Our Toxic Home Transformation List {stuff we trust!}

Our TWO MOST asked questions throughout The Toxic Home Transformation summit were:

  1. What do YOU (Ryan & Teddy) use for your own family (as opposed to what other speakers mentioned or sponsors of the event use)?
  2. The information is great but is there a roadmap to follow?

This document answers both of those questions.  These are the products we use for our own family, laid out from order of least to most commitment in money and time.

This is not intended to be an all inclusive document showing everything you could possibly do to clean up your living environment, but rather a reflection of the questions we got most throughout the summit pertaining to specific products with explanations as to why we use them.

If you have a question about a product category that’s not on here, send us an email and ask!!

  • No / Low Cost Items: These are items we implemented as soon as we heard about them as they cost little to no money and were easy changes to make.
  • Game Changers: These are the products or strategies we feel made the biggest bang for our buck in ridding our family of carcinogens and optimizing our environment.  They weren’t free but were not super expensive either. 
  • Optimize: These are the items we’ve wanted for a long time, set an intention that we’d have them as soon as we could, and now we have them and feel better about our surroundings because of them.

Non-Toxic Household Items & Non-Toxic Bedding

Low / No Cost

  • P2 Probiotic Power Surface Cleaner: This is the coolest healthy home discovery we’ve made in a long time!  This cleaner simultaneously uses enzymes to break down biofilms that protect harmful bacteria and introduces friendly bacteria into your environment… so the actual microbiome of our HOME is optimized!!
  • Etee Food Wraps: We LOVE these hemp & wax based food wraps.  We wrap fruit and vegetables in them directly or use them instead of plastic in covering our (glass) food storage containers.
  • MyGreenFills Laundry Detergent: We met founder Stephen Ezell a while back and were so impressed with his company’s mission to provide non-toxic laundry products AND save the environment in the process that we were very happy to get to feature him on The Toxic Home Transformation.

Optimize

  • Spindle Mattress: This is the best intersection of price and quality we could fine in a non-toxic mattress after a TON of research.  We’ve had our spindle for years now and it still feels like the day we got it!

Healthy Air

No / Low Cost

  • Open Windows: We have our windows open as much as possible. Especially since fluctuations in temperature and slightly “uncomfortable” temperatures are healthier than a constant 72 degrees!
  • House plants: In our new house we’re aiming for one per hundred square feet…. but one total to start is way better than zero!
  • Change our furnace filters!!!  They’re supposed to be replaced or cleaned every 90 days… when was the last time for you?? It could be doing more harm than good… You’ll need to measure the height, width and depth of your existing filter… and get it done!
  • FreshVent Vent Register Filters: We use these as an added layer of particle filtration, and protection against mold growth in ducts… and it keeps spiders out as a bonus!

Game Changer

  • Molekule area air purifier: The most compelling research on air filtration we’ve ever seen for protecting against chemicals, viruses and bacteria… at a comparable price to other quality filters. No brainer after doing the research.  Real life experience: we keep some backup plastic disposable diapers around and one of them ended up in the oven at 400 degrees… don’t ask… horrible chemical smell throughout the whole house.  Set up the Molekule right next to the oven and the chemical smell was gone in minutes.

Optimize

  • Solas RS4 whole home air purifier: When building our new ultimate healthy home, this is the whole home system our building biologist Andy Pace (he gives the keynote speeches at the building biology conferences… and was featured on The Toxic Home Transformation!) STRONGLY recommended.  Real Life Experience: we just had to evacuate our house due to a forest fire!  When we got back the whole area was super smokey and smelly.  Crisp, fresh air the minute we walked into our home!

Healthy Water

No / Low Cost

  • The Mountain Valley Spring Water: Once we found out what was in tap water we didn’t take another sip.  While we were researching water filters we drank spring water.  We still pick this up when we’re out and about and forgot to bring water from home or are traveling!
  • Berkey Shower Filter: We have tried several shower filters over the years and finally settled on Berkey after getting so much use out of their drinking water filter (below)!

Game Changers

  • Berkey Standalone Water Filter: This is the fastest change in drinking water we made right away.  No real setup involved, we just ordered it, it got to us, and we used it.  Berkey is the most trusted name in this style of water filter and performed the best in many independent analyses we found.  Even though we now use an RO filter (below) for our home drinking water, we still are very glad to have this style of filter on hand as it comes in super handy on the road!
  • Ispring RO Under Counter System:  Removing the most possible contaminants was ultimately most important to us in the long run, at that is accomplished with a reverse osmosis (RO) filter.  RO systems are SO effective at removing everything everything from the water however that they also strip out beneficial minerals that keep the water alkaline, so the system needs to have a remineralizer.  We went with iSpring as they specialize only in RO systems, have the most data and certifications we could find on their product, and the system is built at a great value.  This does require a significant time DIY investment to install or a couple hundred bucks in installation costs.  So if you’re short on time or money definitely start with the Berkey!

Optimize

  • Aquasana Whole Home Water Filter: We only recently got a whole home filter but are so happy now that we have one knowing our dishes and clothes are not being washed with the substances we were avoiding in our drinking and shower water.  We got the Aquasana as it was recommended by our building biologist Andy Pace and came at an affordable price.  

Healthy Lighting

Low / No Cost

  • Incandescent Light Bulbs: More research is beginning to come out showing the frequencies and spectrums produced by CFL and white LED lighting is not good for human health.  We use incandescent bulbs in the late afternoon and early evening while the sun is still up when we need extra light.
  • Blublockers Blue Blocking Glasses: After the sun goes down when it’s dark outside we should not be taking in blue light spectrum from lighting and electronics screens.  We like BluBlockers because they’re inexpensive… and look super rad. 😉 

Game Changers

  • Modvera Lighting Red LED Light Bulbs: Glasses are a great first step for wearing around the house at night time but we noticed a big step up even from that in our sleep and sense of calm when we switched all of our lamps over to red LED bulbs and used those for the last couple hours before going to sleep!

EMF Avoidance

Low / No Cost

  • Unplug Router: Upon finding out there was an issue with EMF we immediately unplugged out router and only plugged it in when we were actually using it.

Game Changers

  • We hardwired all our electronics using shielded ethernet cables, cable clips and ethernet adaptors as necessary.  We then called our internet provider and asked them to disable the wifi on our router and have never looked back!
  • Smart Meter Cover: We have always avoided utility companies with smart meters in determining where to live so this is not something we use ourselves but feel strongly about putting this in the document so you can at least shield your own until you come up with the best-long term plan.  This smart meter cover is sold by a good friend of ours who’s child also overcame cancer and who has done the same level of research we have in optimizing their environment.
  • Electrosmog 2 EMF meter: Once we hardwired everything we then got an EMF meter which revealed several electronic devices we didn’t think would be putting out EMFs actually were!  The meter is also incredibly useful in determining what areas of the house are worst for outside sources such as cell phone towers or neighbors’ wifi.