Fresh & Clean Home – Pure Walls & Memories

Fresh & Clean Home – Pure Walls & Memories.

 About walls, memories and healthy and pollution-free life. 

The walls in our homes are an inseperable parts of our lives. They absorb our laughter, our happy times, our tears. They are not just walls, they are part of our stories, memories, moments.

They are not simply stones and bricks. They are the rocks of our good and bad days. They are our strength, the solid support we lean on when bad things, bad news trample us.

How many of us have that moment when we heard a bad news through our phones and leaned, desperately against the walls?

I had. In that moment, I had been immensely grateful for that strength behind my back.

But, stupid, walls can’t hear, talk back!

Who told you?

Lean in, a little closer, close your eyes and place your ears over the cool, smooth surface and you can hear it whisper your secrets back, you can hear it recount all your dreams–that dream of becoming a street dancer, you remember? That dream of becoming a tattoo artist, you remember? You don’t? They do– you can hear it echo your trilling laughter as you ran through your childhood.

Have you felt, the touch of these stones tingling in your toes? Have you felt it, the memories passing through your fingers, inducing your brain cells as you place your hands on your walls.

Not just any walls feel the same.

The walls we grew up in, the walls where we drew stick figures, the walls where we let stains of our dirty hands rest, the walls where we painted our dreams… they are our bond to our past, our happy place.

As we go far away from our homes, as we spread our wings and fly, they stay, they remember. The walls. With our memories, with the loud sounds of our sibling arguments, with the pleasant reverberation of our laughter.

So… how much of us give due importance to these solid pillars of our life, our memories?

We buy cheap, toxic, polluting paints, we dump it over them, layers and layers of bad goo and we are done with it.

But is it any way to preserve our memories? To respect our homes?

After roving outside, after hard treks, after polluting air and poeple, we want our home, we desire our home.

And after facing a bad, bully of the world outside, don’t you want something pleasing, something comfortable and safe inside?

After facing air that stenches, air that suffocates our breath, air that is nothing but noxious gas after gas, don’t we want to breathe in fresh air, air that is pollution-free once we step in inside our safe corner?

Of course, yes.

And how does it feel when you are slapped at your face with the facts that your home is not as fresh or clean or safe as you thought?

So… I have been in this perpetual ignorance that my home, my walls are all safe and comfortable and clean.

Dirt. What dirt? I wipe and clean like a mad woman.

Pollution. What pollution? You have got to be kidding me. I keep a totally tidy, vacuumed home.

Bad air. What bad? I use air fresheners, I use ventilation, chimney, exhaust fan. Shut up.

And then one day…

I was watching one of my favorite shows on TV and in barged Shruti Haasan with her masked family–even the little pug is wearing one and it is so cute– to shatter all my hard kept beliefs.

Shruti: What bro, what is happening here?

Brother: Hey, do you even know that the air inside our home can be 5 times more polluted than the air outside? Here, there is a mask for you, too.

Shruti: Ha, I don’t need any masks. It is the walls that need a new paint.

I was like, whoa. Wait there, buddy. Are you shitting me? 

And then they presented us with…

 A new paint “Royale Atmos – the air purifying paint”, that can clean our air with its activated-carbon technology. The paint can destroy more harmful and powerful pollutants inside and make the air purer and fresher than before. (Haha!)

Whoa. Whoa. Another trick, right, to sell us their paints?

My hubby and I laughed at the absurdity of such statements and kept living in the state of blissful unawareness of the pollution inside home.

And then one day, as I was looking for a cure for my frequent sneezing and coughing, I come across a statement that said how air pollution is a major cause of breathing problems. (I am a Sneezy who sneezes 24×7)

Another day, another commercial with Deepika Padukone.

I wanted to check it out, as I, rubbing against my itchy nose and sneezing, hard and long until my eyes watered, sat down yesterday in front of my laptop. Googling.

I wanted to educate myself, again, with my school day definitions of air pollutuion. The forgotten things.

Wikepedia says: Air pollution is caused by poisonous gases, sulphur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, carbon monoxide, and very small particulates. Air pollution may cause breathing problems such as asthma and other health problems. It also causes cancer.

Okay. I sneezed. God. That is a lot to take in. 

And I went on to search about indoor air pollutants inside my home. My clean, safe home. My Haven, I come into escape the cruelty of outside. I walked around my home to list it out, and Boy am I surprised!

1. My refrigerator: Why your fridge pollutes. I already knew about CFCs, it’s adverse effects on ozone. As I read again, I know why my home is not as pollution free as I had thought. Refrigerators uses Freons, a refrigerant gas that contains Halocarbons. Halocarbons contains carbon, flourine, hydrogen and chlorine, and they are MAJOR air pollutants.
2. My kitchen stove: The gas stoves always felt like a better option when compared to cooking over 🔥 made by burning wood and coal and kerosine. But I did not know. The gas stoves relase nitrogen dioxide. N2O which is highly reactive, reacts with oxygen and moisture in air to form toxic nitrates.
3.  Tube lights: Traditional flourescent tube lights contains Mercury vapour which are harmful air pollutant. The ultraviolet.
4. The furnitures: Yes, those innocent looking tables and chairs and beds. The adhesives used to fix furnitures release poisonous formaldehyde.
5. The bag of laundary in the side: well, it carries pollution in its every fiber. I sound paranoid, but what do I know.
6. The food I cook: why leave them out? The smoke from fried food is just as strong as the smoke released from a massive truck.
7. The windows I open for fresh air: What fresh air?
8. The deodorants, sprays, and air fresheners I religiously use: They release harmful air polluting particulates such as volatile organic compounds (VOC). These causes serious health problems as they circulate within the rooms for so long.
9. Paints: Most of the paints we slather our walls with, comes loaded with leads, VOCs and other toxic pollutants that release polluting particulates in air.
10. My Talcum powder: Pollutant. Check. Ugh!
11. My flower pot. Pollens. Aaarrrgh!

What the heck!? How am I supposed to live inside my home which seems to host a wide variety of pollution causing things?

I look at my baby boy. How is he going to grow up in this infested air, healthy?

The health risks of breathing bad air:

What you don’t see can hurt you, as well. Air pollution is a major risk to health. WHO states that one can reduce the risk of stroke, heart disease, lung disease, and respiratory diseases such  as asthma, by breathing clean air.

The indoor air pollutants:

The most common indoor air pollutants are combustion products, biological particles from mold, pet dander, volatile organic compounds, lead dust, CFCs, nitrogen oxide, asbestos etc. Indoor air may also contain over 900 different types of gaseous chemicals and particulate matter smaller than 2.5 microns and breathing these tiny, unseen pollutants put everyone inside at risk. They pass in your breathing tracts, accumulate in lung tissues and cause long term breathing problems and serious illness.

How am I going to ensure my baby’s healthy and secure childhood?

1. No fridge? Impossible!
2. Close all my windows and suffocate. Not a chance.
3. Switch off my lights and live in eternal darkness. No thanks.
4. Eat out and never cook in home. My hubby is gonna scream and cause noise pollution.
5. Not using my deodrant and be that person everyone shrink their nose at? Hell no!
6. Sell all my furnitures and sit and sleep in floor and suffer back ache? No way.
7. Throw away the flower pot. Nooooo oooo.
8. Peel all the paints. Uff…

So how then? How am I going to let my baby boy live with all of them and the Pollution they cause?

1. Induction cook tops are better than gas stoves. (The other side of the problem is they consume more electricity)
2. LED lights replacing the flourescent ones, as they have no Mercury.
3. Keep the refrigerator in a space you use less likely.
4. Close that bag of foul smelling laundry clothes.
5. Routinely check the fridge and air conditioner for possible leakages. Switch it off when possible. Keep them in prime condition.
6. Use air filters and purifiers.
7. Use new improved air conditioning technologies that come with air filters.
8. Dust the nooks and corners that accumulate more dust and dirt.
9. Wipe, clean and wipe, clean until you smite the dust mites.
10. And use paints that are non-toxic, green and environmental friendly.

And Paints. Non-toxic paints? Where in the world do we find one? 

Remember Shruti Haasan and her masks. There. 

You (I) will not laugh anymore. It is that serious, the air pollution inside our homes.

Royale Atmos™: A new innovative paint from Asian paints, with activated carbon technology they use in air purifiers. So what it does is… purify your air and keep it less polluted.

How does Royale Atmos clean my air?

It is equipped with Activated carbon technology, where active carbons or charcoals are used as filters. 
It reduces the levels of formaldehyde, a kind of dangerous indoor pollutant. 

In your normal paint, the pollutants bounce back like a bouncy ball and float around your head like a Halo 👼 in your (what you supposed as) fresh indoor air. 

But when painted with Royale atmos, it break down the pollutant molecule is broken to million harmless particule. And thus Royale Atmos keeps your house free of formaldehyde. 

The tested results against international standard shows royale atmos reduces 85% of formaldehyde within 24 hours.

Carbon filtering uses activated carbons to remove contaminants and impurities in air by using chemical adsorption technique. Carbon attracts the impurities by chemical attraction and the impuritues are retained in the filter.

The huge surface area of activated carbon gives it large bonding sites, where certain polluting chemicals are trapped or broken to  unharmful particles.
Doesn’t it sound a little bit relieving?

Fragrance: Remember what I told about air fresheners? The advantage in using royale atmos is you don’t have to use air fresheners. Any bad odours released inside home (say farttttt…?😋) act as air irritants and degrade the quality of air we breathe. The royale atmos can absorb foul smells and bad odours within the home and thus cleanse air.

Wall as a drawing canvas: I look at my baby boy and I can imagine the drawings that he will draw on the walls. Royale atmos comes with a teflon surface protector, which provides excellent washability. I will let my baby boy scribble his jolly childhood (it is an inherent part of childhood memories) and not worry about the state of my walls.

Non-toxic and green: Royale Atmos is environmental friendly. Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs safer)

Homes are our escape, our healthy retreats away from outside dirts and dust. It is necessary to keep it clean and safe and that, home. 

And walls are an inherent part of our homes and lives and memories. They are our sounding boards, our secret stashers, our painting canvases, the solid supports behind our backs. 

They can also be your way to pollution free life. So why hesitate?

Paint the walls with the best possible paint out there, (*nudge, nudge* yo, look above) and keep your home, air and memories fresh and pollution free.  

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©fathima| ada2writes@wordpress.com

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