Join with me on April 22 for B Kind 2 Earth Day! #kind2earth

While Earth Day comes only once a year, we like to make changes that help the earth all 365 days a year. There are many ways you can make small changes in your lifestyle that will help our planet. Here are a few of my tips for making easy changes:

1. Switch to cloth from disposable (napkins, diapers, paper towels).
2. Switch to CFL light bulbs.
3. Buy a few more organic products than you do now.
4. Carpool or try combining as many errands into one trip as possible.
5. Pick up trash in your neighborhood.
6. Plant a garden & don't use toxic chemicals in its upkeep.
7. Hang a few loads of laundry on the line to dry each week instead of using the dryer.
8. Purchase recycled paper products for your office & recycle them when you're done with them.
9. Try a staycation at home instead of a vacation abroad this year.
10. Switch to non-toxic cleansers for your household cleaning.

Can you commit to making a change on April 22nd for B Kind 2 Earth Day? If you're local to Castleton, Vermont, join us as we pick up trash in our area on April 22nd. If you're too far away to join us, pick one of these changes that works for your family and let me know what you can do on April 22nd.

Stop by and join the movement on Facebook.

Make Earth Day count for you and your family this year!! In all fifty states on Earth Day, families will get outside, appreciate our planet and do good things for the Earth – and their collective actions are going to count, big time. B Kind 2 Earth Day is a project of Nickelodeon, the National Wildlife Federation, TheMotherhood.com and incredible bloggers and organizations across the country.

I am the Vermont State Leader for B Kind 2 Earth Day. I received no compensation. I am sharing a cause that is important to me.

The Healthy Home by Dr. Myron Wentz & Dave Wentz

Book Title: The Healthy Home
Subtitle: Simple Truths to Protect Your Family From Hidden Household Dangers
Author: Dr. Myron Wentz & Dave Wentz
Genre: Healthy Living
ISBN: 978-1-59315-655-8
Publisher: Vanguard Press
Suggested Retail Price: $21.95

From the book:

In The Healthy Home, father and son team Dr. Myron Wentz and Dave Wentz walk readers room by room through a typical house, pointing out the surprising health risks posed by the everyday products and behaviors of any modern family.
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The Healthy Home is meant as a guide and reference book to hidden household dangers including products and practices that we might use. It's broken down into five different chapters.  Each chapter details the different types of problems that might exist in each, specific room in your house.   Chapter one is a welcome to hidden household dangers and explains why the authors decided to write this book and where the idea for The Healthy Home came from.  It also explains why you should be concerned about having a healthy home and what you should expect to find in this book.

Chapter two is a detailed look at your bedroom from the mattress you sleep on to the clothes you wear. It looks at various synthetic fabrics and why we need to consider how our clothes and linens are made.  The author offers a list of fabrics to avoid and their natural alternatives.  The chapter will also urge us to consider our laundry products, electronic gadgets, lighting, temperature and air quality.

Chapter three is devoted to our bathrooms and focuses mainly on the chemicals in our personal care items including washing, moisturizing, shaving, brushing our teeth, oral care habits, prescription medications.  Not only does it tell us the areas that are dangerous in our lives, it offers suggestions for improving these areas by using different products or by lifestyle changes.

Chapter four focuses on your kitchen and includes everything form the food we eat , how healthy our diets are, how we prepare our foods,  the pans & kitchen tools we use, our drinking water, and other beverages we drink.    It also discusses flouride and water pollution.

Chapter five discusses our living areas and includes electronics, cleaning products, industrial waste, environmental concerns, tools for healthy cleaning, pets, and internet addiction.  The final chapter is all about our garage and yard and takes a look at contaminants found in the garage, patio, yard and beyond.  It also takes a look at pesticides and how to get enough sun without getting too much.

Each of these topics is discussed and we can come up with our own areas for improvement by taking the handy quizzes included.  Throughout the book are simple tips highlighted in orange that will help you take easy steps toward some of the problems included in the book.  There are also a number of informative websites in each chapter where you can go for more information on the topic.

This is a really fantastic reference book. You can start in the room you want and pick and choose the suggestions that best work for you. You take the quiz to see what they recommend and then using their suggestions you work on areas of your home that most need help. This is a really great way to learn what you need to do to make your home a safer place.

My thanks to the sponsor for allowing me to review this book. 

As required by the FTC: I received a product sample in order to write my review.  I received no monetary compensation.  All opinions expressed are mine and mine alone.

Article first published as Book Review: The Healthy Home: Simple Truths to Protect Your Family from Hidden Household Dangers by Dave Wentz, et al on Blogcritics.