20 Easy & Practical Ways to Detox Your Kitchen
So much of the food we eat comes out of our kitchens, however, it’s often full of many toxins and unhealthy chemicals. Learning the ways to detox your kitchen is an important step in improving your overall health!
Instead of trying to do everything at once, start implementing the easiest changes first, and, when you’re ready, move on to the next one. Using this method, I did a detox process on my entire house, and I’ve never looked back! The goal isn’t perfection but small, sustainable changes that make a big difference over time.
20 Ways to Detox Your Kitchen
Here’s a list of the best ways to detox your kitchen. You can start the process today!
No More Aluminum
Widely used in kitchens, aluminum has been linked to diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s among other serious health problems. As we learn the best ways to detox our kitchens, removing aluminum is an important step.
1. Stop Using Aluminum Foil
Foil is a one of the major ways aluminum leaches into food. Beeswax wrap is a great alternative to aluminum foil! You can purchase it from numerous sources or make your own.
2. Choose Healthy Materials for Pans
From bread pans to cookie sheets, aluminum is a common type of metal for baking. Thankfully, it’s easy to find glass and stainless steel alternatives.
Reduce Your Plastic Use
Even if plastic is BPA free, the alternative chemicals used in plastics have still been shown to be unsafe. One of the primary BPA alternatives, BPS, is a known endocrine disrupter and can cause issues with the nervous system. The bad news is that our kitchens are often full of plastic.
3. Get Rid of Plastic Cutting Boards
If you have plastic cutting boards, take a close look at them. Even if they’re fairly new, you’ll likely see numerous scratches with tiny slivers of plastic that look like they’re about to come off – probably into your food! Wooden or glass cutting boards are an easy alternative that will last longer and won’t leave pieces of plastic in your food.
4. Use Glasses instead of Plastic Cups
Cups are a major source of plastics in our kitchens. If you already have some glasses, go ahead and toss your plastic cups. Otherwise, glasses are an important purchase for your family. To keep things more affordable, you could buy mason jars instead of drinking glasses. Even though I have both, I often prefer drinking out of quart mason jars anyway,
5. Switch Your Cooking & Baking Utensils
Stainless steel, wooden, or silicone utensils are a much healthier (and longer lasting) choice than plastic. I also find that these types of utensils are much nicer to use and work better.
6. Stop Using Zip Lock Bags
When storing snacks, use glass containers. For the wide variety of other ways we use zip lock bags, get creative! There’s almost always an easy (and often reusable) alternative. Overtime, this saves money since zip lock bags are disposable.
7. No More Plastic Wrap
If you have glass food storage containers, you’ll rarely need plastic wrap. For the cases where you do need to cover something that doesn’t have a lid, beeswax wrap is a great option! You can buy it or make your own.
8. Choose Glass or Stainless Steel Water Bottles
These are much better choices than plastic water bottles! Stainless steel bottles tend to last the longest since they’re not prone to cracking like plastic or breaking like glass.
Keep Leftovers Healthy
We often go to so much effort to make a healthy meal, and the last thing we want is leftovers that have been contaminated!
9. Store Food in Glass Containers
This is one of my favorite ways to detox your kitchen! Glass food storage containers are a wonderful alternative to plastic and foam containers or aluminum foil, all of which can leach harmful chemicals into your food. Many glass food storage containers are freezer and oven safe making them perfect for freezing meals and heating up leftovers!
10. Get Rid of the Microwave
Microwaves heat food using radiation which also exposes the individual using them to the same radiation. While this type of radiation isn’t as harmful as some other types, long-term exposure (such as using a microwave daily for years), isn’t healthy. Microwaves can also greatly impact certain nutrients in food which is another good reason to stop using one.
Try replacing your microwave with a toaster oven. It still heats up most foods within 10 minutes, the foods often taste fresher, and it’s much better for your health!
Cooking & Baking
A lot of us cook or bake every single day. It’s important to make sure we’re using healthy tools!
11. Replace Nonstick Pans
No matter how careful you are, the chemicals in the coating on traditional nonstick pans will leach into your food. These chemicals are part of the chemical group PFAS and have been linked to numerous health issues including cancer.
Since even the coating on healthier versions of nonstick pans will eventually come off into food, one of the best replacements is a well seasoned cast iron skillet. While it won’t ever be quite as nonstick as a traditional nonstick skillet, if it’s been taken care of, it’ll get pretty close!
12. Buy Canned Food with BPA-Free Lining
Even though plastic in general isn’t safe, BPA is believed to be the worst chemical in plastic. It’s often used in the lining of food cans, so look for a BPA-free lining label.
Healthy Drinks
When we think about the ways to detox our kitchen, chemicals in our drinks may not be our first thought. However, approximately 60% of your body is made up of water, so it’s important that we’re drinking healthy, uncontaminated liquids all day long.
13. Filter Your Tap Water
Unless you have a well with high quality water, filtering your tap water is extremely important. From dangerous chemicals to bad bacteria, tap water is usually contaminated with multiple things that are linked to serious health issues including cancer and endocrine disruption. I love my Berkey filter, but there are many high quality water filtration systems available for reasonable prices.
14. Drink Loose-Leaf Tea
Paper and plastic tea bags contain chemicals such as chlorine or microplastics that are released into your tea when they are placed in the boiling water. There goes that cup of tea that was supposed to be full of fantastic health benefits! To avoid this, drink loose-leaf tea steeped using stainless steel tea infusers.
Cleaning in the Kitchen
Our culture values cleanliness so highly that we’re often willing to do almost anything to get rid of dirt and germs. However, many conventional cleaners and cleaning methods are filling our kitchens with numerous chemicals and toxins that should never be anywhere near our food. Thankfully there are many ways we can keep our kitchens safer without sacrificing cleanliness.
15. Ditch Napkins and Paper Towels
Many paper towels are made with chlorine, formaldehyde, and BPA all of which can be dangerous to your health. Try switching to cloth napkins. Not only is it a healthier choice, but it also saves you lots of money overtime! In place of paper towels for cleaning, rags made from worn out clothes and towels work great.
16. Swap Your Dishwasher Detergent
Whether you use a powder or liquid formula, most conventional dishwasher detergents are made with chemicals you don’t want all over your dishes every day. While there are many recipes to make your own dishwasher detergent, I haven’t found any I’m happy with. To save the hassle, there are non-toxic formulas you can purchase such as Seventh Generation’s Dishwasher Detergent Powder.
17. Use Healthy Dish Soap
Just like dishwasher detergent, dish soap also typically contains a long list of unhealthy chemicals such as formaldehyde and phthalates. There are a number of healthy alternatives on the market, however, my favorite all-purpose soap is Castile soap. In the kitchen, it works great as dish soap, hand soap, and to clean various surfaces.
18. Clean Your Oven without the Chemicals
Many ovens have a self-cleaning feature that will simply steam or burn off all of the residue without the use of chemicals. If your oven doesn’t have this feature, you can simply clean it with baking soda and vinegar.
19. Make Your Own Simple Surface Cleaners
If you’re cleaning granite or stone counters, use a 50/50 rubbing alcohol and water mixture in a spray bottle. For most other surfaces, a 50/50 white vinegar and water mixture works great.
20. No More Conventional Floor Cleaners
Hot water with white vinegar works great to mop floors! In addition to being a healthy alternative, it’s also much cheaper than premade floor cleaners.
How to Implement Ways to Detox Your Kitchen
Looking at a long list of things we want to change is often so overwhelming we decide to just not to do anything. Long term, this attitude can be detrimental to our health and various other areas of our lives.
When my husband and I started our natural living journey, we worked on one new habit at a time. That was the only way for it to stick. It worked! A few years later, we’re still doing all of the habits we started, and we continue to implement new things as we continue to learn.
One Habit at a Time
Instead of trying to do everything at once, start implementing the easiest change first. Maybe you’re out of a cleaner you usually buy so you decide to replace it with something healthier. Or maybe next time you’re at the store you pick up a couple of glass pans to replace some aluminum ones.
Once the change has become habit and you don’t have to think about it anymore, pick a new change to make! Using this method, work from the easiest changes to the most difficult ones.
Expedite the Process
While gradual habit changes are often the longest lasting, there are times when we need to expedite the process. Maybe you’re dealing with an auto-immune issue, are pregnant or trying to become pregnant, or have recently gotten negative results from the doctor that need to be addressed right away. In these cases, it might be important to make these changes as quickly as you possible can.
If you need to go quickly, first take a day to go through your kitchen and throw out everything that contains toxins – plastic cups, zip lock bags, chemically-based cleaners, and the like. Then immediately go replace everything that you need to function in your kitchen. While this could easily cost at least a few hundred dollars, once it’s done, you won’t have to think about it anymore.
Next, work on the daily habits. When you need to mop the floor, just use white vinegar and water. When you’re shopping for canned goods, make sure to look for the BPA-free label.
Finally, purchase your bigger items such as a high quality water filter and a toaster oven. While these are likely the single biggest detox investments in your kitchen, they’re worth it!
Long Term Success
If perfection is your goal, you’ll never be able to get there. The best plan is to make seemingly small, sustainable changes that have a major impact over the years.
Sometimes, you’ll slip back into an old habit. Don’t stress about it, but go back and think why you changed that habit in the first place. Likely the reasons are still important to you, and you can get back to making healthier decisions quickly.
We started on our detox journey a few years ago and are continuing to make new changes as we learn more and have the capacity for it. We don’t do things perfectly, but that’s never been the goal. Our aim is to develop healthy, sustainable habits that fit into our lifestyle and foster good health in every area of our lives.
Are you ready to implement some of the ways to detox your kitchen? Where are you planning to start? Let me know in the comments!
