Houseplants are a wonderful means of bringing fresh and clean air and oxygen into your home! In fact, they are perhaps the most sophisticated air-purification system available at a more frugal cost! They absorb carbon dioxide and chemicals such as formaldehyde and benzene, and provide a healthy level of humidity. Plus they bring a little creation into your home (part of that creative mothering), displaying some of God’s creativity in each unique plant that He created, encouraging a little love of nature when it is not necessarily able to be enjoyed out of doors as in the current winter season. They provide such elegant decorations to our homes as well!
The EPA estimates that indoor air is 2 to 10 times more polluted than outdoor air. How is this possible? Contributors include that variety of furniture, carpeting, ply-wood, adhesives, mattresses, and shower curtains.
According to Renee Loux in Easy Green Living: “Two small plants or one medium size plant per 100 square feet will provide fresh air and healthy, mold-free humidity in any room so everyone can breathe deeply with ease.”
What are the most effective plants for completing this task?
Bamboo palm, Chinese evergreen, corn plant (Dracaena massangeana, not edible corn), dragon tree, chrysanthemum, English ivy, peace lily, pothos, philodendron, and snake plant.
I am motivated to start saving my pennies to include a little more creation into my home and provide a more healthy environment at the same time!
House plants are indeed awesome. Keep in mind that oxygen release is a product of photosynthesis. At night time plants do not release oxygen, they release carbon dioxide. Therefore you don’t want to crowd bedrooms with plants.
House plants can make a dreary home more cheerful and pleasant to live in.
You can take the most drabby houses and add plants, and it’s an instant change. It also teaches children responsibilites and shows them how to care for things as well.
My family loves the Pothos. It is really hard to kill. I go weeks without watering mine and it does fine. The great thing about this plant is that it is really easy to get starts from it. This allows you to take clippings of the plant and start a new plant. I have my plant in a hanging basket so that my little one doesn’t get into it. This plant is also very cheap. My mom has had one for over 15 years and she is horrible with plants.
WoW! I had no idea that houseplants could make that much of a difference! Do flowers count? I actually tend to be happier and less stressed when there is a fresh bouquet of flowers on my table… Definitely going to remember this post!
Very interesting post. I love the idea of a natural air purifyer instead of one to buy! My 2 hesitations are these: 1. I can’t stand the little black flies…are there some plants that don’t get those? 2. What is not easy to kill, I’m not naturally a green thumb!
hey wendy? just popped on here again to read more suggestions! if you’re not a particular green thumb-the yucca palm is really hard to kill;) so is a small rubber plant! those come in several varieties. the yucca is nice because you don’t have to constantly water it, and doesn’t need constant sunlight all the time (though it IS good for it;)). also if i forget to water it for a day or 2 or whatever, it doesn’t keel over and die on me:P. bamboo is really hard to kill too!
Lindsay- Please be careful about which houseplants you bring in. Some are toxic or fatal to children or pets even if all they ingest is a little taste. This includes English Ivy, Philodendron (and its cousin, Rhododendron), and various lilies, which you listed above. Poinsettas are toxic to pets, but not so much children so pet owners should be careful about holiday decorating.
Here is a link to a list of poisonous plants; on the navigation bar to the left, there is also a tab for non-poisonous plants.
http://www.cincinnatichildrens.org/svc/alpha/d/dpic/plants/poisonous.htm
And they just make a room look so nice!
Oh, this is something I’ve been thinking about for a while. Thanks for reminding me of this!
Maybe this winter is a good time to scout around for some good deals on plants, especially seeing as we’re indoors so much with all the rain.
I love having plants in the house!!! Currently I have 3 bamboo stalks, 2 yucca plants, and 2 banana plants! we have 3 cats, so i make a solution of tabasco sauce and water and spray the leaves about once a week-keeps them well away from it;) and we keep some of the bamboo in a clear glass vase with rocks and water on our bathroom counter–looks beautiful against the mirror and does its silent job keeping things fresh^_^
Fred Meyer carries a nice selection of houseplant starts for only $1.50. I can always find a little pot at a thrift store or garage sale for very inexpensive, making for a very affordable plant. These grow quickly and I’ve found them to be very healthy.
Wonder if I could find something to hang on my ceiling — we have a cat that loves to eat any plants we have so we just don’t do plants. Wish I could, but I don’t want my cat jumping up on my table. I love Bamboo plants, I wonder if my cat would eat that. Oh well.
What a good idea!
Interesting. I don’t think about indoor pollution. I have aloe vera and Christmas cactus. I hope they are doing their job! Boy, this summer, I grew 11 tomato plants and 9 pepper plants in the livingroom of our one room apartment along with a spice windowbox and lots of little baby aloes. Of course our windows were open all the time to let in the balmy temperatures, and we struggled with mold, spider mites, and little flies (annoying), but I bet over all the air was pretty clean in our house!
Seriously! I have a knack for killing houseplants,too! I wonder sometimes if it’s because in winter we keep our house a little on the cool side.
if only i could keep them alive.
There are many resources available for keeping houseplants alive. I recently heard of colorful glass blown globes that you set into the pot and it will keep it continually watered as needed. Can’t recall what they were called but they were cheap and I saw one recently at a local restaurant. Seems like an easy way to go.
I kill everything. However, I stuck some bamboo sticks in our fish bowl and voila! Instant houseplant. The beta is happy and so are we. Also, I don’t have much sunshine in our apartment but it still thrives. I take out and rinse off the stalks every time I change the water in the bowl and they’re still living. Amazing : )
When choosing houseplants, keep in mind that some are toxic when little people “taste” them.
My brother was famous for eating my mother’s houseplants. It kept us on a first name basis with Poison Control!
I’ve been looking for that info for awhile! I knew I read it somewhere once, but then left it on the back burner. With all the windows closed up due to cold weather, it got me thinking our the yucky air we breath!