Healthy Home Construction: My Home
Welcome to Second Nature, a Q+A series with Jute founder, Ali Davin, that explores all things healthy living, with a fond emphasis on that thing she does best—interior design.
Have you ever had such a good night of sleep that you felt like a bear emerging from a months-long slumber? Remember that feeling of waking up clear-headed, bright-eyed, and ready to conquer the world?
Having eight (or more) hours of blissful, uninterrupted sleep does not have to be a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Here’s how to create a comfortable—and toxin-free—sleep environment.
Everybody is different, but a good night of sleep is however long your body needs to sleep. Some people are lucky and don’t need a lot; I personally need nine hours a night. But creating an environment that lets you do that can be a challenge.
Your liver is detoxing while you sleep, so you want to minimize anything that can off-gas. Your mattress is usually the biggest offender in a bedroom. If you have allergies, you want to have a hardwood floor and no rug. Your bedroom should ideally be in the darkest part of your house. Window treatments are great for keeping light out, but if you have blackout shades, the PVC off-gasses—you don’t want that chemical in your bedroom, so use heavy cotton drapes with a cotton lining instead. I’m big on organic linen bedding and I sleep on an antique wooden bed. You should technically not have metal on or under your bed.
All of the electric devices in your house emit low-level radiation called EMFs; they can affect your nervous system and disturb your sleep. Even if your bed is upholstered, the metal can be like sleeping on an antenna. You want to put your bedroom in a place in your house that doesn’t innately have a lot of EMFs. It’s also important to unplug your WIFI when you go to sleep. Most people would tell you to leave your phone outside your bedroom; it’s a way to calm down, but it doesn’t kill the signal. You need to completely turn it off.
You want the air to be as clean as possible, so leave the windows open or put a HEPA filter in your room. At night, I use a diffuser with essential oils—I put a purification blend in with lavender, which is super relaxing. I’m also obsessed with thieves’ oil—it was used by thieves during the bubonic plague so they didn’t get sick when they picked the pockets of the dead. You can get it online and it’s great for purifying the air.
Having a clean living space is important because it’s where we detox our bodies. Where you’re sleeping needs to be the cleanest environment possible.
PRO TIPS:
Mattresses can be the worst offenders in terms of off-gassing. Read the fine print and do your research.
