Simple and Cheap Strategies for Going Green

We hear a lot about the benefits of living a “greener” lifestyle – especially when many of the chemicals used in our daily products have endocrine disrupting effects (In other words, they’re messing with our hormones. That’s not ideal in any scenario but certainly not when we’re dealing with endometriosis.)

While eliminating our exposures to toxins and using more natural products all sounds great in theory, you may be asking yourself when do you really have the time or the budget to make it actually happen in your own life?

Let’s explore a few tips to getting started.

Upgrade as Needed

Doing a complete overhaul of all the products in your home at once can be extremely expensive and wasteful for the remaining products that you currently have on hand. A much more budget-friendly approach is simply upgrading each product as it needs replacing in your home.

This enables you to go at a much more reasonable pace and without having to toss your existing supply of products.

So next time you run out of product – all-purpose cleaner, dish soap, face lotion, etc. – use that as an opportunity to explore a new, greenier option.

Free Yourself

When you are exploring greenier replacements, the easiest place to start is selected “unscented” products. Fragrances can be the biggest culprit of toxins and endocrine disruptors, so let’s start by bidding farewell to them.

It doesn’t mean that you can’t have a good aroma, you can simply add quality essential oils to the unscented products. This gives you the nice scent without the chemicals. Instead, you’ll receive the benefits of the essential oils. (For example: citrus essential oils are uplifting, mint essential oils are energizing, florals are calming and tree oils are grounding.)

Take a Minimalist Approach

Another cost-savings approach is looking at the amount of products that you’re using to see if you can simply reduce the number of products.

This is especially important with our bath and beauty products that we’re applying to our skin.

The skin is our biggest organ and many chemicals that are used in personal care products are easily absorbed into the skin and enter the bloodstream where they circulate throughout our body.

The skin also plays a big role in our ability to detoxify, so keeping our skin free of these chemical-laden products is critical for overall health.

Open Up

This next tip may seem a little obvious, but its value can easily be overlooked. Open the windows and doors when appropriate.

Getting fresh air to circulate throughout your home will help to naturally purify the air in your home. It also feels really good to have the fresh breeze come indoors – especially if your health challenges have prevented you from getting outside as much as you would have liked.

Repurpose & Reuse

This last one might be my very favorite budget-friendly green tip. To help eliminate your exposure to plastics – especially with your food – repurpose and reuse glass jars that you receive when purchasing apple sauce, tomato sauce, honey, coconut oil, olive oil, etc.

It’s free, higher quality and already in your home.

I know that this is not a comprehensive list, so I want to know what are some ways you’ve gone green on a budget? Share below!