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Lifestyle Habits for a Complete Life Renovation- Week 4

How are your brand new habits coming along? If you’re ready to keep going, let’s go!

Here are four new habits to try this week and see how they enhance your life ♥︎

Health

Detoxify your house! I recently came across a great YouTube video that discussed things women do that are super toxic (including using nail polish removers, nail polish, and hair dyes) and it made me realize how much around is can be so toxic. Nail technicians suffer cancer rates higher than the regular population, and other professions are also considered more dangerous because of their exposure to toxins. That’s not just for specific jobs though… are you bringing poison into your home?

Some things I read in the news recently- packaged foods contaminated with PFAS, eye drops that are actually non-sterile and have caused blindness in some consumers, and more. This made me realize that the less we use, the better, and for the things we have to use, the more natural, the better. Minimally or unprocessed foods. Less makeup and choose brands that source natural ingredients. Natural cleaning products (vinegar, baking soda, lemon, castille soap, etc). Items like oven cleaners and fabric sprays are so incredibly bad for us to breath in, so why buy them at all? Try to find alternatives that are natural for as much of your daily products as possible, as well as cleaning products, so your family is safer, the air you breath is healthier, and you’re still healthy and look great.

Beauty

In keeping with the health theme this week, I wanted to focus on more natural beauty ideas, including less is more with makeup and skincare, and what you can use that will help moisturize skin and keep you looking great, while not harming you in any way. A lot of people are starting to grow out their gray (a pretty cool beauty trend that actually looks good), but if you aren’t ready for that, maybe consider highlights to help them blend in without having to color all your hair and expose your scalp to toxic dyes. Highlights don’t touch the scalp (it causes blotchy color and bleeding because of the heat from the scalp so colorists start a small increment away from the skin).

I’ve been researching different food products to wash and condition hair, and discovered that egg whites are a great shampoo (for an oily scalp) while the egg yolks condition dry ends. Some people incorporate vinegar and mayo into their haircare routine, but they were too extreme for me and I have great success with homemade egg shampoo, so research homemade hair shampoo for your hair type and try it out at home. I have been conditioning my hair with a touch of olive oil or coconut oil (mainly to seal the ends to they aren’t damaged), and brushing my hair with a 100% boars hair brush to distribute the natural oils and keep the time between washing farther apart.

happy marriage love notebook

Relationships

Gratitude is a powerful force, and one way that I started to focus on the many, many things I have to grateful for is to create a love notebook. Every day, I would write all the wonderful things that happened to me, either via some kindness of another person, or just random luck from the universe. If I didn’t have much to write about, I would write about what I already have to be thankful for- my health, my family, my home, household income, freedom, friends, opportunities, a sunny day.

If you are in a relationship with someone that you don’t find yourself appreciating, you can write a love notebook specifically for them, and what you appreciate about that specific person, and what kind or wonderful things they do for you or to enhance your life and make it better. It can be anything from them taking out the garbage (it doesn’t matter if they always did it… appreciate that you don’t have to) to complimenting you to taking over a task you hate, to working hard to support the household. After doing this for a while, look back on your previous entries and realize how much this person adds to your life… it has an unbelievable effect on your gratitude for this person, and your appreciation for their place in your life. Maybe it will inspire you to do wonderful things for them too (don’t they deserve it?).

Money

I’m a huge fan of DIY anything, because it’s incredibly empowering to be self-sufficient and take care of things yourself. Whether you choose to hire others or pay someone to do things for you is another matter, but having the skill and the ability to do it if you chose to has an unbelievable impact on your self-confidence and sense of self worth… you can do it! It also saves a lot of money and usually has many other benefits as well. For example, if you tend to drive through chemical filled car washes each week, why not get some gentle cleaners and microfiber towels and try to wash your own car? It will save money pretty quickly over time and get you moving a little bit more (exercise out in the sun is great for you), and can be something you do with your kids. You’ll learn how to get your car to sparkle and how to not leave streaks without having to pay a stranger quickly dealing with your car in an assembly line of vehicles for $30 a pop.

You can learn to fill your own tires with air (and learn how much pressure the tires should have seasonally), you can learn to change your own car oil, you can learn to create your own basic website (and maybe over time, a more advanced site and maybe after that, a new side gig creating websites for others). You can learn so sew on a button, fix a hem, hang up blinds, and many other things we tend to pay people to do for either convenience or out of fear that we can’t manage it. Maybe you really can’t, but did you try? It’s expensive to farm out so many chores, and for so long, many people have been doing all these things themselves (heck, people used to churn their own butter and there are people who build their own computers). You can do a lot more than you realize, and there are so many free resources online to help you out, on YouTube or various websites.

Here are things I now do myself to save money and get it done how I like, when I like: I give myself manicures and pedicures (with low-chemical products), I blow out my own hair, I cut my sons’ hair with clippers I bought from Best Buy, I try out copycat recipes from famous restaurants, but with healthier, organic ingredients.