Living an eco-friendly lifestyle is all the rage these days and with good reason. As climate change has become a global cause for alarm and natural disasters are occurring at a rapid rate, every action that we make – no matter how small or big – leaves an impact on the environment. Thus, more and more people are starting to become aware of the things they do that have a negative effect on the environment which leads them to look for ways to correct them. And with some homeowners converting their humble abodes into green places where energy is conserved and wastefulness is not allowed, you too can turn your home into an eco-friendly place to live.
What Are Some Ways for You to Turn Your Home into an Eco-Friendly Place to Live?
Turning your home into an eco-friendly place to live may initially sound like a formidable challenge to you. But doing so can become an easy task as you have these ways that you can consider:
Install solar panels on the roof of your home.
If your most recent electric bill has become more expensive compared to your last one, you may have to consider looking for ways to reduce the electricity being consumed in your home.
As sunlight is considered as a sustainable energy resource, you can take full advantage of it by installing solar panels on the roof of your home as part of a homemade backup energy generation system.
You can use the energy that you’ve gathered out of sunlight to power your entire house at night instead of having to rely on your electricity provider all the time.
Replace any incandescent and fluorescent light bulbs you have in your home with CFL and LED ones.
Both incandescent and fluorescent light bulbs are increasingly falling out of favor in most homes as they waste too much energy that can drive your electricity costs through the roof.
CFL and LED light bulbs, on the other hand, are more energy-efficient and last longer.
You can install dimmer or sensor-driven switches as well so that the new CFL and LED lights in your home can be adjusted for brightness or automatically turned off when no one’s using them.
If you’re craving the warm glow of an incandescent light bulb though, you can install LED bulbs that give off a yellow light to simulate it.
Stock up on organic cleaning products.
Most cleaning products available on the market today contain too many chemicals that can cause considerable harm to the environment.
Ever since being eco-friendly turned into a worldwide trend, some manufacturers have started making cleaning products using all-natural ingredients.
Organic cleaning products generally smell good, and some of them even do a better job compared to chemical-based ones.
Thus, you would want to replace all your chemical-based cleaning products with organic ones so that you don’t have to contribute to poisoning the environment.
Turn the lights off during the day when the weather is sunny enough.
Whenever there’s sunlight outside of your house, you would want to use it as often as you can instead of relying too much on artificial light that can put a massive amount of strain on your eyes.
Pulling back the curtains of your windows so that sunlight can enter in your house can slash the amount of electricity that you’re using as you read your morning newspaper.
You can also consider adding a few more windows on your house so that even more sunlight can come in during the day.
Build an indoor garden.
An air purifier and a humidifier can help clean the air and provide some warmth in your home, respectively. But they can get very expensive, and you’ll need electricity to operate them.
On the other hand, buying a few houseplants and placing them in certain areas of your home can act in place of an air purifier and a humidifier at a fraction of the cost.
Installing an indoor garden can also help you relax as the color green has a soothing effect and give your home a look that spells eco-friendly all over.
Collect rainwater that you can use for purposes other than drinking.
When you’re letting rainwater fall over your roof, you’re not using it to its fullest potential as it can help you cut back on using the water from your garden hose.
You can build a harvesting system to catch rainwater from your roof using a few pipes, a filter, and a large tank that can hold gallons of it.
However, you wouldn’t want to drink the rainwater you’ve collected as it can’t be potable enough even after filtering it of impurities. You can use your collected rainwater though for cleaning your car or watering your plants, just to name but a couple of things that you can do with it.
Unplug all your appliances except your refrigerator when you’re not using them.
Let’s face it: Household appliances are the biggest contributor to electricity wastage, especially if you leave them on for an entire day.
Switching your appliances to off or putting them on standby mode usually isn’t enough as there’s still energy being wasted even when they’re not using any power at all, so you have to pull their plugs to fully conserve energy.
The only household appliance that you should leave on is your refrigerator as you wouldn’t want any perishable food that you’ve stored there to spoil. You should make sure though to buy an energy-efficient refrigerator so that you can still save on electricity even for an appliance that’s turned on all the time.
The environment’s condition is worsening every second which is why some people have taken it upon themselves to live an environmentally friendly lifestyle. From small habits like throwing candy wrappers in garbage bins that are labeled non-biodegradable instead of mindlessly tossing them out in the open to huge undertakings like relying on solar power for electricity, committing yourself to the eco-friendly way of life can help save the environment from further ruin. As your home is an extension of who you are as a person, you would want to turn it into an eco-friendly place that you and your family can live in with the ways listed above. The environment can thank you later for not doing any further harm to it.
Bethany Worth
Bethany is an aspiring interior designer who enjoys designing, especially the bathroom and kitchen. She currently writes for Burdens Bathrooms and is passionate about renovations. In her spare time, she reads design magazines and loves to work in a local interior design business for inspiration.