My guest today is Annie B. Bond and we’re going to talk about how to clean your house for a holiday party. We’ll be covering party-specific things like how to remove candle wax and red wine stains. I met Annie many years ago when her publisher asked me to write the forward to her first book Clean and Green. Annie is the best-selling author of five books, including Better Basics for the Home (Three Rivers Press, 1999), Home Enlightenment (Rodale Books, 2008), and most recently True Food (National Geographic, 2010), and winner of Gourmand Awards Best Health and Nutrition Cookbook in the World. She was named “the foremost expert on green living” by “Body & Soul” magazine (February, 2009). She has been the editor of a number of publications, including “The Green Guide.” Currently Annie is the Executive Director and Editor-in-Chief of The Wellness Wire and leads the selection of toxic-free products for A True Find. www.anniebbond.com
LISTEN TO OTHER SHOWS WITH ANNIE B. BOND
- Toxics Then and Now: Debra Celebrates Thirty Years in Print
- Eight Steps to Improving Your Food Choices
- Toxic Free Valentines
- Great Toxic-Free Holiday Gifts
- Toxic Free Cleaning Basics
- Natural Solutions for Bugs
- Healthy Halloween
- Tips for a Toxic Free Home
TOXIC FREE TALK RADIO
Cleaning for Your Holiday Party – Before and After
Host: Debra Lynn Dadd
Guest: Annie B. Bond
Date of Broadcast: November 25, 2013
DEBRA: Hi, I’m Debra Lynn Dadd, and this is Toxic Free Talk Radio, where we talk about how to thrive in a toxic world. And we do this show because there are lots of toxic chemicals out in the world, and we don’t have to be victims of them. We don’t have to be made sick by them. We don’t have to have our children have birth defects from them, or any of those things, if we know where to identify them, and to reduce them as much as we possibly can.
We may not be able to reduce all of our toxic exposures 100%, but I and many others have found that if we do what we can, it’s sufficient to make a huge difference in your health and happiness and well-being.
So today, we’re going to talk with Annie B. Bond. I’ve known her for so long. It’s habit to say what her name used to be when I met her. Annie B. Bond, who is the author of many books and websites about non-toxic living—her first book, Clean and Green, was many, many years ago.
I shouldn’t make it sound like she’s so older.
ANNIE BOND: I sort of am. Okay.
DEBRA: But I am too, [cross-talking 01:19] the both of us.
—Better Basics for the Home, Home Enlightenment, True Food. She has, for many years, had columns on websites, and is currently the Editor-in-Chief of the Wellness Wire, and has a wonderful website of toxic-free products that she’s chosen called a True Find.
And you can also go to her own personal website, AnnieBBond.com, to find out more about her.
Hi, Annie.
ANNIE BOND: Hi. I’m still old enough to talk well, so it’s okay.
DEBRA: Well, this is what toxic-free living does. You and I have lived without chemicals for so many years. We’re just ageless.
ANNIE BOND: There you go. That sounds good. Tell that to my gray hair.
DEBRA: Annie, I know you’ve been on the show before, but we’re always having new listeners. So just tell us a little bit about your background, and how you got to do what you do.
ANNIE BOND: Sure, I’d be happy to. My background is fairly similar to yours, just with a little bit different aspects to it.
I worked at a restaurant in 1980 that had a gas leak, and I was told at the time that I had permanent central nervous system damage. And then I lived at an apartment building that was exterminated with a pesticide that’s been taken off the market because it was so neurotoxic.
And I got very, very sick. I was in the hospital for three months. So I basically had a classic case of organophosphate pesticide poisoning.
I became a little allergic at that time, the 20th century, and I just was very—I was a bubble case. I needed to live without chemicals. And so I sort of had an unerring drive to have fresh air. I moved 10 times in four years, finally found a place that was healthy.
And in the process, I learned a huge amount about how to live without chemicals in our world. And it’s a difficult thing to do.
And so I decided to start a clearing house of information to help provide information for people to have a less toxic lifestyle themselves.
And of course, the first person I stumbled on when I started doing my research was Debra Lynn Dadd. So I was very impressed by your work.
DEBRA: The lone place back in 1978.
ANNIE BOND: So there you are. And then I’ve been in the field pretty much ever since then. It’s one of those greatest pain/greatest gift story. Who would ever thought I would write a book on non-toxic cleaning because I don’t like to clean or anything, but I loved being part of the green movement. It’s just been a fabulous honor and gift really.
DEBRA: Me too. I totally understand and agree. As difficult as it was to go through my own experience with being poisoned by my home, I would say that I’ve recovered and learned a lot, and it was actually the greatest blessing that I’ve had in my life because it made me aware of where the toxic chemicals are, so that I wouldn’t get sicker from them.
And so, actually, at my age now today, I am healthier than I’ve ever been because it’s been a process of eliminating those things that are making everybody sick.
So it really is from a health standpoint. I think that the current paradigm today is that people just do whatever it is that our industrial chemical society tells them to do, advertises and sells in the product. And then they get sick, and they take drugs, and they have surgeries and stuff.
And I’ve taken a different approach, which is to say that my body naturally exists to be healthy, and as long as I don’t do the things that destroy its health, and do the things that support its health, I’ll be healthy. And so far, that’s been true.
I think you have a similar—
ANNIE BOND: I want to say that I’ve also recovered in terms of my multiple chemical sensitivity. It is really true that you can lead a normal life. It’s not a sentence of isolation. I mean I’ve traveled all over the world since I’ve been living in a healthy home. It’s just an incredible—as long as you have a place to come home and rejuvenate, you just really do heal. There’s no question about it.
DEBRA: I completely agree. And so anybody who is having any kind of chemical problem with their bodies at this point in time, here are two examples of people, Annie and I, who cleaned up our homes, cleaned up our bodies, and now, live what we each call a normal life, with the caveat that we have a healthy home.
And that’s how much difference it makes because we can go out in the world, be exposed to toxic chemicals, and come home to your non-toxic homes, and maintain our health.
ANNIE BOND: It’s so true.
DEBRA: We’re two living examples of this. And we’ve been doing it for 30 years. It’s not like we just have done it yesterday.
We’ve been continually doing this for 30 years.
Annie, I just realized that between us, we’ve been doing this for 60 years.
ANNIE BOND: Oh, my gosh. Well, and the thing is we survived without the big commercial cleaning products. Imagine that.
We live in clean homes. So it’s really amazing—all you have to do is decide not to live with that kind of thing, and then you can just do it. It’s just as simple as that.
DEBRA: It actually is that simple. So what are you having for Thanksgiving dinner?
ANNIE BOND: Well, I have a range of people here, and I have a vegetarian clan, part of my family, and a non-vegetarian clan.
And so, we’re certainly having organic turkey for those who want the turkey. That’s raised on a local farm.
Then we have a tradition where we have this beautiful, big, organic pumpkin that we stuff with all sorts of wonderful things for those who are the vegetarians.
It’s a very festive dish for them.
DEBRA: How wonderful!
ANNIE BOND: [cross-talking 00:07:48]
DEBRA: I should say that Annie lives in upstate New York where there are lots of wonderful food to eat, and local places to buy it from. What am I having? I don’t know yet because I’m actually all by myself this Thanksgiving.
ANNIE BOND: Oh, dear! Well, you could come over.
DEBRA: I wish I could. Well, I have invitations, but people say to me, “Well, you’re welcome to our Thanksgiving dinner, which is out of a can and not organic.”
So I have my choice of a non-organic Thanksgiving, and raw Thanksgiving. But I was just thinking about like what are some things that I could make at home for myself that are festive without roasting a whole turkey, and eating it all the way until Christmas, just being one person.
And a couple of things that I thought of were, once, a long time ago, I saw a recipe for making a turkey stew for Thanksgiving.
And I cut out that recipe, and I made it. It was absolutely delicious, and then served it with little biscuits that had parsley and different herbs in it.
ANNIE BOND: That sounds very nice.
DEBRA: Yes, it was very nice. And I also had some idea about having turkey meatloaf.
ANNIE BOND: That’s interesting.
DEBRA: And I’ve seen a couple of different recipes, one with a cranberry compote on top instead of catsup, and another one with a tomato fig catsup on top. I thought that would be very good.
ANNIE BOND: Yes, that sounds really good. And let me just interject that the pumpkin recipe that we used is from MPR. We heard a while ago, and you just search for stuffed pumpkin on MPR, and it will come up.
DEBRA: We need to take a break, but when we come back, we’re going to start talking about how to clean up after your holiday party. My guest today is Annie B. Bond. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd, and this is Toxic Free Talk Radio.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd, and my guest today is Annie B. Bond, author of many books on how to take care of your home without toxic chemicals. And before we go back to Annie, I just wanted to mention that last week, I started a food blog about eating whole organic fresh seasonal local foods, and preparing them in easy, simple, delicious ways. And I have some Thanksgiving recipes there, including how to make gluten-free cornbread that’s really yummy.
And I have a whole, little e-book with seven recipes for making cranberry sauce, relish, et cetera, with natural sweeteners and fresh fruits. And they have infinite variations.
In case you didn’t know this, the top selling brand of cranberry sauce is made with high fructose corn syrup, in a can, with Bisphenol-A and, of course, pesticides on the cranberries.
I make mine with organic cranberries. So go to my website, go to ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com. Go up to the menu on the top where it says “Food.” Click on that and scroll down until you see the cranberry, little cranberry book. And that is free.
So get it, pass it around to your friends, and have a great Thanksgiving.
Okay, Annie, so I actually put on the title for today, “Cleaning for your Holiday Party: Before and After.”
So before we talk about the clean-up stuff, do you want to talk about what to do before the party?
ANNIE BOND: Sure, I’d be happy to. I had my mind all focused on red wine stains and candlewax, but I would be delighted to talk about the—it’s a great opportunity to make sure that your house is as healthy as it is for Thanksgiving.
So doing green cleaning, I think, is a great choice. Even something as simple as polishing the dining room table could just make the entire room neurotoxic because most of the fumes from furniture polish (most are petroleum distillates). And there are a lot of great ways to do the same thing without using chemicals.
And so, I’m, as you can imagine on the show, a huge proponent for green cleaning, and I think that—it’s a big topic, Debra.
Where do you suggest we start talking about cleaning?
DEBRA: I think that you started in exactly the right place. I’d like to explain what a petroleum distillate is because I’m sure most people don’t know.
So petroleum distillates, how can I start this, where they come from is from petroleum in the ground like crude oil. And then what happens to the crude oil is that they take it to a refinery and they crack it.
They split it. And so you have portions of this that are solvents. We’re going to call it solvents. And they’re thin, they evaporate, and they’re clear, and there’s a whole classification of them. And they’re called petroleum distillates because they’re distilling petroleum.
When you distil water, that you have a bunch of water, and then you distil it, and the vapors come off, and then re-condensed into water. That’s distilled water.
Well, that happens with petroleum distillates. It smells very light, airy things, that come off the boiling of petroleum, and then re-condensed into these things called petroleum distillates. All of them are toxic. All of them are very toxic. But you never will know—if you see petroleum distillates on the label, you never will know exactly what the toxic chemical is because they just take whatever are the cheapest, leftover, can’t be sold toxic petroleum distillates that are available at the moment, and throw them into a barrel and call them petroleum distillates.
So if you see that on the label, that’s what that is.
ANNIE BOND: Well, that’s the greatest explanation. I’ve never heard all those details, so I’m delighted to—I try to avoid any chemical solvents in my house at all because—I mean, I don’t even try, I just do. It includes even dry cleaning. I won’t dry clean my clothes because of solvents.
They just will outgas large amounts of fumes. It’s really tragic with dry cleaning because those people hang their dry cleaning in their bedroom, and they breathe those fumes all night long.
This would be a great starting point for the whole holiday season, it would be to not use products with petroleum distillates, or solvents of any kind. One thing you could do is you look at—the government puts, what they call, signal words on products.
And it’ll say “flammable” and most of the products with solvents in them will say “flammable.”
So just avoid and just say, “No, I won’t use those anymore.”
One thing that I found all the Faulk formulas for polishing furniture—and this is basically the clean, the furniture, not actually putting a polish on, I recommend using a pretty heft amount of whatever oil you have on hand, and then a little bit of vinegar.
I tested that in every way, and I find that it was way too oily for me. The formula that I love for cleaning the wooden furniture actually, all vinegar with just a few drops of oil because you give enough of the oil to lubricate the wood, and not dry the wood out. But the vinegar is an amazing upholsterer like no other. It’s just fantastic for that.
DEBRA: Does that work on table that already has wax on it from before?
ANNIE BOND: It works very well for cleaning off. And so, you’re not going to want to pour it on. You’re going to want to go along with a cloth. But I find it to be extremely good.
I do have a lot of Faulk formulas for how to make your own polish and things like that. They require using beeswax and things.
But this is just a great way to clean wood. This is what I use at my own house.
And I had a bad experience trying the other formula where it was mostly oil during August, and I was cleaning something at my father’s house way back when. It ended up turning rancid, and it was like a big job to clean that up. So this is a good thing to do instead.
And if you have jojoba oil around, it’s actually a liquid wax, that’s perfect. A few drops of that with a vinegar actually is a perfect solution for cleaning the wood.
DEBRA: That sounds good. I’d like to say—we have to go to break in a second, but I want to say that I have eliminated the whole problem with wax on tables by purchasing unfinished wood tables, and then putting a non-toxic wood finish on it that you can then wipe this with soap and water. And I don’t need to worry about all that wax stuff. And that’s what [inaudible 17:34].
So we’ll be right back after this break. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio, and my guest is Annie B. Bond. We’ll be right back.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd, and my guest today is Annie B. Bond, who is the author of many books, including Clean and Green, Better Basics for the Home, and Home Enlightenment, that all talk about how to live a wonderful life in a non-toxic home, how to take care of your home, how to enjoy your home.
One other thing I thought during the break, Annie, that I think is an important pre-party thing to mention in terms of toxic exposure is air fresheners.
ANNIE BOND: Oh, my gosh. What a good idea.
DEBRA: Because I think that it’s very common to think, “Oh, people are coming over. I better make everything smell good.”
And out comes the air freshener spray.
The thing that I would suggest instead of those toxic air fresheners—the air fresheners, they have chemicals in them that actually deaden your sense of smell. So they’re not removing the smell, but they’re impairing your ability, your sensory experience.
And that’s the last thing that you want on Thanksgiving or Christmas, or any other holiday, is to not be able to smell the wonderful food, or the pine tree, or whatever. So you want to have your sense of smell intact.
But one thing that I really like to do is to take, especially in the winter time, is to just take a pot of water, or apple juice, or whatever, and you can mix something wonderful to drink like mulled cider mixture house smell divine, or if you want to have a fragrance, you can put a pot of water with natural herbs in it, of any sort. And it will just give a lovely smell.
And of course, your turkey is going to smell wonderful too.
ANNIE BOND: It’s so interesting because I went through this myself yesterday because I have new neighbors. I live in a dirt road and new neighbors moved in this year. And I thought it would be nice for us all to meet each other and because I was getting the house all ready for Thanksgiving, I just thought it was the perfect time for me to have a party for everybody.
And I have two puppies this year. And so I had to roll my rugs up. I won’t even go there, but I was concerned about certain residual odor in the house.
And after I rolled the rugs back out for the party, et cetera—and I did that. I made hot cider, and I put a lot of cinnamon in it.
And that was really just—it was a smell that everybody walked in and was like, “Oh, my gosh. It smells so wonderful in here.”
And that was exactly my intention, it was to have everybody be focused on the cinnamon smell from the cider than in any residue from the dogs and the rugs, which I had worked hard on with all my tricks. I was pretty sure they were great, but I don’t smell as well as some people still sometimes.
Some people have unbelievable noses, and I thought, “Oh, my gosh. What if those types of people come in?”
And this worked really well.
DEBRA: Good. So let’s talk about after the party now. How about how to clean red wine stains off the linen tablecloth?
ANNIE BOND: It’s an amazing thing. I was at a dinner party one time, and somebody spilled their red wine all over the linen tablecloth. And this woman literally—and I’m not suggesting anybody do this because it took my breath away. She had everybody take all of the plates and put them on the floor. She whisked the linen tablecloth off, rushed into the kitchen, boiled water, stood on a chair, stretched the linen tablecloth over a bowl in the sink, and poured water from three-feet, boiling water down from three feet above the linen tablecloth onto the red wine stain.
And all of us were gathered in the kitchen watching this thing. And it absolutely worked. And I have seen that as a solution show up in old formula books from all over the place. And it totally works.
I don’t think you need to, and I know you don’t need to do what she did, which have their entire meal disrupted and take the tablecloth off in the middle of the meal because I’ve had it work otherwise.
But there’s something about the pouring of the water from a height down onto the linen that actually really, really works.
Another thing I’ve heard and read, I haven’t done it myself, but it makes some sense, is that you pour white wine—once everybody’s left, and you bring the linen into a sink, and you once again stretch it over a bowl or something. You pour white wine onto the red wine, and the acidity of the white wine will work away—I would think maybe straight vinegar would just work as well, white vinegar could work as well.
But those are pretty simple solutions, strange ones as they may be, but they do work.
DEBRA: I was once having lunch with my literary agent and book editor in a very nice restaurant. And I had a dessert that had a ball of ice cream sitting in this pool of chocolate. And it slipped. As I dug into the ice cream, it slipped, and I had chocolate all over the front of my dress.
My literary agent, who was just a wonderful woman, who knew all the things that mothers and homemakers should know, she immediately ordered a bottle of club soda, and dowsed my dress with club soda. And that chocolate did not stain. It just came right out.
ANNIE BOND: Well, that’s interesting. That’s very interesting because chocolate has protein in it as well, which, talking about protein stains, which there often are a lot—club soda is a standby, so that’s great that you bring that up.
But in researching my book, Home Enlightenment, I wanted to take a new look on stains because I had done a lot of work on stains that are basics for the home. I just wanted to feel like I had some more areas covered.
I really started researching about digestive enzymes and protein stains, so if you spill coffee that had milk in it, it’s often not getting the coffee out. It’s the combination of the protein and the milk that can be a part of the problem.
And this is definitely going to be true with linen tablecloths during the holidays very often with a protein stain.
And so what I suggest people do is they go to a health food store, and they buy digestive enzyme tablets, And you go home, and you just grind it up, and make it into a paste, and then dampen the area that has a protein stain, and put the wet paste of the digestive enzymes onto that area, and let it set overnight, and then rinse it and wash it.
It’s remarkable how the digestive enzymes will actually eat up the protein.
DEBRA: When you said enzymes, I thought of enzyme cleaners. But you’re talking about digestive enzymes like you would take to digest your food?
ANNIE BOND: Yes, that’s right, the digestive enzyme remedies. And if you think about it, it makes good sense that the digestive enzymes themselves would eat up protein.
DEBRA: That makes perfect sense to me. It’s eating it up in your stomach. Why wouldn’t it eat it up on…
ANNIE BOND: That’s why so many of these Faulk formula type ways of thinking are just based on common sense, if you think of things through, which then brings us to the—so many people ask me how can I get candlewax out of this or that or the other place.
DEBRA: Before you answer that question, we need to go to break. So you’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. My guest today is Annie B. Bond. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd, and when we come back, we’re going to learn how to get candlewax off the table, off the tablecloth, whatever we need to get it off of.
We’ll be right back.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd, and my guest today is Annie B. Bond, and we’re talking about how to clean up after your holiday party.
Annie, before the break, you were going to tell us about how to remove candlewax.
ANNIE BOND: I was just going to say that often, you just really, fundamental common sense that gives us an answer for non-toxic cleaning, just like the digestive enzymes. It was not my original idea. Somebody else had thought of it, and it just rang true.
And so what a great way to get rid of candlewax is to bring out a hairdryer and melt it—warm it up, and then you can easily remove it.
Just make sure that you blot the place that has it frequently, so you pull up the wax all at once.
And then, of course, if you end up having a colored candle, like a red candle, after you’ve gotten the wax off, you sometimes are left with the dye of the candle. So my recommendation is, there’s some pure sodium percarbonate products on the market, in the health food store. Some of the commercial brands have oxy in them, but the purest ones you can find in health food store, and you can use that.
It’s an oxygen bleach. And so you can whiten things using that. And that’s what I would recommend.
Also, an iron, again, if you’re blotting the fabric very carefully, an iron will melt the wax. And that’s another thing you could do.
DEBRA: Wouldn’t you put another piece of cloth or paper or something, and you would put the iron directly on the candlewax?
ANNIE BOND: Thank you, yes, exactly. And underneath and over it, I had that in my mind. I just wasn’t saying it, I’m sorry. You put something underneath and over it as the blotting when you do that.
DEBRA: Well, you’re forgiven, Annie.
ANNIE BOND: Thank you. Nobody can see my mind.
DEBRA: I can see it.
So how about dish detergents?
ANNIE BOND: Well, that’s a good question. That’s a very good question. I think the one that seems to have run through a little bit today is the issue of scents, S-C-E-N-T-S. Again, I think everything from synthetically scented dryer sheets, to air fresheners, to detergent that you use for your dishes, everything should be free and clear. And if you use something that has the scent of—it’s true aromatherapy, some sort of a pure essential oil.
Let’s say you’ve got all your guests, and you filled one load of a dishwasher. You don’t want them to be sending synthetic perfumes around in the home. And so the very first list for me would be to have something unscented, and then I would absolutely only buy something from a health food store myself. That’s my recommendation.
It’s interesting. The laws came through about removing phosphates from dish detergents. And it was the green places like Ecover and Seventh Generation that had been way ahead of the game because they’ve been researching phosphate-free dish detergent for the longest time. And then all of a sudden, all of the mainstream companies were scrambling, trying to have products that worked in dishwashers. And theirs didn’t without the phosphate.
So the health food store brands had already been solving the problem. They were just way ahead of the game, and they still are ahead of the game.
DEBRA: I agree with you that they really are thinking ahead. And I just like to say a little word about detergent, the word detergent, because detergents can be made either out of petroleum, or they can be made out of plant materials.
And so I think that the major different between a supermarket detergent and a natural food store detergent is that the supermarket detergents, whether you’re talking about a dish detergent, a dishwasher detergent, a clothes detergent, is that they’re going to be synthetic detergents for the most part, and they’re going to have artificial fragrance in it—very toxic.
And if you go to a natural food store, and buy the same type of product, it’s likely that it will be a plant-based detergent and essential oils, all of which are much safer for your health and the environment.
So I used to be able to say, just as a blanket statement, “Just go to a natural food store and buy anything.”
And I’m sorry to say that I can’t say that anymore because many natural food stores have become more lax about what they carry. But it’s more likely that you’re going to find the product that you’re looking for that’s non-toxic at a natural food store. And it’s worth becoming familiar with your local natural food store if you haven’t already.
ANNIE BOND: Yes, absolutely.
DEBRA: Let’s see. What else can we talk about? So we’re coming up on the gift-giving season. How do you get all those stickers off of gifts?
ANNIE BOND: I put this tip out there on a big e-mail list, and it’s one of the top clickers of all time for me, people clicking on it.
You simply put a dab of oil, a vegetable oil, olive oil or something that you have in your kitchen, on your finger, and you rub the sticker with that, with the oil, and it just will peel right off. Otherwise, it’s just endless amounts of problems.
There’s something about the oil, reaching the oil of the glue that just pulls it right off. It’s really great.
DEBRA: Wow, that’s so easy. I didn’t know that. And I sit there, and I try to pull it off with my fingernail.
ANNIE BOND: Yes, exactly. It goes on for half an hour, and you’re tearing your hair out, exactly. That works really, really well.
And then you just want to wash it just to get the oil off, but that’s easy. You could just stick something in the dishwasher, if it’s a glass or something.
Something else I might suggest that’s really important when it comes to scents is candles, and making sure that you don’t buy scented candles for the holidays. I just buy 100% beeswax candles. That’s another way that gives a beautiful fragrance.
DEBRA: I just love the fragrance of beeswax candles—just that honey smell.
ANNIE BOND: I know.
DEBRA: There are listeners who have never had burned a beeswax candle. Please, please, please go buy some because it’s just so glorious that fragrance.
ANNIE BOND: It not only is it glorious, but they give off negative ions, which means they help us an air cleaner as well, the burning beeswax does. And so to understand what a negative ion is versus a positive ion, if you’re in an LA traffic jam, the air is full of positive ions. And a negative ion would be like you’re at the ocean, and you’ve got crashing waves, or on top of a mountain, or right before a thunderstorm, the air is just electrically wonderful.
Those are negative ions, and they’re incredibly good for you. And they also draw the heavy positive ions from pollution, and then make them drop to the ground. And so if you burn beeswax, you’re also doing a really good natural air cleaner for your home, and it’s a really great thing.
DEBRA: It is. Beeswax candles are one of my most favorite things. And you can go to my website. If you go to ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com, and there’s a search box that’s just for my website. Just type in “beeswax candles,” and I have listed at least a dozen places online where you can get really wonderful beeswax candles, some of them directly from the beekeepers.
It’s a wonderful thing to have around during the holidays, on your table, but also as gifts. It’s just one of my favorite things, one of my very, very favorite things.
So Annie, we just have a couple of minutes left. Is there anything that you’d like to say that you haven’t said?
ANNIE BOND: I think it’s just to actually inspire people to try less toxic living during this holiday season, and get so much enjoyment out of it. One thing leads to another, and there’s a lot of pleasure in having a healthy home as you possibly can for guest and things when they come in.
One great way is to drop anything with synthetic scents, just like we’ve been talking about—the candles, the air freshener, the laundry detergent, the dish detergent, all that kind of thing. That alone will be a great asset to your home.
DEBRA: I totally agree. Have you ever asked anyone to not wear perfume?
ANNIE BOND: I have. Not when I have them come into my house. I don’t ask people not to wear perfume when they come in because actually, most people know me well enough that they wouldn’t. But I have a very, very, very dear friend who, every time I went out to dinner with her, I just was keeling over, and I had to ask her. She’s never worn perfume since.
That’s very sweet of her.
DEBRA: I do have people come over to my house, and I don’t say to them, “Don’t wear perfume.” But I’ve noticed that the people that I gravitate towards as my friends are not wearing perfume anyway because I think that nowadays, more often than in the past, that there’s a lot more people who are aware of these things, and want to live more simply, and just perfume, I think, is not as big of a deal as it used to be.
Although I want to minimize the fact that there’s still a lot of artificial scent going on in the world that still people need to be aware and stop using. But I find that in the circles I’m in, people aren’t wearing it, and I think that that’s a very good thing.
And I also don’t let people smoke in my house. I don’t know anybody who smokes anymore anyway. But it used to be an issue.
I would invite people over, and they’d want to smoke, and I’d say no.
But sometimes we have family members or things like that, and it’s difficult, but I would even say to a family member not to smoke in my house and expect them to—
ANNIE BOND: Oh, my gosh! Absolutely, for everybody’s sake. I’ve had that happen where, “There’s the chair, Daddy.” This would be applied.
DEBRA: Okay, so we’re just about done with our time. Thank you so much.
ANNIE BOND: It’s wonderful to be here, and happy holidays to everybody.
DEBRA: Happy holidays to you too, and have a great Thanksgiving. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. This is Toxic Free Talk Radio. And we’ll be back tomorrow.
