What’s In Your Cabinet? Air Fresheners

Do you use air fresheners in your home?

Below is a list of what a majority of common air fresheners have. 

Remember, the government does not require a complete listing of ingredients on these chemicals and the listings can be very vague. Here are just a few ingredients your air freshener can contain:

Butane, propane, ammonia, phenol, benzene, phthalates, formaldehyde

Here are some of the known health problems air fresheners can cause:

Allergies, asthma, skin, eye & lung irritation, depression, hyperness and ADHD type behaviors in children, central nervous system damage, liver damage, and even links to cancer.

Scary, isn’t it?

Some of the fresheners used that are aerosols can also make your home more flammable. 

Think about it, when you spray a flammable liquid like Lysol on your furniture, your drapes, your carpet, where do the chemicals go? They go right on and into those fabrics making them more flammable should a fire ever break out in your home. 

Plus, that can you keep in the cabinet will end up being a bomb going off should fire ever reach it, causing fire to spread more quickly and making a bad scenario even more deadly.

For the non-aerosol type sprays like the Febreeze, is it any wonder the significant rise in asthma goes hand in hand with the rise of using products like this? The majority of allergies and asthma can be traced back to chemicals used in the home.

The chemicals used to make the fragrances are extremely toxic and are regulated very little to none by the government. This means you are making your house smell good at the risk of your health and especially the health of your children.

Manufacturers have used manipulative marketing tactics to convince the majority of Americans that they need to have some kind of fragrances in their homes as they obviously stink.

Now don’t get me wrong, I like a clean smelling home, but I do it in ways that not only benefits our health, but also saves us a ton of money!

Here’s what we do:

• Open the windows! 

Every day for about 15 minutes, even in the dead of winter, even when it’s 0° out, I will open the windows in each room, just a little and run the fan on the furnace to circulate the air. 

This changes the air in the house, removing some germs floating around, it removes odors that seem to accumulate overnight that we call “bed smell”. You know the odor I’m talking about.

It only drops the temperature about one to two degrees is all, so it’s not a significant cost for the furnace to catch back up and if you don’t keep it hot in there to begin with, it’s no big deal.

• Keep a clean house 

Now this seems obvious, but it’s the simple things in life that work. If we let things go too long, and I am guilty of this at times when life gets hectic, then odors camp out. Try cleaning just one room a day. That way you don’t get overwhelmed and the housework doesn’t get ahead of you too far.

• Use natural scents from Nature

Take a walk outdoors in Nature and you will find an array of scents. What the chemicals try and imitate you can go gather for free. 

Flowers, fruit, pine cones and pine needles, leaves, branches, most anything from Nature will bring a light scent into your home that won’t over power the room. 

Of course, if someone in your home has seasonal allergies, then bringing Goldenrod in or some other type of flower might not be the best thing, but experiment a little. Pinterest is full of great ideas on even ways to simmer natural items to make the scents even more powerful.

• Use natural made products

My husband loves it when I do laundry as he loves the scent of our FabricSoftener Concentrate.  It has just a light, clean scent and I will even use our spray bottle with a mild mixture of the 1 part concentrate mixed with 4 parts water and lightly spray around a room. 

I have even been known to use our disinfectant spray, Basic-G on really smelly areas like the dog bed, if I don’t have time to wash it right then. It does an amazing job!

There you go. Easy and most importantly safe ways to deodorize your home without risking your health. 

Besides, you want people to enjoy coming into your home, not gag on the “perfumy” smell and leave with an asthma attack! And isn’t the health of your family more important?

Thank you for taking the time to learn of new ways to freshen the air inside your home!

Julie

For more information on the products mentioned here, please visit our site ToBeHealthy.MyShaklee.com

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