Low-Tox Living: Tips For Detoxifying Your Home: with Amy Pigott (The Slow Living Collective)

Have you ever thought about how many chemicals are hanging out in your home, just waiting to sneak into your daily routine? Low-tox living is all about cutting down on those sneaky, potentially harmful substances and making your home a sanctuary of health and wellness. It’s about swapping out the icky stuff for cleaner, greener alternatives that are better for you and the planet. Imagine turning your space into a haven where you can breathe easy and feel great!

This month, we’ve teamed up with the fabulous Amy Pigott from The Slow Living Collective to bring you this blog. Amy is a slow living guru, yoga teacher, busy mama and dedicated wellbeing thriver. Over many years, Amy has not only built herself and her family a life of toxin-free goodness, homeschooling and a focus on the ‘simple things’ in life - she has also built up quite an online following too, now with over 6000 people following her natural, good-for-you-and-the-planet lifestyle hacks, tips and tricks.

Amy describes her work as ‘Helping Busy People Slow Down, Simplify And Live The Life They Desire’.

Here’s what she has to say!

Why Should You Care About Reducing Toxins? 

Our homes should be our safe spaces. But did you know that the very air we breathe and the products we use can affect our health? Those everyday toxins can sneak up on us, leading to things like headaches, skin irritations, or even long-term health issues. And not just that, the products we use daily can be carcinogenic (cancer-causing), endocrine disruptors (affecting our hormones), allergens and irritants. By embracing a low-tox lifestyle, you’re not just detoxifying your space—you’re also nurturing your health, your body and your mind. It’s about creating a healthier environment where you can thrive and not just survive. So grab a cup of tea, get comfy, and let’s dive into the world of low-tox living together and learn some super simple and effective tips to help you detoxify your home. 

Understanding Household Toxins

Household toxins are often hidden in plain sight and the most common culprits include cleaning products filled with harsh chemicals, personal care items laden with synthetic fragrances and preservatives, and furniture and decor emitting volatile organic compounds (VOCs). Indoor air quality is significantly impacted by these toxins, often surpassing outdoor pollution levels. Even our kitchens can harbour potential dangers, from non-stick cookware to plastic food storage containers. Prolonged exposure to these chemicals can lead to a range of health issues, including respiratory problems, allergies, hormonal imbalances, and even chronic diseases. I know this can seem like everything is out to get you, but I promise you this: with a few simple changes you can make a big difference to your exposure. It’s really important to remember this one thing too: You can’t change everything all at once, it’s a slow and steady progress and one that I have undertaken over many years. Take it slowly, go one step at a time and you definitely don’t need to run out and bin all of your non-stick cookware straight away.

Detoxifying Your Cleaning Routine

I found a great place to start and it’s in your cleaning routine. This is where I first started when I wanted to make some changes, as I feel it’s one of the most impactful areas where you can make changes. Cleaning products, as mentioned, can emit various VOCs, are often packed with dangerous chemicals and fragrance and can cause a variety of issues for the humans and pets in your home. In the social media era of cleaning influencers, somehow we’ve got to a place where cleaning is sexy. Now I am not saying don’t clean, quite the opposite, but you can create your own low toxic or non-toxic products, that are really affordable, better for your health and home, and take just minutes to put together. Oh, and yes, they work just as well, if not better.

Simple home cleaning spray:

1 cup of white vinegar

1 cup of water

10 drops of an essential oil (or you can infuse your vinegar with something like lemon rinds for a week before making) (optional)

 

Stubborn Stain cleaning spray:

1 cup of castile soap

1 cup of water

1 tbsp of white vinegar

Infused vinegar or essential oil to fragrance (optional)

Hand soap:

1 cup of castile soap 

2 tbsp of water

1 tsp of Vitamin E oil

Essential oil to fragrance (optional)

 

Dish soap:

1 cup of castile soap 

2 tbsp of water

1 tbsp of vinegar

Essential oil to fragrance (optional)1 cup of castile soap 

Hopefully these recipes will get you started and I think you’ll find once you’ve made them a few times you will be able to throw them together in a matter of minutes. I use amber spray bottles or pump bottles for storing, and they can be used time and time again.

NB: Never mix vinegar cleaning products with bleach or bleach based cleaning products, this can cause a chemical reaction (Mustard Gas) that can seriously impact your health. 

Choosing Non-Toxic Personal Care Products

When I was on my own journey to low toxic living, and once I had embraced trying out a new cleaning routine, I moved onto my personal care products. I had switched to things like period pants and reusable sanitary pads many years before (and as an anecdotal side effect that I have heard many people cite, I experienced less period related symptoms, such as cramps, since) but my shampoo’s, shower gels and the like still needed work. I downloaded the Yuka App on a recommendation, which is an app you can use to scan the barcodes of almost any product and it will tell you whether there are any problematic ingredients inside. It will highlight things such as carcinogens, endocrine disruptors, allergens and irritants. I went through my bathroom and with no word of lie, threw almost all of it out. Not very eco-friendly of me I must admit, but I needed these things out of my home.

To say the ingredients of my bathroom were a total disaster is not over-egging it. I thought my products were on the better side anyway, but boy was I wrong. It was all there: the cancer causing chemicals, the hormone disruptors,the allergens and the irritants. All I was left with was my shampoo and conditioner bars, and a shower gel. Everything else was gone and it’s been that way ever since. You don’t need to be as brutal as me, there is nothing wrong with using things up and making better decisions next time round. For me, I needed it gone, I didn’t want another minute where I used these products that were messing with my hormones. I even purged my makeup bag and left myself with some mineral face powder and not much else. And here I am, many years on, still not really finding the low toxic makeup I require.

So what do I use instead? 

I switched to a fluoride free toothpaste, I use simple shampoo and conditioner bars for my hair, I make my own shower gel, I use reusable sanitary products and for skincare and sunscreen I use tallow balms. And that’s about as complex as my bathroom gets. Does it work just as well though? It does. I’ve never been happier with the products I have.

As with all of these things, don’t panic. Replace when you can and when you have finished what you’re using and make better choices for yourself next time round.

Safe Food Storage and Kitchen Practices

The kitchen was an area that I left until last when it came to addressing the toxins around our home. It wasn’t for any reason other than it’s expensive to replace kitchen items anyway, and especially if they aren’t ready to be replaced. As with everything, there is no such thing as perfection, just doing our best. Do I still have plastic in our kitchen? Yes. Is it less than before? Also yes. 

I have always cooked with stainless steel anyway, so I was lucky that I didn’t need to think about replacing things like non-stick or teflon pans. I did however replace my non-stick baking trays for things like glass (Pyrex is great and worth the investment). Replacing cookware such as saucepans and frying pans for non-toxic alternatives like stainless steel or cast iron. Switching plastic storage containers for glass is also another great swap, as is switching silicon kitchen utensils for either stainless steel or bamboo alternatives.

The kitchen is a place where the cost of switching can really add up, so my advice is go slow, prioritise what works for you, replace only when things need replacing and definitely get rid of any non-stick items that are peeling or degrading so it doesn’t leach into your food.

What I don’t want is for you to have gotten this far and be panicking about everything inside your home, that’s counterproductive as the worry and stress is just as bad for you. There is nothing here to worry about in any great depth, just ways you can be aware of what is in the products we consume and how we can make better choices for our wellbeing from this point onwards. I’m nowhere near perfect but I am doing better than I once was, and that's all I can hope for. Progress always over perfection. Low toxic living doesn’t stress me out, in fact for me it’s actually been a gateway to living more simply and naturally. That, if anything, brings me quite a lot of joy. My hope is that it will give you some ideas too and that you too can live with a lot more joy, less toxins, and support your wellbeing in many different ways.

Find out more about Amy and The Slow Living Collective here:

Instagram: @theslowlivingcollective
Podcast: The Slow Living Collective (Amy Pigott) - available on Spotify
Website: www.theslowlivingcollective.com