Making a home worth living in.
Many years ago I had the chance to take a tour of Dow Chemical’s corporate offices in Midland, MI at the location where they research and develop all of their insulating foams. Dow is one amazing company and Midland is one of the most company of company towns—an Edward Scissorhands kind of town with perfect looking homes and perfect architecture and with citizens Garrison Keillor would most assuredly characterize as all above average. During that visit, I picked up a marketing brochure that included this quote:
“What’s the use of a fine house if you haven’t got a tolerable planet to put it on?”
--Henry David Thoreau, essayist, poet and philosopher
Quite true I thought. But as someone with a long-standing interest in organic foods, alternative medicine, and healthy green building, something about that quote struck me as odd, but I couldn’t pinpoint exactly what. And then, after a few days, it struck me: What good is a tolerable planet if that same fine house is built using synthetics and toxins that contribute to its occupant’s poor health, or even death?
Not much good at all frankly. As Arthur Schopenhauer, 19th century German philosopher once noted, “health is not everything, but without health, everything is nothing.”
Moreover, what good is ‘One Fine House’—that is to say, a home that I heretofore will call healthy because it maximizes the use of natural and unadulterated building materials and finishes, allows for natural self-regulation of indoor air humidity using hygroscopic materials, and minimizes stray electric and magnetic fields—if its occupants live an unhealthy lifestyle? A knowledgeable green developer can build new healthy homes all day long, but for those homes to stay healthy or become even healing, takes a commitment from the owners to eat natural or less-processed foods, use natural body care and personal care and medicinal products, garden organically, use non-toxic cleaners, practice natural pet care, and decorate the home with furnishings made from natural fabrics and finishes.
It’s not necessarily easy or less costly to do so and it often takes a vigilant commitment to make it happen. And I am guilty of not always doing so. But thankfully, the consumer’s job of maintaining a healthy lifestyle is getting easier to do as products with attributes like those mentioned above gain wider distribution (think Whole Foods Market which 30 years ago was a one-store natural food grocer in Austin, TX but now of course part of the Amazon Empire), and as consumers get better educated about using them. Better living begins with better building and the choice to live in a healthy home, but ends with consumers who internalize the principles of natural living and actually live them each and every day.
With that as a backdrop, today I am officially going LIVE with my new GURU web site devoted to healthy homes, which includes this blog about healthy home building and living. Entitled “One Fine House” with the subtitle “Healthy Homes in a Toxic World” my intent is to both educate and to learn from the discussion it generates; to entertain while also making some very serious commentary about the toxic world we find ourselves living in; and do so in a way that keeps you interested enough to come back here a couple times a week to see what’s new and to forward these messages on to your friends, family, and neighbors.
Over the posts to follow, I’ll share some tidbits of wisdom about healthy building techniques; about the people across the country who care most about designing not-so-big homes that put health and the environment first; about why it is important to build this way; about non-toxic building materials and finishes you may not be aware of; about how energy-efficiency fits into healthy building (or doesn’t); about the lifestyle choices occupants of healthy homes should consider to keep them and their families healthy and life-affirming; and above all, about the things you need to know to find or create a space that nurtures your body, mind, and spirit.
I hope you will follow me on this journey, let me know when I stray off course, and help deepen and broaden the conversation through your feedback and commentary.
Wishing you Health, Happiness, and Equity (!),
Mark Ahlheim
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