balanced living made simple with Brett Blumenthal
Living a healthy and balanced life starts with your personal space. Creating a home environment and a lifestyle that promotes and encourages well-being is all part of the equation.
Wondering how small changes can make a BIG difference? Individually, they may not. But if enough of us make changes, we’ll make the world a more livable, sustainable place—and enjoy ourselves while we’re at it. Hopefully you’ve started at home, but here are some tips to be green at work:
1. Kick the bottled water habit. [...]
Going vegetarian is a great way to live a more eco-friendly lifestyle. Meat production requires a great deal of energy, creates a massive amount of carbon waste and can take a significant toll on your health. By rethinking the way you eat, you can do your body and the planet a huge favor.
Going vegetarian, however, can [...]
Yes, we all know that lying out in the sun is just as bad for us as puffing cigarettes. That said, even the most sun-smart among us slip up every once in a while and come home from a day outside with red, inflamed skin. The unique pain of a sunburn leaves most of us [...]
Stuff: we all have it. But sometimes, all the miscellany of life can add up until it feels like a physical weight. After eight moves in eight years, I managed to accumulate a basement full of storage bins that I unquestioningly brought with me to every new home. I found myself buying more and more [...]
The best and safest sunscreen, undeniably, is to stay out of the sun. However, in the summertime, who wants to do that? Even if you are in the shade, there is a good chance you are getting some sun from reflection of rays off of sand, buildings, water, and other surfaces, so to be safe, [...]
If you haven’t spent much time at farmers’ markets, you may not know that they can be a bit intimidating. Locals always know exactly where to go and what to buy, and seem to possess some kind of secret, cult-like knowledge of seasonal favorites and exclusive deals.
How’s a farmers’ market newbie supposed to sort through [...]
It’s finally spring in Colorado, I think. Our spring weather is very moody with one day in the 70’s and the next day it’s snowing. It’s around this time every year that I get rambunctious to get my garden planted, spring cleaning, store away the extra winter blankets and about twenty other things.
This year I’m [...]
Growing up, springtime often meant it was gardening season. We never grew vegetables or fruit, but we definitely had our fair share of plantings, bushes, flowers and trees. Given my parents’ passion for creating a beautifully landscaped property, I’m surprised we never embarked on the idea of a vegetable garden. Although I don’t have my [...]
Organic gardening is a chemical-free and earth-friendly method of gardening. Organic gardening and conventional gardening differ on how they control pests and nourish the soil. Conventional gardening uses chemical pesticides and chemical fertilizers while organic gardens use organic means of enriching the soil and organic weed killers and fertilizers.
Organic gardens follow natural practices that include:
Organic [...]
When it comes to gardening, my good intentions vastly outweigh my time and energy. My composter sits unassembled in a shed. Every year, I buy about four times as many types of vegetable seeds as I actually plant. The last bag of seed-starter mix I bought became an excellent rodent nursery.
Those of you who mulch, [...]
