Toss The Toxins Overview: How to Create a Healthy Home

By Marilee Nelson |

Toss The Toxins Overview: How to Create a Healthy Home

There has never been a better time to create a healthy home with our Toss The Toxins program! 

Tossing the toxins has transformed our lives and the lives of thousands of others Marilee has consulted over the last 30 years. Our process to do this is based on common sense, is simple to execute, and can change you and your family’s health for the better starting today!

More and more people are buying safer products today, yet they often still have hundreds of toxic products scattered throughout their home, negatively impacting their air quality and their health. We want to change that. 

Our process is all about removing the harmful inputs. Removing the source of a problem is always the most efficient and effective way to a solution. We’re going to help you do that, category by category. 

We've seen it over and over again how this simple act of removal can make health issues (mental, physical and emotional) resolve and become a thing of the past. The goal is to dramatically improve the air quality of your home and give your brain and body a chance to experience what a difference removal can make.

Why Toss The Toxins? 

Toxic products pollute the air, weaken our immune system, make us more vulnerable to infection and chronic illness, and much more. These products can create a low-level chemical soup that your family has to detoxify from 24/7, never allowing time to recover, rest and rejuvenate from the everyday exposures.

The products under your sink, in your pantry, or in your cabinets may be causing your headaches, your weight gain, your husband’s sinus infections, brain fog, your children’s irritability, or asthma. We just don’t know how much these products affect us until they are removed!

And even if you and everyone in your family is well, tossing the toxins is one of the most powerful preventive healthcare measures you can take. We invite you to try this opportunity and experience how transformative it can be! 

Now, let's get into it! 

How To Toss The Toxins: Category by Category

Use this article and the additional resources noted below as a starting point on your journey to create a healthier home. Remember, every category you remove, every step you take makes a difference!

Pesticides

The first category of products we recommend tossing is pesticides. It's time to toss all of the toxic pesticides in your home, garage, and outdoor spaces.

What to do: Look for anything with the word “cide,” and don’t forget things like lice treatments, bug sprays, exterminator services, disinfectants and sanitizers, and lawn/garden care items.

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Cleaning Products

The next category to toss is your harmful cleaning products. These are sitting under our sinks, in the pantry, closets and more. 

What to do: Start at your kitchen sink and remove all chemical cleaning products with zero ingredients listed and any labeled with “warning,” “danger,” or “hazardous”. Remember, “non-toxic” on the label is not enough! When in doubt, throw it out and replace with Branch Basics or other safe products with all ingredients rated a 1 or 2 on EWG Skin Deep.

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Laundry

The next category is laundry. Our laundry products are incredibly important as we are exposed to them 27/4 - our clothing, towels, bedding and more.

What to do: Remove all toxic laundry products. This includes most conventional laundry detergents, fabric softeners, bleach (which is also an EPA-registered pesticide!), stain removers, dryer sheets, and “boosters.”

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Fragranced Products

Fragrance is a tough category for people to toss, as it's engrained into our lives! Read The Emotional Attachment to Fragrance for more.

However, fragrance is rarely one thing - instead it's usually a mix of even hundreds of synthetic chemicals which are toxic to our health. It is also a common irritant, hormone disrupter and more. 

What to do: Remove air fresheners, scented candles, fragranced personal care products, and anything else that contains synthetic fragrance. 

Initially this removal includes all synthetic fragrance as synthetic fragrance is especially toxic. How do you know if it’s synthetic? It’s labeled “fragrance” or parfum in the ingredient list.

Tossing fragrance also includes the removal of non-organic essential oils processed with solvents. In addition, temporarily, even wildcrafted and organic essential oils processed without solvents are removed because essential oils can cause an inflammatory response and have been shown to hijack the healing process.  Also, if not processed carefully, it has been found that some products with organic essential oils are contaminated with phthalates.

Then, after at least a month to six weeks of avoidance of all fragranced products, then quality products with wildcrafted or organic essential oils processed without solvents can be introduced to see if they are tolerated.

Note: As long as there are members of the family that have chronic illness, the household should be completely fragrance free. 

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Personal Care 

Your skin is the largest organ of your body, and it absorbs what it comes in contact with. Personal care products should contain clean ingredients, as they ultimately make their way into your body, bloodstream and lymphatic system.

What to do: Remove all personal care products that have ingredients rated a 3 or more on EWG Skin Deep Database! Keep products that have all ingredients rated a 1 or 2 on EWG Skin Deep. 

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Plastics

What to do: Remove the plastics that you can! The most concerning are plastics you eat or drink from as they are a source of BPA, BPS, BPB, and phthalates. Think water bottles, baby bottles, storage containers, kitchen utensils, cutting boards, etc. 

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Water

What to do: Find a water filter that works for your home and budget! Read How to Choose the Best Water Filter for Every Home and Budget to learn more. 

Food

We believe food is medicine, and we must nourish our bodies with real, whole foods! In our modern world, so many additives are in our foods. We encourage everyone tossing the toxins to get back to the basics of what real food is. 

What to do: We encourage you to toss processed foods with harmful chemicals that can be found in your pantry and refrigerator. Get started by avoiding these as best you can! GMO Foods, conventional (non-organic) foods, sugar, Excitotoxins and inflammatory fats.

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EMFs 

We also want to point out the importance of understanding how EMFs affect us, and removing them when they are harmful to our health. Our favorite resources to learn more on this subject is TechWellness, Electric Sense and Greenwave. 

    Make the Life-Changing Decision to Toss The Toxins

    We just don’t realize how much products with harmful chemicals impact our mental, physical, and emotional wellbeing until we remove them.

    Tossing the toxins can be truly life-changing. These chemicals are undermining our health and immune systems, hijacking the healing process and keeping us from our full potential.

    You have come to a fork in the road. Decide to take the road less traveled and create a healthy home. It can make all the difference.

    We're here to help you on your way. Check our Wellness Center regularly as we release new articles every week on healthy cleaning, living, food and more.

    And follow us on Instagram (@branchbasics) for your daily dose of healthy living, swaps from our founders and much more! 

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    Marilee Nelson

    Marilee Nelson

    Marilee Nelson is an Environmental Toxins expert who has spent nearly 30 years advocating for the chemically-sensitive and chronically-ill. She is a Board Certified Nutritionist, Certified Bau-Biologist and Bau-Biology Inspector and specializes in Food As Medicine. She has helped thousands of families and individuals identify, heal and recover from toxic exposures and is on a mission to revolutionize the way American families view their health.

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