Cleanse Your Life Part 1: Detox Your Environment

Welcome to the first part of our series on how to detox your environment. Have you ever wondered if there were a handful of simple tips for cleansing your surroundings inside and out?

After all, many ‘gurus’ will ask you to do everything but stand on your while whistling in order to heal and cleanse. Maybe you have a ‘mystery illness’, you know- you constantly feel unwell or even a little ‘out of sorts’, people may say constantly “but you don’t look sick’” all the while, you struggle and try to just get through your day.

Recently, I was asked what were my top tips to cleansing. Now, if you’re expecting that long list of confusion and enigmas- you may be disappointed. Cleansing is simpler when you know where to start. It is fun and an activity that can involve family and friends. No need for a PhD, just a willingness to heal.

Eliminating Toxins from Your Environment

The first port of call in how to detox your life has a few different facets to it. The first is eliminating toxins. We live in a really toxic society. We take it in from our foods, our surroundings, our furniture, and our clothes. When we buy clothes, they’re actually loaded with fungicides (which is why we don’t buy moldy clothes). We also get it from driving around (roads emit noxious gases as we drive, not to mention vehicle exhausts). We get it every which way and of course, we get it from the very controversial vaccines. In essence, we are toxic people.

Let’s look at this in depth.

Eliminating Toxins from Clothes

So you’ve been shopping and bought some nice clothes, it’s exciting. They smell so clean, right? Wrong! They are, as mentioned, loaded with fungicides and have often been stored in warehouses near rat baits and bug baits. Clothes are made of fibres and fibres soak up the chemicals around them. As soon as you get them home, wash your clothes three times in cold water (hot water intensifies the chemicals in the fibres). I recommend ‘Soap Nuts’ or a homemade soap, which I teach my clients how to make.

Once thoroughly washed, hang everything in the sun and breeze. If you can’t find a spot outside, try to hang things in the sun inside near an open window. This washing regime goes for sheets, pet blankets, pillows, and much more. What’s that? Worried your new gems won’t be fluffy or perfectly pressed after washing them? Ask yourself, is that ‘newness’ worth your or your family’s life? And why the sun? Well, the sun kills off any bacteria that may remain after the washing and allows the ‘cleansing’ process to complete.

Eliminating Plastic Straws from Home

So now your clothes are cleansed, how about a commonly used implement- straws? Replace plastic straws with bamboo, glass, or stainless steel. Straws are one of the most commonly found plastic items in our oceans. Animals swallow them and they are a key contributor to our pollution and conservation issues. Plastic straws leach chemicals into your drinks. Between the colours in the plastic, the plastic itself, and the fact that others handle your straw often before you put it in your mouth- straws can harbor bacteria and chemical cocktails of their own.

We accumulate toxins in our lives, we take them in through our skin or dermis (which is the second largest organ of our body). Once we have addressed our clothes and diminished some nasty plastics from our lives, we need to look at our food, our sustenance.

Eliminating Toxins from Fruits and Vegetables

Say you’re at the fruit shop. The produce is colourful and you just know that as you shop, you’re filling the shopping bags (non-plastic) with all the colours of the rainbow, great! Take a look at how you do your shopping. You touch the produce, feel for freshness, and maybe even smell it as you clutch these wonders of nature. You’re actually taking in pesticides without even having to ingest them. Just putting them in the bag allows a range of chemicals to enter your body through your skin. Whilst you may look a little ‘unique’, you should shop with cotton gloves on to protect yourself.

Once home with your bounty, you need to make sure that you wash your fresh produce in either organic apple cider vinegar (or as I’ve just read a study today in bicarbonate of soda) and cold distilled water. This process will actually cleanse the produce of pesticide and herbicide residues, all sorts of waxes, and of course other people’s bacteria and viruses. Let’s not forget everybody picks up an apple at the fruit store, has a look at it and puts it back, and picks up another one. You’re washing off everything from their handprints to whatever they’ve got on their hands.

Wash in one part of apple cider or bicarb to three parts cold water for about 15 minutes. It must be said that this is not needed if you grow your own produce. I do recommend that you still wash farmer’s market produce though. Apple cider vinegar works well and you’ll actually notice that the wax on apples and other produce breaks down. Your produce may look white and cloudy on the outside. Once dried, take some paper towel (recycled of course) and give it a thorough rub. If using the bicarb method, please make sure it is aluminum-free.

Eliminating Toxins from Furniture

Now you’ve washed your clothes and done your food shopping (fresh produce anyway). You want to take a rest on your fabulous new, clean furniture. Whether wooden, leather, or cloth, your furniture is laden with formaldehyde and other toxic chemicals. Whether you are buying a new couch or a new car, always air it out thoroughly. If you think you can smell chemicals (off-gassing), you can!! Take heed of this notification before you become ill with other symptoms that are likely to be more debilitating than an unpleasant smell.  Your body is intelligent and is warning you that you are being exposed to toxins.

One simple and quick way to get rid of toxic off-gassing is to cut up lemons and place them in glass dishes around your furniture, in the new fridge or in the new car. Make sure they are organic lemons, and cut them into quarters and slices (ensure you have a range of sizes and shapes, the more surface area of lemon exposed to the toxins the better). In a new car, leave them overnight with the windows down, put up some fly wire or some shade cloth. This way, the spiders don’t get in the car but the lemon can soak up all the chemicals.

Washing your existing car? Use the lemon here too. As you drive after a car wash,  chemicals from the wash heat up. As soon as you start driving, you’re breathing the chemicals and toxins in. I make all of my family’s products. When washing the car, I wash it myself and take my own products, using only the car wash’s water. There are still ways to cleanse your life without looking like you’re driving somewhere important in some beaten-up bush-buggy.

That’s the end of Cleanse Your Life Part 1: How to detox your life .  For more tips on How to Detox Your Life  read Part 2 of Cleanse your life by clicking here.

If you would like some personalised guided help detoxing your life  our liver and functional detox does it all!