• Protect yourself from smoke and fire, carbon monoxide, and lead: Install smoke detectors in your living room as well as carbon monoxide detectors. Also get yourself a cheap lead test (even if you rent--don't leave something like this up to the landlord or super) and make sure you don't have any lead in your living room. If you find lead is present, get it professionally abated immediately.
• Clean green: Don't use cleansers with harmful chemicals like chlorine, phosphates, and artificial dyes and fragrances. Not when there are so many healthy alternatives. You can clean brass with white vinegar mixed with a dash of all-purpose flour and salt; you can clean copper similarly (except without the flour); blot fabric stains with club soda; mop wood floors with water brewed with black tea (and then cooled); clean furniture with olive oil and vinegar; wash windows with diluted vinegar; clean silver with non-gel white toothpaste. And if you'd rather go a more traditional route, just be sure to purchase only cleaning products with at least one of the following words on the label (the more the better): Non-Toxic, Hypo-Allergenic, Biodegradable, Chemical-Free, Fragrance-Free.