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10 Reasons You Should Have House Plants

Houseplants are a great addition to your home to add a pop of color and enhance decorations. Not only do they look great, but they have many other benefits that make them valuable to have inside the house. It is no secret why indoor plants have grown in popularity over the years.

Here are 10 reasons you should have houseplants.

1. They Reduce Stress

One of the fantastic benefits of plants is that they reduce stress. Nature has always been prescribed to people who deal with lots of stress. Whether someone takes walks or enjoys the natural environment, it can help them refocus and bring them back to the present moment.

Whether someone gardens outdoors or indoors with houseplants, it can help reduce feelings of stress. Adding a houseplant to the window for people who do not have an outdoor garden space can help promote a relaxing environment.

2. Increase Concentration and Productivity

Plants make people happy, allowing them to work more efficiently on a task they are doing. Whether it is household chores or a work-from-home environment, it can help maintain concentration.

Some workplaces and schools are integrating indoor plants into their settings. If plants can help you be more productive at home, they can also help at work and school. Some claim that test scores improved significantly after adding a couple of plants in the room. Adding a few plants to your space can help the day be more productive while adding charm.

3. Help with Sound Pollution

Adding a few plants for people who live in a city or have noisy neighbors can help reduce sound pollution. Plants with broad leaves can counteract the noise from car horns, chattering neighbors, and more. They absorb and deflect unwanted sounds in the home.

Place plants against windows that bring in the most noise or near a wall where the loud neighbors are. Try options like rubber trees or fiddle-leaf figs since they have large leaves to absorb the sound.

4. Adds Color and Decoration

There is much potential to get creative when adding greenery to the home. Adding plant displays, vines or flowers are beautiful ways to add color and nature to the house. Most apartments or homes have a lot of neutral colors and basic kitchens. Plants add color and texture and can be even more fun in colorful pots.

5. Improves Sleep

When adding plants to the bedroom, not only does it add coziness, but it promotes restful sleep. Plants have oxygen-boosting abilities that can encourage better sleep throughout the night. The carbon dioxide gets absorbed into the plant, which turns it into fresh oxygen during photosynthesis. All plants go through this process, but these are great options for the bedroom.

● Snake Plant
● Money Plant
● Chinese Evergreen
● Gerbera Daisies

6. Decorate Seasonally

Nature is one of the easiest ways to update your home as the seasons change. It creates endless opportunities to decorate from summer to winter. Summer and spring give a wide range of flowers to choose from and fall and winter are the time to explore plants that don’t need much care or set the holiday tone with poinsettias.

7. Improves Indoor Air Quality

Plants are the best air purifiers and can remove toxins in the home. Bringing in new furniture, paint, or using cleaning sprays can release harmful chemicals into the air. These chemicals are linked to various health problems, but plants can help.

Outdoor air gets purified to a degree, so why not purify indoor air too? Some plants are better than others for purifying, like spider plants, rubber trees, and lady palms.

8. Increase Humidity Levels

In a plant’s photosynthesis process, plants release oxygen and expel water vapor. This can combat dry indoor air and is especially helpful in the winter. The heating systems on full blast can cause dry air, dehydrated skin, and overall undesirable conditions.

Humidifiers will add more to the electric bill, so sticking with plants is a cost-effective alternative. Spider plants specifically do a great job adding moisture to the air.

9. Easier than Having Pets

It can be fulfilling to have something to take care of daily. Only some people’s living situations will allow pets. Getting plants can satisfy the fulfillment of having a pet. They are permitted in any living environment, which makes them a plus.

Plants are simple to take care of. There are many low-maintenance plant options if it is a first-time experience. Once there are lower maintenance plants in the home, try to expand to more advanced options.

10. Smell Amazing

Lots of money is saved when adding plants to the home. They can take the place of air freshens since they add fresh and clean scents indoors. The options like lavender, lemon trees, mint, or roses are endless.

Add House Plants to Your Home

There are many reasons to add plants to your home. Find the ones that fit your care level and suit your style to add throughout the house.

About The Author

Ava Roman (she/her) is the Managing Editor of Revivalist, a women’s lifestyle magazine that empowers women to live their most authentic life. When Ava is not writing you’ll find her in a yoga class, advocating for body positivity, whipping up something delicious in the kitchen, or smashing the patriarchy.

Simple DIY Tips to Bring Elegance to Your Home

Homeownership is a dream for many Americans. It’s the culmination of hard work and saving the funds to make it happen. When it does occur, you join two-thirds of the U.S. population as a homeowner.

Although you’re happy with the property you purchase there’s a time down the road where you want to make some changes. Not necessarily extensive renovations. Rather, you want to infuse elegance into your home. There are ways to do this without overextending your budget. Here are some simple DIY tips to bring elegance to your home.

Metal Art Prints

There are advantages to metal art prints as opposed to those on canvas. One is the sharpness of the images. Where a canvas sometimes absorbs the paints used, metal prints keep everything on the surface.

Then there’s the ability to shape these pieces of art to your needs. This is done through tools like air grinders. Companies use these instruments, sold at locations like International Air Tools, to create a unique piece. Sometimes, they offer an opportunity to cut a landscape piece into several parts for a segmented display.

Choose The Right Paint Colors

Paint is important to your home’s interior. The wrong colors and tones cause areas to seem dark and smaller than they are. For elegance, you need a palate that is a mix of bold and understated hues.

For instance, bedrooms should be painted in subdued hues of blue, green, yellow, pink, or lavender. These make the areas seem larger, increase the power of artificial & natural light, and make it easier for you to sleep. On the other hand, darker colors seem to work well in dining rooms, libraries, and studies.

Upgrade Handles And Doorknobs

There’s no need to replace entryways and cabinetry to make your home feel more elegant. Simply replacing handles and doorknobs with upgraded designs does wonder for these areas. Big box outlets and specialty stores sell these items with burnished finishes and other designs to make things feel classier.

Paint Entry Doors

On the subject of doors, a new paint job sets a different tone for your home’s exterior. Here, dark colors are welcome. For instance, a deep red signifies your home as a welcoming space for guests. When you add an elegant doorknob and knocker, you transform the portal from a simple door to a pleasant gateway.

Place The Right Number Of Pillows

Ten pillows on a loveseat aren’t elegant. Instead, it makes it feel cluttered. However, a pair of tasteful pillows provides another dimension to a plain seating area. If you want to use large, overstuffed pillows then add one each to couches and chairs for an extended comfort level.

Add The Right Plants

Plants do several things for your home. First, when placed in strategic areas, they add bursts of bolder color to light-toned areas. Second, when you bring in spider ferns or English Ivy they help keep the interior’s air fresh. This is because they have natural properties that remove toxins.

Find The Right Accessories

Even if you desire a minimalist atmosphere within your home, you still have the power to accessorize to increase its elegance. The goal is to not go overboard so rooms seem cluttered. Rather, accessorize existing items.

For instance, replace brown picture frames with gold or silver-plated ones. Swap out bathroom fixtures like a painted soap dish with something that has a metallic finish. For only a few dollars you should be able to find elegant replacements for the most common items around your home.

Add Crown Molding

Crown molding brings the ceilings and walls together to form a seamless unit. Thus, a room feels complete and elegant instead of unfinished. Fortunately, crown molding is relatively inexpensive. However, to make it work you must have it correctly sized before you apply it to a room.

Swap Carpet For Hardwood

Wall-to-wall carpet is a recent fad that started in the post-World War II suburban boom. However, there are fewer homes that contain this feature today. In the end, hardwood floors are more elegant. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have any form of carpeting. The addition of area rugs to hardwood floors not only increases their beauty but also offers insulation on cold days.

When implemented slowly, these simple DIY tips will bring increased elegance to your home.

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About The Author

Sheryl Wright is a freelance writer who specializes in digital marketing, inclusive business, and interior design. If she is not at home reading, she is at a farmers market or climbing in the Rockies. She currently lives in Nashville, TN, with her cat, Saturn.

Incredible Ways Gardening Can Improve Health and Benefit the Environment

Human health and the state of our planet are connected. To be healthy you need clean air, water, and soil. For the environment to be in such good shape, you need to be in good health to help it heal from centuries of abuse. Elevate your gardening routine with the right attire. Explore our selection of Garden Clothes—perfect for a comfortable and stylish outdoor experience.

One of the activities that can improve both is gardening. If every human being on the planet planted one tree, it would eliminate a lot of carbon emissions from the atmosphere, believes climate activist Greta Thunberg. She has a good point, considering that trees use carbon for photosynthesis and release oxygen into the air. Moreover, they barely cost anything and can pretty much take care of themselves.

Imagine how much good gardening can do for you and the environment if planting only one tree can turn into something this big. So, let’s discuss ways gardening can improve health and benefit the environment, both at once or one at a time.

1. It’s a workout

Gardening can burn as much as 330 calories in an hour, based on CDC. Today, when one of the biggest health problems in the world is obesity, this is a good way to maintain or lose weight. Basically, the more work you do in your garden, you may burn more calories.

Also, it can lower the body mass index or BMI that is directly connected to being overweight or obese. While according to a 2013 study, men lost more in BMI than women, the results are still an important indicator that gardening can help you control your weight.

2. It can relieve you of stress

If you want to take control over your stress, a Dutch study suggests you do gardening. The study included two groups of participants, both exposed to the same stressor. Afterward, one group was instructed to read quietly and the other to garden. The tests showed that the group doing gardening had lower levels of stress hormone — cortisol than the other group.

Gardening helps you stay in the present and calm down by doing various tasks, like planting and digging. This is a great way to take your mind off the things that bring you stress and even come up with solutions on how to resolve the troublesome issues.

3. It can improve your diet

Growing your own food allows you to control what kind of ingredients you use. If you follow organic farming, you will eat chemical-free produce and also be kind to the environment.

In addition, you will pay more attention to your diet by including more vegetables, fruits, and herbs into the meals. This means more vitamins and minerals, as well as fewer bad habits, such as eating processed food and trans fats. The more people do this, there will be less demand for products cultivated by practices that harm the environment, like mono cropping.

4. It brightens up your mood

If you suffer from anxiety or depression, gardening should be part of your therapy. Tending to your garden increases serotonin and dopamine levels in your body making you feel happier and satisfied. However, using glyphosate-based herbicides is bad both for your mood and the environment.

Even if you wear products made from plants sprayed with glyphosate, such as cotton, you can feel the bad effect on your mood. Besides lowering dopamine and serotonin, this chemical affects wildlife on the cellular level. Some scientists believe that it is responsible for disrupting gut bacteria in many animals, like bees.

5. It’s good for your heart

A Swedish study found that gardening can reduce the risk of stroke or heart attack since it is a form of moderate exercise. This is because it offers an appropriate amount of physical activity and stress relief, both effects are known to improve heart health. Moreover, using homemade pesticides may lower the risk of heart disease, as well as keep the environment clean.

6. It’s beneficial for the brain

Based on a 2019 Korean study, 20 minutes of active gardening can stimulate nerve growth that may improve memory. This means that people who suffer from dementia may experience improvement after gardening.

Greencare programs in Norway and Netherlands are based on horticultural therapy where dementia patients work in the gardens for several hours during the day. Social interaction and cognitive function during gardening may allow people who suffer from memory problems to relax, stay active, and improve their quality of life.

7. It teaches you to reuse waste

You probably heard of composting as a good way to give your plants the nutrients they need to grow. But this is also a sustainable practice that will help you recycle your food and natural waste instead of throwing it away.

Put used tea bags, coffee grounds, banana peels, grass clippings, dead foliage, and other suitable waste into the composting bin. Since it takes three to nine months to produce compost, you should start making it in time for the fall preparation of the soil. Thanks to composting, you may turn into a zero-waste household.

8. It reminds you to conserve water

A garden needs water or your plants would wither and die. However, even though Earth has more water than land, we can use only 1% of it. This is why water is a precious resource that needs conservation and careful use, especially during drought seasons. One of the ways to do that is through rainwater harvest from the roof into the barrels.

Also, install a sweeper hose which is designed to sip water into the soil and reduce wastage. Placing a timer on your irrigation system will make sure you only spend the amounts your plants need, as well as not to forget to water them.

9. It helps lower carbon levels

Plants need carbon dioxide, water, and sunlight to perform photosynthesis. As a result of this process, they release oxygen into the atmosphere. So, the more plants we have on the planet, the better are our chances to eliminate these harmful amounts of carbon from the air and stop global warming.

This also means you will have more fresh air on your property, especially if you plant trees. Maple, spruce, and Douglas fir give the most oxygen, but you won’t make mistakes by planting oak or aspen.

The bottom line

There is a strong connection between your health and the health of the entire planet. If air is polluted, waters contaminated, and soil barren, humans may be next in line for extinction. Gardening may not be the only way to improve health and benefit the environment, but it’s a good start to make a difference.

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About The Author

Nina Simons is a lifestyle blogger and an avid traveler passionate about interior design and creative DIY projects.

Benefits of Having Plants in the Workplace

Decorating the office and work desk instils a positive spirit and adds grace to the work environment. And the best thing about decorating the workplace is that there are several ways of doing it. One of the most practical ideas is adding plants to your office décor. With the touch of green to your office desk, you can bring in certain proven wellness benefits. Let’s know more about the benefits of having plants in your office space and how the green decor helps maintain good health.

Plants enhance creativity & increase productivity

Plants offer an excellent look to offices, and at the same time, they boost up creativity and increase productivity. And plants in offices can help in maintaining a comfortable space if placed at a strategic location. According to various research reports, plants have been instrumental in boosting productivity. Plants bring a feeling of peace and enhance your creative skills. They instil freshness and positivity, thus, making you both creative and productive.

Plants reduce stress and anxiety

Several indoor plants can help in busting stress and anxiety. According to the various psychiatrists, keeping plants in the workplace helps in relaxing and reduces anxiety. If you sit around the plants inside your office, you tend to remain more relaxed.

Plants can freshen up the mood and help in maintaining good mental health

The green color is found soothing and exhibits positive vibes among human beings. Plants add new energy by emitting fresh oxygen and taking in the carbon dioxide exhaled by human beings. They increase concentration power, keep you attentive and calm. Everyone faces a lot of stress at work, and just by looking or touching plants, you can relax your mind.

Plants bring luck and prosperity

Various plants attract good luck and are considered spiritually significant. Feng Shui plants are an important source of fortune, prosperity, luck and love. Feng Shuialso advocates that plants help maintain the right balance of the water elements to displace negative energy. This creates a good environment inside the office, boosting positivity, which helps make the workplace prosper.

Best Plants for Your Office Desk

Plants tend to transform your offices into a peaceful and engaging space apart from adding tranquillity. Keeping the plants on your office desk can add a positive impact on your work life. However, not all plants can be placed on the work desk. Some plants cannot sustain in an office atmosphere. Modern-day workplaces with windowless cubicles have no open space for green plants. Thus, choosing the right plant for offices that can easily accommodate and bring in various benefits is challenging. Let’s check the six plants that can be kept inside your office desk.

Snake Plant

Another famous desktop plant is a snake plant. These are simple to sustain in an office environment as they are low maintenance in nature. These remain the best air purifying indoor plants in the offices, helping the office staff feel fresh while working around the snake plant. They are also grown for Feng Shui purposes.

Sansevieria

Sansevieria is one of the best office desk plants which can remove benzene, xylene, trichloroethylene, toluene and formaldehyde within the office space. It helps in cleaning the oxygen during the night time. It has the unique function of improving upon the quality of the air you breathe in your office space. This helps in making the area more productive and healthier.

Money Plant

The next best office plant is a money plant. It is believed to bring luck and prosperity. And it creates a positive aura in the office space, reducing the negative energy. It helps in filtering air along with boosting up the oxygen flow. The spiritual benefits include attracting wealth and prosperity.

Succulents

Succulents are thick fleshy tissues that can store water easily. These plants keep water inside their small leaves and stem, creating a soothing atmosphere inside the office. Their presence in offices acts like an air purifier, giving away fresh oxygen and freshness.

Lucky Bamboo

The next popular office plant is Lucky Bamboo. These are simple to maintain and can be quickly grown in water or soil. However, lucky bamboo lasts longer in soil. Lucky Bamboo brings luck and wealth, and thus, it is used for Feng Shui purposes. It has great features of air purification.

Philodendron

The next popular office plant is philodendrons. They can easily adapt to different lighting and water conditions and can be seen thriving indoors very easily. Philodendrons have dark and large leaves that help absorb even the tiniest level of water and light.

These were some of the popular desktop plants that can add charm to your workstation. Office plants are as important as other decor items in the workspace. From offering high energy, positivity to good air purification capabilities, desk plants will help you maintain a healthy working space for sure.

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Healthy Plants to Grow in Your Garden

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People often get confused as, what to grow in home garden because there are lots to choose from, but not all of them are appropriate to the core, considering an indoor garden. So, sometimes it might fail. They also look for healthy and useful plants to grow indoors so that those organic vegetables and fruits can be used in dishes which will boost the nutritional content in it. So, here, we bring seven such healthy plants that you can grow easily in your home garden.

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1. Carrots

Carrot provides a lot of health benefits like clear skin, it’s good for eye, cancer prevention, anti-aging etc. Usually orange in color, there are carrots in different colors like purple, black, red, white, yellow etc. It provides with a lot of vitamins which is essential of your body and helps to keep it healthy.

2. Sweet Potatoes

Sweet potatoes are highly nutritious and delicious. They contain Vitamin A, fibre and potassium in it which is necessary for our body. Many studies have proven that sweet potatoes help in decreasing obesity, heart problems and diabetes. They are even easy to grow in large baskets and buckets and is a good choice if you only have small amount of space.

3. Mushrooms

Mushrooms are extremely delicious. At the same time, it provides much nutrients to the body like Vitamin B, Vitamin C, fibre, calcium, iron, minerals etc. They contain anti-oxidants too. They mainly grow in dark, moist environment. So, small space indoors is the best possible spot for planting mushrooms.

4. Avocados

Avocado is a tree. So, you must be wondering that how can you plant such a tree at your home. It’s possible using the grafted dwarf sapling through which you can grow the small plant. You can prepare a number of dishes or a healthy juice because avocados are tasty and are rich in nutritional value.

5. Lemons

Lemons make an amazing home plant or an indoor plant which you can grow in your home garden. The home plant will be around 3 to 5 feet long. Well-draining and slightly acidic soil is what’s suitable for the plant. It requires a lot of sunlight in order to grow. Lemon is a vital part of any dish as it adds to its taste and flavor. Lemon juice can also be consumed during summers which is a great relief in itself.

6. Bell peppers

Bell peppers are of different colors like red, yellow, green, orange, chocolate etc. They have high Vitamin C contents and are good anti-oxidants which makes it a perfect addition to your dishes. They are low in calories also. It thrives for warm and slightly acidic soil in order to grow. It is better to grow this plant if you live in a cold climatic region.

7. Ginger

Ginger is one of the best option to grow indoors because first of all, it is an essential component of a lot of dishes; so, in that sense, it’s extremely useful, second reason being, it’s an herbal plant and also, a medicinal plant. You can read more about the detailed review of the medicinal benefits of this plant. So, it is highly nutritious and beneficial for the body. It is easy to grow indoors as it requires very less amount of sunlight and just takes about 10 months to grow.

Visit http://tilleradvisor.com to learn more about indoor garden, benefits, tips or products.

Keep these plants in your top seven lists of healthy plants that you can grow in your home garden. All these plants can be used in your day to day cooking. So, it will enable a proper diet for your body with appropriate amount of nutrition and health benefits. These easy to grow, yet beautiful and healthy plants are must for your home garden. So, what are you waiting for? Start planting and experience the power of your home garden.