Written by Erika Bloom & Photographed by A Wild Dove
Erika Bloom, founder of Erika Bloom Pilates, wellness maven and MOF (Member of the Flock), believes that your home should be treated with as much reverence as your body.
After all, you live in both.
So when it comes to the ritual of spring cleaning, she chooses products that are organic and as natural as possible to ensure her home remains sparkling, while keeping her family safe and healthy. Inspiring as ever, Erika even makes a few of her own green cleaning potions.
why it's important to her and a list of her favorite green products.
When you walk into a home that is cared for, naturally, you feel nourished and energized. You can just feel it. A home should be both clean and evoke joy, love, comfort and beauty. As someone who is earnest in living a thoughtful, healthy life, I’ve always been considerate of what I am exposing my body and my family to.
It’s comforting to know that we live in a green home, one that has clean air and is safe for the environment and our health, as well as, free of chemicals. As a general rule, avoid phthalates, perfumes, fragrance, parabens, sulfates, dyes, and petrochemicals, pesticides and limit plastics.
When you choose green products or make them yourself, you’re choosing cleaners that do not cause harm to you, your family, your pets or to the environment. Spring is the perfect time to detox our homes as we choose green and bring the healing power of nature inside.
Here are some ideas about how we can spring clean our homes naturally, in simple ways and in the products we use -
Fresh Air
We open our windows as much as possible. Fresh air helps to bring the joy of the outdoors in and helps move any indoor air pollution out.
House Plants and Flowers
Plants take substances out of the air through the tiny openings in their leaves. They also balance humidity levels in the air. Not only are our orchids, huge fig tree and rubber plants gorgeous, they improve the quality of the air we’re breathing. I also love flowers for their mood lifting benefits and beauty, especially white peonies.
Air Filters
A great detoxifier for any indoor space, air filters clean the air you're breathing in before impurities have a chance to trigger allergies, asthma and other reactions. Austin Air makes a modern filter that looks great in our home and cleanses up to 1,500 square feet. We notice an immediate difference when it’s on.
Water Filters
The quality of the water we drink is paramount to our internal health. In order to purify our tap water from potential contaminants and ensure we’re drinking clean, we use the Drink Soma glass water pitchers. The company uses green products and packaging and is dedicated to ending the global water crisis.
Aromatherapy
Enfleurage
My family adores the beautiful diffusers and oils from Enfleurage, which are imported directly from farms and stills, bringing in high quality, fresh and pure essential oils from six continents. The potent aromatics like lavender, neroli, geranium, and eucalyptus, also benefit air quality.
Essential Oils are naturally occurring aromatic compounds found in the seeds, bark, stems, roots, flowers and other parts of plants. When anti-microbial oils are introduced to the air in vapor form, the organic compounds within the oils come into direct contact with airborne pathogens resulting in purified air.
Cold Spring Apothecary
The candles and room sprays from the modern day Cold Spring Apothecary are fueled by the healing powers of herbs and botanicals. Medicinally focused and remedy-based and crafted in small batches, they use no drying sulfates, harsh parabens, or harmful fragrances.
Jurlique
Jurlique makes balancing and revitalizing essential oil mists that transform the air around you. Started by a biochemist and a botanist husband/wife team, their mission is to reconnect people with nature by combining the ancient alchemy, herbal medicine and homeopathy.
Red Flower
Red Flower candles and diffusers, both biodegradable and biocompatible, are pure botanical beauty. The company creates its plant based products with a deep respect for the land and its cultures, using science, sustainability, holistic medicine and wellness rituals.
Hand Soap
We absorb hand soap through our skin as well as touch our food, our mouths and our children after we use it. Not only do these soaps smell amazing and nourish our skin, the essential oils and natural ingredients in them can clean and disinfect our hands more effectively than harmful chemicals.
Red Flower
Red Flower has been a mainstay in all of our bathrooms for years. My favorite scent right now is Wanderlust, a delicate earthy scent of cypress, vetiver and mandarin.
Common Goods
Common Goods Hand Soap, comes in a glass bottle. Made with coconut oil and essential oils, it’s great for the kitchen. Common Good products are made with gentle, plant-based ingredients and scented with 100% pure essential oils. Their mission is to reduce plastic packaging by offering beautiful, refillable bottles.
Cleaning Products
You can create beautiful, effective cleaning products yourself using organic antibacterial essential oils such as rosemary, lemon, lavender, and thyme. It even feels healing as you clean with them. I also use organic white vinegar and baking soda and put it into glass spray bottles.
Ferm Living
Re-usable dish cloths by Ferm Living are a staple in our house. Both sustainable and stylish, I use these for everything from dishtowels to dusting to wiping up spills or cleaning mirrors. Ferm Living promises integrity as they use honest materials, meaning clean, real commodities with a minimal impact on the environment.
Seventh Generation
Seventh Generation makes natural cleaning products that work for every surface as well as paper towels, toilet paper, and trash bags. The company strives to use ingredients derived from plants rather than petroleum whenever possible in order to decrease its reliance on the use of fossil fuels.
Laundry
Common Good
Common Good makes beautiful laundry products. The bergamot smells liked I’d always wished my laundry smelled as a kid. For beautiful bright whites, I soak garments and linens in organic white vinegar.
Babyganics
Babyganics utilizes plant based and organic ingredients and the latest research in green cleaning. Their laundry detergent (and stain spray) is beloved in our household and is the highly effective.
The Honest Co.
For tougher stains, I love the very effective Honest Company Oxy Boost. The Honest Company is dedicated to safe, eco-friendly, beautiful, convenient and affordable home and body care products.
The Bedroom
We spend close to half our lives in our bedroom including ample time surrounded by and breathing in our bedding. That’s why it’s essential to clean living to have an organic and non toxic bedroom.
We sleep on an organic non toxic mattress and sleep on an unbleached wool mattress pad, all natural sheets, comforters, blankets, and pillows as most traditional bedding uses toxic petrochemicals derived from oil. I love the organic non toxic mattresses and bedding at The Clean Bedroom as well as the Coco Mattress. Area Home makes gorgeous, lasting organic linens.
Furniture, bath and kitchen linens, rugs and drapes
Even our furniture can be a source of toxins. They can live in the fabrics, the glues, even what the wood is treated with. ABC Carpet and Home sells beautiful products that are mindful of our health and well-being and meet the highest environmental standards. Opt for home furnishings and accessories made with metals, non toxic woods, natural wool, and organic cottons.
De-cluttering your sleep space and adding plants also helps to keep pollutants low and to create a minimal space for a clear mind and a relaxed sleep environment.
As for floors, choose non toxic carpet or ideally no carpet at all as they hold pollutants and give off potentially harmful Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs). The same goes for paint, look for no VOC paints.
find out more
ErikaBloomPilates.com
@Erikabloompilates
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As modern mamas living in the over information age, (where everyone is an expert and parenting opinions are shared as freely and easily as an Instagram post) it can be tough to filter through the white noise to find the facts. Naturally, we’d love to consider ourselves wise in all sorts of ways, but the truth is sometimes we’re scrawling SOS in the sand. Good thing we’ve got the guidance and expertise of our own personal rockstars: the people who inspire us on the daily. Our rockstars (our flock) are enthusiasts, professionals and influencers in the fields of wellness, travel, education, style—the list goes on. Each one brings a profoundly different perspective to the table, one informed by their own experiences and outlooks. And that perspective is priceless.
They say it takes a village…we say it takes a flock.