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Your home is probably not as healthy as its heavenly odor and its looks imply. Your furniture is polished to a mirrored perfection, and the candles melting on the kitchen counters gives it a false sense of health. Your luscious off-white carpeting is immaculate and not a stain is in sight. The elegant and stylish French poodle blends in elegantly. Yet let all who enter this sterile looking environment beware, the house may be quite sick. All the slick and fanciful interior decorations are hiding a house full of potential dangers.

Your house may be near a three on a scale of 1-10 for a healthy home. The house that gets a nine will be an older house, will not have air-conditioning but will have opened screened windows, an unkempt but clean appearance, and will have worn, but clean wood floors, and the bathroom and kitchen will have linoleum.

The gas stove will have an exhaust and the bathroom heater will have an will be vented as are the other heaters in the living room and bedrooms. In the good smelling up to date appearing house there is no exhaust for the stove, nor are there one in the bathroom.

The food smells are masked by the candles melting and the highly polished look was the result of furniture polish sprays that gave the look and feel of a healthy home while, in fact, polluting the air with dangerous chemicals. This was made more dangerous by the fact the house is poorly ventilated.

Where healthy living is concerned, looks are deceiving. It is best to let a house smell like the latest food being cooked if that is not offensive, although candles melting on the counter are not especially unhealthy. Burning candles may be a safety hazard especially if small children are around.

Other concerns where healthy homes are concerned is the location. What kind of soil does the home sit on and what surrounds it. What was there before. Surely you do not want your house to have been built on a former sewage dump. Toxic fumes from this will be there for many years afterward. And too, if you live near a manufacturing plant that routinely pollutes the waterways then your house is that much unhealthier.

A healthy home will use chemical in cleaning but will not overuse them. Whenever possible natural cleaning products such as vinegar and soda can be substituted for harsh cleaners.

If that is not an option and is understandable, it is possible to get by with a minimum of detergents: Clorox, a scouring powder, Dishwasher liquid, (hand & machine), a wax or a liquid furniture polish, and as an overall Lysol cleanser.

I started to mention pets that roam in and out of your house, but I thought better of it. This is a personal choice and each must decide whether a healthy home is worth doing without man's best friend.
Some things we must live with and take the chance and even with enormous effort, we will never find a home one hundred percent healthy.

Learn more about this author, EMoore.
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