My path to green

I first started to clean up my chemical act after a lecture from Anne Steinemann, a University of Washington professor whose main research at the time demonstrated some pretty frightening unintended consequences of artificial fragrance (you can check out her work here). I was a college freshman at the time, and thanks to that lecture and ongoing communication with Dr. Steinemann, I started to replace every product I used that contained artificial fragrance - Shampoo, soaps, lotion, candles, laundry detergent, disinfecting wipes, hand sanitizer, etc. As I continued to read further into the basic chemistry of my everyday household products, I found more and more reasons to go green, not just for the earth but primarily for my own health. After doing a clean sweep of my personal care products and my household cleaners, I started to investigate what was really in the food I was eating. Once I'd made some serious changes in my diet, I slowly started to look into the safety of my cookware, furniture, flooring, and the other physical details of my home. I kicked this research into high gear when my husband and I first thought about having a baby, and now that our son is here I've added baby gear to my ever-growing list of research interests. I'm happy to say that in every single one of these categories, I've found doable, affordable, healthy alternatives to the often unsafe conventional products that typically fill our daily lives, and over the course of 5+ years, I've made some pretty big changes at a slow and easy pace. The time has definitely come to organize what I've learned and share it with others, so in addition to continuing to make improvements to my own lifestyle, I'm starting to pass along what I've learned so far and share my successes and failures with others who have the same goal: a happy, healthy, harmless home.