Living Like Ed (8 page)

You might assume that VOCs are only a problem right after you paint, when you can actually smell that new-paint smell when you walk in a room. But it turns out paints and other finishes release low-level toxic emissions for
several years.
And it’s definitely not good to be breathing this stuff.

                  I love having a clean house. In fact, I’d say that I’m a neat freak. My biggest pet peeve when it comes to the house is having paint on the walls that doesn’t look fresh and crisp. Walls get dingy and banged up really quickly, and I wish that we could paint them much more often than we do. These new nontoxic paints definitely make it easier for me to convince Ed that it’s okay to paint the walls again. It’s still a negotiation, but it’s less of a battle than it used to be.

I do go into homes where I think, “Wow, the courage!” when I see the home owners’ color schemes, but I’ve gotten a little bolder about using color now, too. At one point, my walls were all Swiss Coffee, which is a designer’s fancy name for off-white. Now I’m using color as an accent, so my dining room is green, which I never would have tried before. You know, the inside of your house is an expression of your personality, so don’t play it
too
safe. Just consider the colors of your furniture and the artwork before you choose a bold color. If you want to showcase your art collection, keep the walls on the neutral side.

I’m still very conservative about exterior colors. I like the basics, white and gray. Some of the stucco houses, which are common in California, can be a little bolder. But I sometimes drive through a beautiful neighborhood where I know people have paid a lot for their homes, and see that someone has painted their house bright canary yellow. So my advice is: Express yourself, sure, but try not to offend your neighbors.

Air Purifiers

Even if you use nontoxic paint and change your air filter regularly, the air quality inside your home could still be unhealthful.

In part, this is because a normal household is filled with chemicals (cleaners, paints, and so on), not to mention dust mites and pet dander, pollen, cooking oils, common molds (including airborne bacteria), and even viruses. There’s a virtual army of pollutants assailing our lungs, sinuses, and personal health in our own homes.

Also, the air inside your house might not get circulated all that well or that often. You can do wonders simply by airing out your home once in a while. Open the windows and get some cross-ventilation.

Of course, nontoxic cleaning products and nontoxic paints can reduce the number of chemicals you release into the air in your home, and you’ll want to avoid things like hair spray and air fresheners.

Once you’ve stopped introducing toxins into the air, you’re ready to take the next step and
purify
the air in your home. The purification process helps to eliminate both germs and toxic odors, improving the environment inside. I started using an electronic air purifier—a relatively small device from Advanced Pure Air that doesn’t require much energy—in both my home and Rachelle’s Pilates studio, which is over the garage. The air purifier has been great for improving our health and alleviating our allergies. I’ll let Richard Mayer from Real Spirit USA, the company behind Advanced Pure Air, explain how the device works (see
“Ed’s Green Friend: Advanced Pure Air”
).

Turn Off Electronic Devices

Looking for more low-hanging fruit? You can save energy just by flipping a switch and changing some bad habits.

For instance, Rachelle doesn’t understand there’s this wonderful valve at the entrance to each room. It’s called a light switch. Every time you flip off that switch, you save a little energy.

Rachelle will turn on a television in the living room and then she’ll come into the kitchen, make dinner, and eat dinner with the television still on in the other room. You can’t even hear the TV from the kitchen. So you can save a little more energy by turning off the TV when you leave the room.

Rachelle also regularly turns on her curling iron, then gets on the computer, then forgets about the curling iron. It turns off automatically after about 20 minutes. So then she’ll turn it on again . . . and go back to the computer. She’ll do two 20-minute cycles before she finally gets around to doing her hair. If I turn it off, she gets outraged—even though it gets up to full heat in 2 minutes. It doesn’t get hotter at the 3-minute mark. It’s as hot as it’s ever going to get at 120 seconds. So all you need to do is put it on for 2 minutes—let’s say a slap-happy 3 minutes—before you do your hair. Not 20 minutes, turns itself off, 20 minutes, turns itself off. There’s energy to be saved there, certainly.

I’m picking on Rachelle, of course, but she’s like so many people who just haven’t focused on how their actions—simple little everyday actions—can make a real difference.

Fortunately, I’ve found some cool companies that are making it easier to save energy with no thinking required. GreenSwitch is a great example. I’ll let Gregory Hood from Energy Innovation Group explain how it works.