Detox your home with houseplants!

Do you know how good houseplants are for us? Not only do they help to create a lovely ambiance and bring life to our homes but they can also reduce noise, lower stress, clean the air and provide fresh air. Is your house shut up tight over winter and getting musty and stale? Is it too cold to air the place when you get home? If you add a few of the plants listed below you could dramatically improve the quality of the air, without losing all the heat. Great news for anyone suffering from asthma or breathing problems.

Here are some of the many benefits of houseplants:

• Reduce noise in the room by interrupting the sound waves and stopping them from bouncing off hard surfaces
• The University of Surrey found that houseplants can lower stress and make us feel happier
• Choosing a fragrant indoor plant can deodorise the room, for example, plants that have lovely smelling flowers or small pine type trees/shrubs
• Plants can help heal us when we are sick
• Can increase humidity in the room and decrease dust
• Can help us to focus more and improve our memory and retention
• Create fresh oxygen using the carbon dioxide in the air
• AND filter out harmful pollutants like Ammonia, Formaldehyde, Xylene, Toluene and Benzene, among others (these chemicals can be found in the home in plastics, cleaning products, paints and gasoline).

The following is a short table of some of the best plants to use. For a full list or further information please use some of the links below:

Not only are they amazingly helpful plants they also don’t need much from us. Most of these plants are very hardy and need very little care and attention. A great return on investment I think!

Further information and links:

For more information on the potential of plants for your home and office have a look at Mr. Kamal Meattle’s TED talk from 2009 here (Duration - 4 mins):

http://www.ted.com/talks/kamal_meattle_on_how_to_grow_your_own_fresh_air?language=en

The original NASA study published in 1989:

https://archive.org/details/nasa_techdoc_19930072988

For further information on Concentration and Memory see article: http://ellisonchair.tamu.edu/health-and-well-being-benefits-of-plants/#.VPSAm0JN1lI

For information on Humidity and Dust see the study from the University of Agriculture Norway:

http://www.healthline.com/health/importance-plants-home#2

Plants for clean air with some short tips for growing them:

http://www.health.com/health/gallery/0,,20357829,00.html