Health

Having Your Wishes Carried Out

Personally, I have dealt with relatives dying and having to clean up the mess. For me, each time got better with less to clean up.

What requests to you have – do you want to be buried or cremated, do you want a funeral or a memorial.
What do you want to happen to your stuff – do you want specific things to do to s specific person. I have witnessed more fighting about little items (two people want the same thing) Take some time to think about what you have and who each item should go to. Maybe you want to start to give the items away now. Maybe you want to donate or sell the items. Remember to leave detailed instructions to prevent fighting.
Have you updated the beneficiaries on your insurance and financial account? Make sure to specify one or more for each account. It makes things a lot easier.
What are your health wishes – do the necessary forms to have your intentions carried out, like you want.

Here’s a great article to get you thinking about what you need to have on place.

Life Without Chemicals Or Harmful Additives

I am on a mission to remove hazardous chemicals from our lives. There are so many that appear in our lives without even thinking about it. There are additives in our foods. There are chemicals in our cleaners in our personal care items and food. This is too much for me and we are changing how we buy things. Reading the labels for ingredients. Yes, it takes time, but my health is more important.

I buy organic foods and do a lot of cooking myself versus buying prepared foods. I grew up with a family that lived farm to table lifestyle with a garden in the back yard for some awesome vegetables. I still garden to this day. in fact, we just planted this years garden. There is nothing better to me than picking lettuce and making a salad or picking a vegetable for a meal based on what’s ready to pick. You can’t beat the freshness or the taste without any additives or chemicals.

In addition, we have been eliminating chemicals in our home too. All those chemicals in the cleaners we used to use. Not to mention the chemicals in our personal care products. Ugh! We use products such as vinegar, baking soda and essential oils to clean and sanitize our home. Young Living’s Thieves is what we use for laundry, dishes / dish washer / household cleaner and more.

When is the last time that you read the label on a product you regularly use in your household? Take one out now and see what’s in it. It might shock you.

We are putting our money towards better options. For more information check out these websites:

Environmental Working Group for a list of the dirty dozen and clean 15 fruits and vegetables. Also, they have a list of skin care products with ratings to help you choose.
Food Babe – great information about what is in the food that we eat – it’s shocking.
Young Living – for non toxic cleaning and personal care products included the Thieves products in the photo*
Center for Food Safety – working to keep our food / environment safer

Once you read the labels, you will be shocked at what is in these products. For me, it means making my own healthy versions for our home. For example, condiments – we make our own from scratch. I couldn’t find mayonnaise or salad dressing without partially hydrogenated oils and added sugar. Yes, it takes time, but my health is more important.

We are not perfect, but we are eliminating and replacing one product at a time. It’s a journey and it will take time, but it’s one step at a time to a healthier lifestyle.

* We may receive a percentage of the purchase price if you chose to buy the linked products. There is no difference in price to you.

Single Use vs. Reusable

I grew up with a mother that recycled and composted, so reducing and reusing is in my blood.

Our town was one of the first town’s in the state to ban the single use plastic bags at stores. They encourage you to bring your own bags. If you don’t bring your own, they will give you a paper bag. I personally keep my reusable bags in the back seat of my car, so that they are always available and with me. Also, when buying one single item, we skip the bag and take the item without a bag.

In addition, we have been reducing our single consumption items in favor of reusable ones. We are eliminating the plastic in our lives. We have switched from plastic bags to reusable silicone bags and from plastic containers to glass jars (mason jars are a great inexpensive alternative). We try not to purchase items in plastic instead looking for alternatives.

We now make our own cleaners in reusable glass jars – no more single use bottles from the store. You can believe how inexpensive it is to make your own (besides not having a single use container to toss). Baking soda, vinegar and essential oils can clean just about everything for a fraction of the cost of store bought cleaners.

We have eliminated the private trash collection service from our home and now take our own trash to the transfer station – we our down to one bag of trash per week. This eliminated a $100 a month bill! I love saving money.

Share with me what reusable things you do.

Fourth Quarter To Do’s

Can you believe it, it’s fall and the year end is in sight! choices

For me, there is lots to do (and I am not thinking the holidays yet).

This time of year means it’s time to review my health insurance choices. Open enrollment for health insurance is here (or just a week or so away). Medicare is already in the open period, the state of CT will open up the 1st of November and many company plans have the open enrollment at this point too. It’s time to reevaluate and determine if I want to stay on the same healthcare plan or make a change.

If you have a FSA (Flexible Spending Account), start to look at the balance and determine how to use the funds. This is a use it or lose it type of account. You wouldn’t want to lose money, would you? If you have an HSA (Health Savings Account), have you maximized your contributions for 2018? This can be a great way to lower your taxable income. Make sure you pay all your eligible medical expenses with this account.

Take the time now to do your research and make the choices that are right for you and your family now.

Spring Cleaning Your Finances & More

Today, I am going to talk about actual spring cleaning and how I do this while saving money.

Personally, we try to avoid chemicals in all aspects of our lives. A few years back I was amazed at all the products on the market and what they were made up of. Have you hear of these words?

sodium lauryl / laureth sulfate (SLS)
fragrances and dyes
propylene glycol
parabens
formaldehyde

And that is to name only a few ingredients. Can you guess what products these chemicals are in? (see the bottom).

In our household, we have eliminated much of these thanks to many other options. We use Young Living’s Essential Oils and make many of our own products and/or purchase them from Young Living. Thieves is a staple in our home – here’s a link to the product information page. We use this oil / products to clean (dish washing soap, dishwasher detergent, tooth paste, hand sanitizer, wipes and more.

We make our own cleaners – one quick and easy to do one is glass cleaner (1/4 cup white vinegar, 2 cups water with a few drops of my favorite essential oils mix together in a glass spray bottle. This works great in mirrors, windows and glass coffee table. There are many more items you can easily make at home without chemicals. One of my favorite books Essential Oils Ancient Medicine by Dr. Josh Axe, Ty Bollinger and Jordan Rubin.

If you would like to try a sample of essential oils, I have a very limited supply of Young Livings Thieve’s essential oils, that I can let you try, just reply to this blog post and I will respond. If you are interested in learning more about Young Living oils, please click this link.

Not only can you spring clean your home without chemical, you can save money too. Home made products are easy to make and can be cost pennies (saving your wallet too).

Note, that I have an affiliate relationship with Young Living.

Toothpaste, Shampoo, Make Up, Laundry Detergent, Soaps, Deodorant and more.

Reducing The Chemicals In Our Life

I don’t know about you, but there seems to be more and more chemicals in my life. They are in the food we eat, the products we buy, in our home and everywhere else. It’s scary to me.

When I do something, I ten to jump in with both feet.

For our food, I cook most meals and purchase whole unprocessed foods for the meals I make. I tend to stick to the outer aisles of the grocery store buying more fruits, vegetables, meat and fish (more so than the processed ready to eat food in the aisles. We still have our garden in the warmer months for fresh just picked vegetables. I am experimenting more with new recipes / ideas to make. Are we perfect, no! But we are substantially better than a few years ago.

In our home, we have eliminated most toxic products in favor of healthier alternatives. Using vinegar, baking soda, Castile soap with essential oils does the trick in our house. Clean bathrooms, floors, counter tops and more with no more toxic fumes and they work great!

If you want to try or start, here are some great resources to learn more and to make your own products:

For more resources, please visit my resource page on my website JillRussoFoster.com

What do you do in your household? Let me know

**If a link is an affiliate it will be clearly noted with ** so that you are aware that Jill Russo Foster may receive a percentage of the purchase price if you chose to buy the linked product. There is no difference in price to you.

Chemical Free At Home

It started with a lecture at our local hospital about the chemicals in our homes and lives a few years back. That really opened my eyes to the chemicals in our household and we have removed many of them. BPA (Bisphenol A) was the start. Good-bye BPA plastics. We replaced the plastic food containers with glass. We try not to make plastic purchases (that’s not always possible) and NEVER microwave in plastic.

To find a lower cost alternatives to replace the plastic, we use canning jars in a variety of sizes for food storage. We switched from plastic bags to waxed paper bags, from aluminum foil to glass storage options. We stopped bagging our vegetables from the store and try to buy the without packaging which is not always possible.

Next, we started the eliminating chemicals hunt in our home. We found sodium lauryl sulfate (SLS) and parabens in our personal care products – toothpaste, shampoo, skin care and more. We didn’t want formaldehyde, phosphates, dyes and more in our cleaning products. It’s these ingredients that makes me cringe.

Finding healthy alternatives at reasonable prices was a challenge, so I began making my own products. Essential oils were the answer for our household. First, I started with glass cleaner with just water, white vinegar and lemon and Thieves essential oils. Next, came the personal care products. Check out my Chemical Free Household Pinterest board for more information and stay turned for what’s next.

Want to learn more, check out my social media and blog posts as I am posting there regularly. To learn more or to start with essential oils, click here.

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