Easy Ways to Make your Home More Eco-Friendly

We all want to do our part to protect the environment, but without a large paycheck, that can be seem difficult, if not impossible. But doing your part doesn’t have to be hard. Small steps add up to a big difference, you just have to know which ones to take.

Use less water.

Saving water is all about small steps, here are a few that will help save big.

- Shut off the water while you brush your teeth
- Take showers that are a minute or two shorter
- Only flush the toilet when you need to
- Only run full loads of laundry and dishes
- Buy from sustainable producers. These are farmers, ranchers, and other producers that use techniques that pollute less and use less water. You can do some research online or ask at your local organic market to find these products.

Use less energy.

If you don’t have the money to buy a hybrid car or convert your house to solar power, you can make a big difference with small changes.

- Buy energy efficient appliances. They may be more expensive, but make up for the increased cost in lower energy bills.
- Unplug chargers when you’re not using them. Cell phone and other chargers use up powers even if there’s nothing attached to them.
- Put devices with remotes, like T.V.s, VCRs, and stereos, on a power strip and turn it off when you’re not using them. These devices use a lot of power to run the remote receiver even when the device is off.
- Walk or ride your bike for short trips.
- Buy local products. It takes energy to transport food and other products across the country. Buying local not only supports your local economy, it helps them use less energy.

When it comes to saving energy and water, it’s a great idea to get the kids involved. You can even make it a game. Have them track how much water and electricity everyone is using. You can compete to see who uses the least water. You can often count on your kids to help keep you on track when given the task.

Reuse.

Most of us know the three R’s: reduce, reuse, recycle, but when we work on conserving, we often leave reuse out of the picture. While you can often find tips on how to reuse common products from other people, what you need most is creativity. With a little thought there are many items around your home that can be reused – toilet paper holders can be used to sow seeds for the vegetable patch. And old yogurt containers can be cut into strip to make plant labels. Old food jars can be refilled with homemade foods or can make great impromptu vases.

Use environmentally friendly products. When you go to the grocery store, you probably see more and more “natural” or “eco friendly” products every time. There are generally two big problems with these products: 1. Just because they’re more natural than regular products, doesn’t mean they’re entirely natural. 2, They’re often expensive.

If you want inexpensive, natural, safe products, why not just make them yourself. Vinegar is a great way to clean and disinfect glass and other surfaces. Need to remove stubborn stains? Just add some baking soda to your vinegar cleaner. Some quick searching online will lead you to hundreds of other natural safe home-made cleaning products.

We all knowing that going green means better for the environment, but it’s also better for you. Conserving resources also helps save you money, which is something most of us are happy to live with.

Kinds of Vitamins: A General Overview

There are many different kinds of vitamins that can help your body. These vitamins, along with the essential minerals, which can also be called micronutrients, are things that your body needs, in small amounts, which promote good biochemical reactions within your body and within your cells. They make you grow right, help you digest your food, make you more mentally alert and more mentally sound, help you to be resistant to infectious diseases, and help your body to use carbohydrates, proteins and fats. Also, vitamins and minerals are catalysts in your body, which speed up or initiate chemical reactions. The difference between the vitamins and the proteins you get from food is that you don’t burn up the vitamins, so you can’t use them for energy.

Because your body does not make most vitamins and minerals directly, you have to get them from food sources or from vitamin supplements. If you aren’t getting enough of a certain vitamin or mineral for a long period of time you can get a specific disease or condition. This will usually be fixed when the vitamin or mineral is re supplied to your body.

Basically, there are 13 vitamins. Four of them are fat-soluble and nine of them are going to be water soluble. The ones that are fat-soluble can be stored in your body fat and also stored in certain organs such as your liver. The water-soluble vitamins do not get stored in your body in large amounts.

The vitamins that are fat soluble, which means that you can store them in your body for a long time, include A, D, E and K. These dissolve in lipids and require bile in order to be absorbed. They are also stored in tissues, and if you have too many of them they can be toxic to you.

The water-soluble vitamins are going to be C and eight of the B vitamins. These are thiamine, which is B1, Riboflavin, which is B2, niacin, pyridoxine, which is B6, pantothenic acid, which is B5, vitamin B12, biotin and folic acid. These dissolve in water, so if you are cooking or washing, the vitamins might actually be washed out of the food. They are easily absorbed and excreted, and are not stored very much or often in your tissues. These vitamins are seldom going to reach toxic levels.

All of these vitamins are found in food, but if you aren’t able to get the food that you need in order to get the vitamins, you are going to have to turn to nutritional supplements to make sure that you are getting all of the vitamins and minerals that your body is going to need.