5 Benefits of Utilizing Organic Furniture in Your Home

Home is considered a safe place for most people, as they spend the majority of their time there. As a safe place, your home and the things in it should contribute to your health and happiness. But depending on the type of furniture you own, it could be doing the opposite.

More and more people are buying organic furniture to avoid the negative effects that come with traditional furniture. Some stores, such as Plank and Coil, are created with the sole intent of providing the public with access to organic and sustainable furniture options. With organic furniture, you don’t have to worry about harmful chemicals being released into the air while you’re sleeping or that your purchase is contributing to deforestation. You can sleep well in knowing your furniture is a positive and health-conscious addition to the place you call home.

Here are five other ways that utilizing organic furniture in your home can benefit you.

1. Improved Air Quality

Indoor air pollution is becoming a more popular topic as of late. With wildfires happening across the country and smoke finding its way indoors, people are paying more attention to the fact that what you breathe in every day can have a significant effect on your overall health. Just like the air outdoors can become polluted, so can the air in your home. But I bet you didn’t know that this contamination could be coming from your furniture. It’s up to you whether your furniture improves or worsens overall air quality.

One of the benefits of having organic furniture in your home is that your furniture won’t be contributing to bad air quality. Non-organic furniture is often built with materials that contain toxic chemicals. Though these chemicals start out in your furniture, over time, they can off-gas some of that material into the atmosphere.

According to the Washington Post, 4of the top 10 chemicals commonly emitted from furnishings are considered “acute” hazards, or irritants. This occurs naturally, and it can lead you to breathe in chemicals unknowingly. With organic furniture, you won’t have to worry about that happening, as the materials they’re made from contain no harmful chemicals to begin with.

2. Environmentally Friendly

Protecting our planet has never been more important, and there are more ways to contribute to that cause than you might think. One of those ways is by being more mindful of the furniture you buy. When you utilize organic furniture in your home, you also help your environment to thrive. Organic furniture is environmentally friendly in a variety of ways that can help both your home and the global environment.

When you purchase organic furniture, you’re contributing to manufacturing methods that don’t use harsh chemicals. Many of the chemicals in traditional furniture are not only hazardous to our health but hazardous to nature and animals as well.

For example, when non-organic furniture is disposed of, the chemicals in that furniture are likely to seep into the ground and enter water systems. This also happens when the material is being created. Waste from those materials can enter landfills, affect water systems, and show up in the soil and habitats of local wildlife. These are all facts to consider when buying furniture.

3. Better for Your Skin

Some things in your home touch your skin more often than others. Items like your couch, mattress, pillows, and chairs are just a few of the things that can come into contact with your skin multiple times a day. No one would intentionally put chemicals on their skin, but depending on the furniture you have, you could be doing just that. Because our skin is our largest organ, what comes in contact with it matters, as our skin can easily absorb what it touches, such as chemicals found on certain materials.

Many people don’t put together that some bad skin reactions may be caused by the furniture in their home. When you use organic furniture, however, you likely don’t have to worry about your skin reacting negatively to it, as most organic furniture is hypoallergenic. Items like organic cotton sheets or organic couch cushions can provide you with a chemical-free covering for the places you use the most in your home. When you switch these items out, you create fewer opportunities for your skin to experience sensitivities.

4. Better Sleep

A good night’s sleep can help you lead a healthier and happier life, but not all furniture is created to help you attain that kind of rest. While organic furniture isn’t filled with harsh chemicals, non-organic furniture often is, and it can prevent you from sleeping well.

Whether it’s from irritating your skin, reducing your healthy air quality, or adding to uncomfortable temperatures, traditional furniture can significantly interfere with your sleep, whereas organic furniture can often improve your sleep. An organic mattress, sheets, pillows, and pillowcases can create a temperature-controlled environment that pulls sweat away from your body and allows for air circulation in your sleeping environment. The ability to absorb excess moisture and then release it back into the air can help you to sleep longer and better each night. And who doesn’t want that?

5. Sustainability

The materials used in organic furniture are often natural items, such as organic cotton, bamboo, and wood. These natural materials bring a wonderful aesthetic to your home, and they can last for a long time.

The longer a piece of furniture lasts, the less need there is to create or purchase more items of furniture in the future. This creates less overall waste and less of an opportunity to contaminate the environment.

People often consider organic furniture an expensive purchase, but when you consider its sustainability and ability to last longer, it’s actually a more cost-effective option than most furniture. When you’re looking for new furniture, try shopping at stores like Plank and Coil in Portland. We have eco-friendly, organic, and sustainable furniture options for every room in your home.

What Are the Benefits of and How To Use a Smart Thermostat?

If you have kept up with any of the latest trends in modern technology, you may have heard of “smart” thermostats. Of course, the name alone doesn’t tell you much. It seems like there’s a “smart” version of everything these days. Smartphones, smart refrigerators, smart cars, and so many others. But is it really worth it to spend the extra money on some technological bells and whistles? In the case of smart thermostats, we think it is. However, you need to take the time to understand how to use them correctly.

What Is a Smart Thermostat?

Thermostats have been a fixture in modern homes for decades now, and their primary purpose hasn’t changed much: they tell you what the temperature is. By doing this, they allow you to adjust your heater or air conditioner to the ideal level. Traditional thermometers are very simple: they utilize mercury to inform you of the current temperature inside the home. This was an amazing piece of technology when it was first introduced, but today, it’s considered to be somewhat inaccurate.

A more modern—if still outdated—type of thermometer is the digital one. They give you a more accurate reading of the ambient temperature, and they have certainly been popular for many years now. However, they can’t do much more than give you an idea of how hot or how cold it is. More recently, programmable thermostats have come into vogue: these allow you to set the temperature to what you want and to adjust it as you see fit.

Smart thermostats are the next step up from all of these older, outdated versions of this technology. They do a lot more than just read the temperature in the room. They can also read other details, such as the ambient humidity. Once you’ve set the temperature to what you prefer a few times, they can “learn” your preferences and continuously keep your home comfortable, without you having to do much beyond the initial setup.

Smart thermostats also connect to Wi-Fi so that you can control them remotely. You’ll be able to adjust your home’s climate using only your tablet, smartphone, or laptop. You can also get detailed information about your home’s energy usage sent to your phone in real-time.

What Are the Benefits?

There are many benefits that smart thermostats offer over their less-advanced cousins. The added convenience is worth the price tag alone. The fact that you can remotely adjust your home’s climate means that you’ll save time, which you can then devote to other things. It also means you can turn on the heater or air conditioner while you’re on your way home so that it’s at your desired temperature by the time you arrive.

More advanced versions of the smart thermostat can even sense and adjust the temperature in individual rooms. Many homes have rooms that are regularly hotter or colder than other parts of the house, so this ability in your thermostat can be a real godsend.

Some smart thermostats even have Alexa or other smart speaker systems built-in, so you can give them voice commands. Simply tell your thermostat to turn the AC when you’re feeling hot; if it’s too cold, tell it to adjust the temperature by a few degrees.

The fact that smart thermostats can provide you with regular digital readouts of your home’s energy usage will help you save a lot of money in the long run. You can always adjust your thermostat for maximum efficiency. The government’s ENERGY STAR® website explains how this type of technology will save you money. It can make adjustments to your home’s temperature levels when you’re asleep and when you’re not home in order to use less energy, which will translate into cost savings for you.

Smart thermostats can also provide you with diagnostic readouts of your entire HVAC system. That way, if anything breaks down or otherwise stops working, you can get it fixed by a professional from Watts Heating & Cooling immediately.

How To Use a Smart Thermostat

With all of these benefits, you may be imagining that a smart thermostat is dazzlingly complex and comes with a steep learning curve for its use. This isn’t the case; however, getting the maximum benefits out of your thermostat does require a certain level of understanding of the technology.

First, and most importantly, you need to make sure that whichever thermostat you purchase will actually work with the HVAC system you have in place. This isn’t a given because not all systems are compatible. Talk to your heating and cooling professional if you’re unsure about this.

You’ll have to choose a spot on a wall to install your thermostat. Needless to say, this should be somewhere that’s easily accessible so you can make adjustments as necessary. After it’s installed, you’ll then have to spend some time setting up your smart thermostat.

Understanding how to use a smart thermostat means understanding the limits of what the technology is capable of: while these thermostats can “learn” your preferences and habits, they tend to do better if you give them as much information as possible when you start. Enter your schedule, as far as you know it, your temperature preferences, and any vacations you may have planned. Over time, the thermostat will utilize this information to hone its ability to keep your home at a temperature you are happy with.

Finally, get in the habit of regularly checking the reports from your thermostat. Learn to find out if your HVAC system is becoming less efficient. In this way, you’ll be able to tackle problems as they occur and contact your HVAC professional if any repairs are required. Over time, this diligence will help save you a great deal of money on your energy bill.