Did you know that the cleaning products in your home are doing you more harm than good? That’s right, the chemicals in them are exposing you and your loved ones to toxins that put your health in danger. But what do you do to protect your immunity, you ask?

show notes:

In this episode, Heidi talks about harmful cleaning products and the green cleaning alternatives that exist. She explains in detail how you can boost your immune system by getting rid of toxic products in your home and adopting healthier options.

Listen in to learn about natural DIY cleaning recipes from essential oils that will not only keep your home clean but also keep you safe and healthy.

“You’re being exposed little by little every single time and each chemical exposure is a drop or a dump in your body burden bucket.” ~Heidi Bramm

Top Takeaways:

• How your body acts as a filter to toxins exposing you to internal and external health dangers.
• Why you shouldn’t rely on the chemical industry to tell you that products are safe because they’ve been wrong before.
• The uses and benefits of different types of essential oils in cleaning and diffusing your home.

What you will learn:

• [2:00] Understanding why products and chemicals load our body with toxins.
• [5:05] The four areas you can improve to reduce your body burden and toxic overload.
• [5:40] The harmful effects and dangers of cleaning chemicals to your body.
• [9:31] How the term ‘fragrance’ is used by companies legally to hide chemicals they use in products.
• [12:09] The 3 steps you need to take to switch from fragrant chemicals in your home to natural alternatives.
• [16:03] Oregano oil and Cinnamon oil- their composition and uses in killing bacteria, viruses, and fungi.
• [16:37] How to use Lemon oil to clean and purify the internal environment of your home.
• [17:33] Rosemary oil- use it to clean and diffuse to increase concentration.
• [17:56] Peppermint oil- use it to clean and kill bacteria and viruses, and also help boost your energy.
• [19:08] Melaleuca/ Tea Tree oil- use this as a deodorant, foot spray, sanitizer, and also fungi nail infection.
• [19:58] Some additional essential oils, plus tips and DIY recipes for when it comes to cleaning your bathroom (toilet), kitchen (microwave + sanitizing spray), laundry (clothes smells + stain remover), windows, and carpets without chemicals.

Detailed Transcript:

Hey beloved! Welcome back to another episode. I want to share with you today. Some of our tips and tricks for keeping toxins down in our home specifically when it comes to cleaning. Reducing the amount of toxins you and your family are exposed to is the best way to start impacting your health for the better. And I don’t know about you, but the more you know, the more empowered you can be when you’re making informed decisions. My husband wasn’t exactly onboard when I first started using natural alternatives for cleaning. In fact, we invested a lot of money into products that I later found out were just simply greenwashed. Maybe they were a little better for the environment, but they weren’t exactly great for us. And so we switched everything over to essential oils for a safer, cleaner home. And I want to talk to you about some of those alternatives that we use in our home routines, as well as give you access to some free resources to help you get started making over your cleaning routine. I know this is one you’re not going to want to miss if you’re concerned with toxins and chemical cleaners in your home, let’s dig in!

It can be really eye opening once you start digging in and realizing the dangers that are lurking in your everyday products. So I want you to envision a life where you can shift your purchasing power, reduce your body burden, and even get rewarded for bettering your health at the same time. The first thing I want to share with you is the documentary called Stink. Now this was available on Netflix previously and it was free, but I’m sure if you Google it, you’ll find it. Knowledge is power. And just because a product is on the shelf does not mean it’s safe or that it’s even been tested. I really urge you to do your own research in this area, to watch it and learn the truth behind the fragrance and chemical industry and how we are all human Guinea pigs in the name of profits.

So there’s really two main sources of toxins and one is environmental. And so that’s kind of like BPA, lead, PCBs, mercury, arsenic, fluoride, all of the chemical things. And then there’s dietary in the form of GMOs and pesticides and sugar and food dyes and hormones and antibiotics. So we’re focusing just on the environmental piece today. There’s actually four areas that you can improve when looking at starting to reduce your toxic load. So I like to describe it this way. We all have a body, right? And your body is kind of like your bucket. And when we’re born, you would think that we were born with an empty bucket, but that’s really not the case. At a time when we should be like an empty bucket brand new to the world with a clean slate, they found through testing that newborn cord blood contains almost 300 known chemicals and toxins from anything from flame retardants to solvents, BPA, mercury, arsenic, all the things.

So how does this body burden happen? The Environmental Working Group site states, the average woman uses nine personal care products daily totaling an average of 126 unique chemical ingredients each and every single day. And your skin is your largest organ so chemicals on your skin are actually worse than eating them because your skin has no filter. And so it goes directly into the blood and accumulates in the body over time. In the 1960s, a woman’s risk of breast cancer was one in 20, and today it’s one in eight, but we have to start paying attention to this. We have to start paying attention to what we put in, on, and around us because the Environmental Working Group, same company sampled one woman’s blood, and it contained 175 chemicals linked to cancer, 210 linked to heart disease and 196 linked to birth defects. So these chemicals get into the mother’s body and our babies are basically born pre polluted from the chemicals in our everyday lives and our everyday products.

So how does this happen?

It happens by letting these things into our home, right? It’s the air that we breathe, the food that we eat, the water that we drink. And so what can we do in our homes to reduce our toxic load and ease the burden on our bodies today? Again, I want to focus on cleaners and having safer alternatives. Green cleaning without chemicals in our homes. We ditched the chemicals years ago. Again, my husband took a little bit longer to come on board cause he didn’t actually believe they had the power to do what I told him they were doing. And so with a lot of study and research and just kind of digging around, we found amazing tools from nature that help get the job done. So there’s actually four areas you can start to improve and reduce your body burden in your toxic load.

Number one is proper nutrition. Number two is personal care and cleaning products. Three is prescriptions over the counters and antibiotics, and four is detoxing. And today we’re just focusing on number two, which is cleaning products. Before we get into why using essential oils for cleaning makes so much sense, I want to just touch a little bit more on why make a change in the first place. So the chemicals used in our cleaning products are obviously harmful and toxic. Some people can feel that in their lungs. I know when I used to work at a restaurant and then a resort, things that we would clean with would literally start to close in my lungs and I couldn’t breathe. So these toxins that are in the environment in our everyday products end up in our bodies. They accumulate in our systems and we are the filter – our lungs, our skin, our nose, our ovaries, these chemicals damage those systems.

They damage our immune system and contribute to allergies. They damage our endocrine system, which affects our hormones, our thyroid, our adrenals, our blood sugar levels. They damage our nervous system and contribute to learning and behavioral issues and they damage our reproductive system, and contribute to hormone dysfunction and infertility. Just to name a few, the sad thing is that the majority of these chemicals are not tested for safety in a lab. Instead they are tested on all of us and in the United States where I live, our motto is basically “it’s safe until proven otherwise,” right? Whereas in other countries, their motto might be, “it’s not safe until tested and proven safe.” Okay. And we have to look at the packaging and the creative marketing that is happening right now, especially as things are trending more naturally. These big companies, these chemical companies want to take advantage of that.

So take air fresheners, for example, it says lavender on it, right? So it shows the packaging, this beautiful imagery of real lavender. It even smells faintly of real lavender, but the truth is there is no lavender on the label. It says fragrance, which is a loophole to trick you. Okay, but don’t fall for it. If there was real lavender in that product, then you’d see lavender or the Latin name listed on the ingredient label. And even then you need to make sure you know your companies because it could be synthetically created. Right? But we’ll talk about more about the fragrance loophole in a few minutes. In regards to what we use in our homes though, over a hundred thousand children under the age of six are sickened by household cleaners each year. The fragrance used in the cleaners cause respiratory irritation, headaches, sneezing, watering eyes at the very least, and then more serious issues again like asthma obesity, infertility, learning disabilities, and of course cancer. The chemical industry that told us that lead was safe, asbestos was safe, tobacco safe, DDT was safe, etc is now telling us that chemicals in our everyday products are safe. They are not in my opinion the best people to be relying on for trust and validation and safety of our products. Again, I encourage you to watch the Stink documentary, to find out more about the industry and how it got to be where it is today. And I’m going to share a little bit more with you on that too, but basically of the over 80,000 chemicals circulating in commerce today, more than 80% of them have never been tested to see if they are poisonous to humans. And some have only been tested minimally. When we go back to the body bucket idea and image, I want you to think of, you’re going to have overflow.

You’re going to have overflow in one or two directions when your body bucket, your body burden is full. And so you’re going to have malignancy. So like tumors and cancer, these abnormal cells that divide without control and can invade your tissues, or you’re going to have inflammatory, right? Like diabetes, allergies, etc. So it’s going to come out one way or the other. And so if you think of your body like a bucket, right, every time you wash your hair, spray your hair with hairspray, wash your hands, do your laundry, spray on your perfume, take an over the counter or prescription, burn a scented candle or breathe in an air freshener, clean and the list goes on, you’re being exposed little by little every single time. And each chemical exposure is a drop or a dump in your body burden bucket. These exposures add up. But there is hope!

If we can lower the load of toxins and even cleanse our bodies – I’m not talking about cleansing today, but we’re talking about lowering the load of toxins, then our health conditions can improve or even we can just head them off at the beginning and they don’t even start to become an issue. One thing I want to share with you as far as how we got here is after World War II, we saw a drastic increase in the creation and use of chemicals. Also in 1966, regulation passed under the Fair Packaging And Labeling Act so that the term “fragrance” acts as a loophole for these chemical companies. Basically companies don’t have to list or disclose what can be a mixture of hundreds of toxic chemicals, as long as they hide it under the term fragrance on the product package.

Let me repeat that in case you didn’t catch it:

The term fragrance appears to be a single ingredient on a product label, but it actually means that it can be made up of hundreds of different undisclosed synthetic chemicals that are known toxins. These chemicals have been found to have significant negative effects on people and medical research is linking them to adult and childhood cancers, nervous disorders, autoimmune disorders, all the A’s right, asthma allergies, autism, ADD/ADHD, not to mention infertility, miscarriages and more. And it’s perfectly legal under this packaging and labeling act that gives companies a loophole to hide their chemicals under the term fragrance. You don’t realize it, but you’re eating fragrance, wearing fragrance, washing your hair and body and clothes in fragrance, blowing your nose with fragrance, cleaning with fragrance – it’s everywhere. Fragrance ingredients usually come from either petroleum or plants. And so which one do you think is the cheapest option?

Right? So yes, synthetics are usually derived from petrochemicals because they’re cheap. And the more raw material you have in your end product, obviously the more expensive it’s going to be, right? It’s cheap for a reason. And these chemicals help manufacturers inexpensively recreate the desired scent and they work well to disperse the fragrance into the air and cause it to linger longer. So if you ever go down the cleaning or personal care aisle of a store, you know what I’m talking about. You can smell all of these chemicals lingering in the aisle and the packages haven’t even been opened yet. So that fresh, clean smell you’re buying can actually be making you sick. It shouldn’t surprise you that when you smell, you know, maybe a quote-unquote lemon fresh, cleaner, or put lavender spray in the air, it’s not real lemon or lavender and all, but at a concoction of hundreds of chemical ingredients, synthesize in a lab and manufactured for industrial distribution designed to trick you and mimic natural aromas.

It is up to us, the consumers to educate ourselves and vote with our dollars. You do have options. You have choices that are safer, more effective, and often cheaper when you turn to nature made versus man made products. So let’s look at the alternatives and the steps that we can take moving forward.

STEP 1:

Remove your toxic products. Since synthetic fragrances are all around us, the best place to start lowering your fragrance footprint is in your own home. Remember exposures add up. So step one would be to get out a big box and fill it with everything that has the term fragrance on it. If we remove the bulk of chemicals in our home, we are reducing a large portion of our body burden. Okay? So that’s step one, remove the toxic products.

STEP 2:

Change your air filter in your home so you aren’t going to be circulating the bad air that’s been circulating, that these chemical fragrance particles have been sticking to. So step two, replace your air filter.

STEP 3:

Introduce safer options and replace those cleaning products with products that you can trust. So I want to speak here to essential oils because not all essential oils are created equal. We don’t want to take out a synthetic chemical cleaner and then substitute in a synthetically built essential oil because you can literally do this. And when you find cheap essential oils, it’s not a good deal. It’s actually cheap because it’s been synthetically built. If you have the right chemical recipe, you can literally buy individual synthetic components of essential oils and build them. And it can look really good on the most common chemistry tests. And that’s not what we want. Okay. We want the real deal. Your body knows the difference between fake chemistry. And even though you can’t maybe tell the difference, your body cannot be faked. You cannot fake the human body. Your human cells know the difference between a naturally sourced essential oil and an adulterated or synthetically constructed essential oil. So if you have not yet taken my 45 minute free online workshop where I cover what essential oils are and how to use them, what to look for in a quality essential oil and why it matters, and where I cover the most popular and versatile oils every home should have, I want to make sure that you have access to that. I am going to drop the link in the show notes so you can take the first steps towards getting access. You can even opt to receive a free sample to go along with the workshop if you’d like it to be more interactive. But it’s really important to pay attention to the quality of your essential oil because you don’t want to be using fake lavender in your cleaning products, right?

You want to be using the real deal and it’s gonna be a lot more effective for you. And it’s actually going to do what it’s designed to do. Okay. Again. So those three steps where step one, remove your toxic products from your home. Anything that has fragrance on it gets tossed. Step two is to change your air filter. So you aren’t, re-circulating the bad air. And step three is to replace your products with those you can trust.

So to help you eliminate those awful toxins found in your everyday products with essential oils, I want to first give you a little bit of validation that essential oils actually work. This again was my husband’s issue. He was like, “Can that bottle really do, you know, clean all this bacteria?” He was used to using chemical cleaners. And so yes, essential oils kill germs safely!

They are non-toxic when they’re real, right? There’s a difference. And they don’t pollute the water supply or the environment. They don’t build up in the systems of our earth and our bodies with toxic side effects. Instead, essential oils have healthy benefits. So lemon for example naturally has antibiotic properties, antimicrobial properties, it’s uplifting and energizing. All of the citrus oils, right, are going to be antiseptic, anti-microbial, fungicidal, insecticidal. They’re going to just remove all of those sticky substances. They’re going to help polish the chrome and the wood in your home. They’re going to remove marker from your wall people. It’s so incredible! And you’re going to smell these uplifting awesome, amazing oils. It’s going to put you in a good mood to clean, right? Everybody could use that. The other thing is they’re powerfully concentrated. So a little goes a long way. I know it can seem like an investment with certain high quality oils because you are investing in purity, but a little goes a long way.

And so a typical bottle might have 250 drops of essential oil in it. And maybe we’re using 10 drops to clean your toilet. Again, they save you money because a little goes a long way and you can stretch your dollars more. So let’s look at how essential oils can kill germs and you can dig into the science on this. If you want to research it, great, but I’m just going to give you a few sources because I think it’s important to know that science does back up what the essential oils are claiming to do. So oregano oil and cinnamon oil, these two oils in particular have strong antibacterial, antiviral, and antifungal properties. So these are going to be great to kill viruses and bacteria and fungus and mold. You can actually, when you have a high quality essential oil, use these on yourself on the bottoms of your feet, you can put them in a capsule and take them internally.

And so this is going to help you fight anything that you feel coming onto your system in that form, like the virus, bacteria, fungus, mold, all right. We talked about lemon, but I want to share with you some research on lemon. So this is talking about diffusing so we can diffuse essential oils to clean and purify the air and our internal environment in our home. And so essential oils when diffusing them, they’re going to fill the room with these health promoting effects, right? They’re excellent for fighting germs, improving respiration and boosting mood. And so diffusing lemon in particular can kill meningococcus. I don’t know if I’m saying that right in 15 minutes, typhus and under an hour, staph in two hours, and then pneumococcus bacteria within three. This is why we have diffusers going. I like to blend. I have a blend that has wild orange, clove, cinnamon, eucalyptus, and rosemary.

And so we diffuse that to help purify our air and just affect the environment and kill any bacteria that might be circulating in our homes. All right. I mentioned Rosemary. So I want to say that too is a great oil to use for cleaning because it’s anti-bacterial, anti-infective, antifungal. It’s a great degreaser. Rosemary personally I like for health benefits as it also helps stimulate mental activity and increases concentration. So this is a good one to diffuse when the kids are doing their schoolwork and they’re just having problems focusing. And then peppermint is also a good one to add to the diffuser with Rosemary, because it can help with focus. But peppermint is a great oil to clean with. It’s antibacterial, antiviral. It’s a great deterrent and natural alternative for ants, for spiders, I’ve heard even for mice. People will leave drops on cotton balls around and the mice will be deterred from that. So peppermint is for our physical benefit also. It quickly relieves headaches and digestive upset. It gives you that quick, pick me up that natural boost of energy in the afternoon. So you can mix lemon and peppermint and rosemary into a spray bottle. I like to add a little bit of Epsom salt in my glass spray bottles first, then mix in the oils. And so it’s like a ¼ tsp Epsom salt and maybe 10 to 15 drops of essential oil. And I just let that swish around for a little bit in a 16oz glass spray bottle. And then I top it off with water. And that really is my sanitizing and cleaning spray. I have a testimonial from Carol and she says, “Yes, I’ve tried every cleaner on the market to remove hard rust and mildew from my bathroom. Cleaning fumes made me feel sick and the results didn’t satisfy me. My new cleaner works so much better and I never feel sick after I scrubbed my shower. I love it!” 

So not only can you ditch the toxins, but you can get a better result. Okay. One more oil I want to talk to you about is a Melaleuca or better known as tea tree. And this is a very versatile essential oil for cleaning. It’s a powerful anti-microbial, antiseptic, and insecticidal agent. We use it to clean our toilets, but personally you can use as a deodorant, a foot spray, a hand sanitizer, and it also is effective for sore throat people gargle with that, for disinfecting wounds, cold sores, pimples, and earaches. And this oil, melaleuca was found as effective in treating fungal nail infections as the antifungal drug Clortrimazole. I don’t know if I’m saying that right, but you can replace a lot of chemical cleaning products in your home with just Melaleuca and it would save you so much money!

So here are some additional oils that are great for cleaning. I mentioned citrus oils. I mentioned Cinnamon, Oregano, Rosemary, Peppermint, and then Melaleuca of course, but Thyme, Basil is a great one for cleaning. Eucalyptus is another really good one. Clove because again, very high in antibacterial properties. Okay. So I’m going to give you some tips on cleaning and just some quick recipes that I use. Very, very simple. I’ve knocked out so many different cleaning products with just these very simple ingredients of vinegar, baking soda, water, and essential oils. So what we do, and I do this while the kids are taking a bath, I don’t have to worry that they’re breathing in anything. I’m working double time. They’re in the bath playing and I’m cleaning my toilet. Okay. So I take baking soda. First of all, I turn the valve off of the toilet, I flush it and let the water go down. And then I sprinkle baking soda in the toilet. And I put in 10 drops. We have an immune blend, and if you want this blend I can get it for you, but basically it’s wild orange, Rosemary, clove, cinnamon, and eucalyptus. And so I’ll put 10 drops of that in my toilet bowl, along with 10 drops of Melaleuca and 10 drops of lemon. And I’ll just scrub that dry and I’ll let that sit a little bit and I’ll come in and I’ll put some vinegar. I don’t really measure. I just kind of pour in the vinegar, let it suds up and do its thing. And then I scrub again, let that sit. And then I turn the water back on and I flush and we’re good to go.

And then I do our master bathroom while they’re in the bathtub, the kids they’re older, so they’re fine. But that is how I clean my toilets. Now for the microwave. This is my trick. I take a one cup glass bowl and I put a cup of water in there with maybe five drops of lemon, essential oil. I turn it on for a minute and that just kind of pre soaks and gets everything ready where literally all I have to do is open my microwave and wipe it off. It is an amazing trick for cleaning your microwave in one minute. The other thing we do is with the sanitizing spray, I mentioned, I put a quarter teaspoon of Epsom salts in a 16 ounce glass spray bottle. I add my 10 to 15 drops of essential oil. And then I top it off with water and that becomes our sanitizing and cleaning spray.

We also have a purification blend that we add into our laundry, because believe it or not your laundry loads can be transferring millions of bacteria from one load to another if you’re not washing with something that’s killing those bacteria. And so we have our protective blend, I’ll put in maybe 10 to 15 drops of that, and then our purifying blend and that blend man, that purifying blend, it gets rid of anything that smells. My clothes are so vibrant and it is just something that, yeah, dogs, cats, pets, kids, anything yucky and smelly. I love adding that to my laundry. I add it to every single load so that it smells fresh and clean. For a window cleaner, we actually love using Norwex products. And so we just typically would use Norwex and water. But if you don’t have that, a great window cleaner option is a one-to-one ratio of vinegar to water and then just adding 10 drops of lemon essential oil. Make sure you shake that bottle every time you use it, because your essential oils will rise to the top. Another thing that we use is a one-to-one mixture of our laundry detergent concentrate. And again, we get a pure version from the company that I love so if you want that, message me and I can get that too. But we do a one-to-one ratio of the laundry detergent with hydrogen peroxide and then additional lemon. And that becomes our pretreat for stains in our laundry. It works so amazing! All right. My last tip for you is carpets. So we will take baking soda, usually two to three cups of baking soda. And then I’ll put in 20 to 30 drops of essential oil, typically a citrusy or uplifting one. 

You can also use Cedarwood. That’s kind of a great one for repelling bugs and things like that. And so we just sprinkled it on the carpet, let it rest overnight and vacuum in the morning. And it’s a great deodorizer. It’s kind of refreshing your carpets and it’s cleaning that smell up. If your vacuum ever gets stinky like mine, I’m sure yours doesn’t, but those are the tips and tricks I have for you for cleaning with safer, cheaper, more natural products so you’re not exposing yourself unnecessarily to toxins and having a buildup in your system. 

Again, if you would like access to the free workshop, go ahead and click the link in the show notes. That’s going to get you started if you’re just kind of thinking, Hmm, I’m not sure if these are the right fit for me. This is a great workshop for you just to kind of explore the potential of essential oils for health and wellness solutions and reducing your toxic load.

If you would like my cleaning PDF, which has recipes on it, as well as a workshop that I did on reducing toxic load in your home, you can reach out to me directly. You can private message me I’m on Facebook, or you can email me and just let me know that you want access to the reducing your toxic load wellness workshop. I hope that information blesses you today. I want all the mamas to be happy and healthy in their home and kiddos not to be breathing in toxic products so that everybody’s happy and healthy. So thank you for joining me today, beloved, just to hear about these powerful plant-based solutions. And I look forward to chatting with you next time.