So we've spent a lot of time working on you and your habits. Today I want to get you to take a good, hard look at your environment...more specifically, your home. After all, it won't do you much good to make healthy lifestyle changes if the place where you spend most of your life is filled with toxic chemicals.

The air quality in most homes is poor due to things like air fresheners, candles, toxic cleaning products, dust, mold, pet dander, and the outgassing of chemicals from carpets, upholstery, paints, mattresses, furniture, and pretty much just about any new thing you bring into your home. The volatile chemicals that you're inhaling or getting on your skin are responsible for asthma, allergies, reproductive issues, hormone problems, neurotoxicity, cancer, and other problems.

Of course, it's not just in your home, it's also outside in your yard if you use harmful insecticides, fertilizers, weed killers, or cleaners. And if you don't take off your shoes when you come inside, then you're tracking these things all around your house too.                                                                      

Here's how you can boost your health and save money by cleaning up your home environment:

• Use the Healthy Living app from Environmental Working Group to check the products you use to clean your home to see how good or bad they are. If they're bad, throw them out and replace them with good. You can also search their database here

• Even better, make your own laundry detergents and household cleaners - it's easier than you think. You'd be amazed at what plain vinegar, baking soda, hydrogen peroxide, water and essential oils can do around your home.

• Buy a HEPA filter for your vacuum cleaner. This will help ensure you're getting out the toxic dust and allergens when you vacuum.

• Take your shoes off outside. Don't track the nasties back into your home.

• Consider an air filtration unit.

• Fragrances and scents used in air fresheners and candles are some of the worst of the worst. Use essential oil diffusers and plain, unscented beeswax candles instead.

• If you need to kill weeds, spray them with vinegar instead. You can often find 21% acidity vinegar for this purpose at garden centers.

• Use essential oil-based pesticides or pick-and-squash by hand when you can.

• Dump the antibacterial soaps and alcohol-based hand sanitizers. They do more harm than good. Plain soap and water are fine for hand washing.

• Stop using plastic wrap and aluminum foil in the kitchen...use Bee's Wrap instead.

• Open windows to allow fresh air into the house.

• Kick off your shoes at the front door to avoid tracking pesticides, herbicides, and toxic chemicals into your house -especially if you have crawling babies.

• Beware of flame-retardants in things like mattresses and pillows. They're responsible for things like brain and reproductive problems, thyroid issues, and cancer. Since we spend a third of our life sleeping, it would be a good idea to make sure that our beds aren't toxic. Check out avocadogreenmattress.com for an organic cotton, natural wool, and natural latex option, or this DIY organic buckwheat hull-filled mattress.

• Download this PDF from EWG listing the twelve worst hormone-disrupting chemicals and how to avoid them.

Above all, stop participating in a system that destroys your health and destroys our planet. Think of every dollar you spend as casting a vote for the kind of world you want to live in...then vote consciously and wisely.