New Living Health believes any family can make the transition to a healthy home. Although it may seem stressful and expensive to find a way to make your home healthier and greener, it doesn’t have to be. If you take an organized and strategic approach – and take it one step at a time – then you can successfully create a home that keeps your family safe.  This section will provide you with a guide to help you make the transition to a healthy home.

The Steps:

1. Assess your home. Take a look at the products that were used to design and build your home (flooring, paints, carpets, beds, sealants, etc.) and find out if they were non-toxic or green.

2. Use this website to find out more information about what chemicals are in each product on your list. It’s a good idea to organize this by product, and make categories for how prevalent that product is in your home and what the health effects of each product are, and any other categories you feel are important.

3. Create a list of priorities. Decide what you want to tackle first. Do you want to change the paints or do you want to change the floors first? If you’re having trouble deciding (or if you want to do it all at once) then see what your budget allows. You can typically find prices at your local green home and building store. However, the best way to decide is to consider both price and what the most urgent problem areas are in your home with respect to health.

4. Start knocking things off the list, one at a time.

Take a look at our example of the of how to organize your products and create a priority list.

Standford University’s School of Earth Sciences also has some great tips for greening your home and making it healthy.