The home should be the sanctuary that we strive for in every aspect of our lives. It’s more important than ever to ensure that the idea of home is not just about a box that we live in and has a few windows, but is a space for us to physically, mentally, and emotionally thrive. Therefore, we should be making upgrades to our living spaces that will foster better health for everybody under one roof. But what are some of the essential upgrades that we should prioritize for a healthier you at home?
Proper Ventilation
This is particularly important if you live in a home that has more than its fair share of damp or mold, but also if you are someone that is really pushing the idea of health and wellness by cooking meals from scratch. We should all be striving for that whole food diet, which is something that’s harder to achieve than ever unless we are chained to the kitchen, but if we are someone who is striving to make everything so we can benefit from a minimally processed diet, we still need to have adequate ventilation.
This is why a kitchen hood, sometimes known as a range hood, could be invaluable at effectively removing smoke, particles, and cooking odors to enhance the freshness of your home. But we should also think about increasing ventilation by opening windows on opposite sides of each other to encourage a through flow. When air is left to fester, it becomes stale, and this means the potential for respiratory issues. We should always breathe in fresh air as much as possible. Therefore, improving ventilation, either through the aforementioned kitchen hoods, as well as ceiling fans and exhaust fans, can make a massive difference.
Bringing Nature Indoors
There are two main benefits to incorporating house plants into your home decor. Plants enhance the visual appeal of the space, but they can also act as natural air purifiers. There’s a lot to be said about the benefits of getting out in nature, but if we don’t have the time or the inclination, we should invest in low-maintenance indoor plants that can help our space thrive.
Plants will take the carbon dioxide out of the air and breathe out fresh oxygen to benefit us in terms of our lungs, as well as our overall well-being. We should spend more time in nature, and if we can’t, we’ve got to bring nature to us.
Embracing Natural Light
Natural light can promote our mental well-being, and in fact, exposing ourselves to more natural light results in improved mood, as well as better sleep quality. We should get natural light as soon as possible in the mornings, and this will help to regulate our circadian rhythm. If we get daylight first thing in the morning, but also ensure that we have a dark room at night, this will help to send that signal to our bodies that it’s time to wake up and time to go to sleep.
Natural light is absolutely pivotal, and if we can get it as soon as we wake up, we will feel the benefits. If you can’t get much natural light anyway, you should think about amplifying the natural light entering into the property, for example, by installing skylights or using strategically placed mirrors. Reflective surfaces like mirrors and chrome can automatically create a lighter space, which makes us feel a lot better anyway, so it’s definitely worth considering.
Choose Hard Flooring
If you have family members with asthma or any breathing issues, it’s important to get rid of carpets as soon as possible and replace them with hard flooring. Hard flooring has a number of benefits, most notably being easier to clean, but it’s less likely to trap allergens.
Carpets tend to absorb small pollutants like allergens and dust mites, which can result in poor air quality. As beneficial as it is to ventilate the property, if it’s freezing cold, you need to start figuring out the best ways to improve your overall health in a holistic manner, which is where hard flooring can promote a far healthier living environment.
Upgrade Your Bedroom
Prioritizing sleep should be at the top of our list because if we can have proper rest, we will always feel better, but upgrading your bedroom is not about one component, but a number of different ones. You need to reduce clutter where you can because if you have physical clutter, this can result in mental clutter.
You should also minimize light coming into the property by investing in blackout curtains, but also ensure that your bedroom temperature is around 65°F. Extremely hot, cold, or drafty rooms can have an impact on your sleep and can actually affect your rapid eye movement (REM) sleep. Any temperature above 71°F is going to cause restlessness, and 53°F or lower can make it difficult to fall asleep. Also, look at upgrading your bed if possible with a comfortable mattress and pillow.
Ergonomic Furniture
Ergonomically designed furniture is an ideal solution because it promotes proper posture. We are all running the risk of developing problems with our posture as we get older because we’ve spent many years hunched over desks or sitting on couches that don’t match the contours of our bodies. We should implement ergonomic furniture where we can, as this will contribute to our overall physical health.
Setting Up a Meditation Space
If you are finding life challenging, meditation is undoubtedly one of the best solutions that ensure you can deal with whatever comes your way. If you are lucky enough to have a spare room, you could turn this into a multi-functional area that could be a space for yoga and meditation, and this becomes something you can keep returning to.
Because yoga and meditation are two sides of an incredibly beneficial coin, we should think about incorporating these into our lives. Opting for yoga studio flooring that is comfortable and durable or setting up a meditation corner with comfortable materials can be a fantastic solution.
Implementing a Workout Space
We have to remember that if we are to incorporate healthy habits into our lives we need to look at physical health. When it comes to upgrading our exercise, it’s not necessarily about the types of workouts we do because, in fact, as long as we do the right ones for our body, this is absolutely more than enough for our overall health. Lots of people think about exercise as being a very general thing; however, you can take advantage of working out at home and maximize its efficacy in different ways.
Lots of people think that they need to exercise for a long period of time in order to experience the benefits when, in fact, intensity and specificity will trump longevity every single time. This is why working out at home can mean investing in equipment that will give you the best bang for your buck. There are tools like kettlebells that you can invest in if you enjoy them, but there’s also exercise machines such as ARX and Nautilus that work wonders if you want to do something like super slow training that ramps up the intensity, meaning that you can get a workout done and dusted in as little as 10 minutes!
When it comes to upgrading our home, it should always be with a focus on physical and mental well-being. Transforming our living space into something that nurtures the health of every single one of us can have a major impact on our well-being so our health can thrive.