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Welcome to SELFs inaugural Healthy Home Awards!
Photographer: Ryan Segedi
In a matter of days, our collective priorities shifted to ensuring our living spaces were clean and healthy.
(Who knew wed come to feel so strongly about air purifiers?!)
Now more than ever, home care is not just nice to haveits a need.
Photographer: Ryan Segedi
Thus, the seed for the Healthy Home Awards was planted.
We received 170 products for consideration and called in 87 of them for SELF staffers to test.
We hope theHealthy Home Awardshelp you keep house with a little more joy and a whole lot more ease.
(Are you cleaning up a lot of baby poop and cat vomit?
Does anyone in your household have sensitive skin or asthma?)
I saw a claim recently that said one products packaging fully degrades in a landfill.
Nothing really degrades in a landfill, so to even make that claim is pretty silly.
Youve likely seen many of theselikeFair Trade Certified,Leaping Bunny, orUSDA Organicbefore.
you could check out the ACIs breakdown of common certification labels and what they meanhere.
Why might you want to consider items that are certified as plant-based?
Most things that are plant-derived are naturally biodegradable, Sell says.
But plant-based or similarly certified products dont always cut it.
Lets say youre looking for a product that kills viruses and bacteria.
Dr. Quinlan recommends using disinfectants that are labeled as killing 99.9% of bacteria or other germs.
Always use a product as labeled, because those labels are made both for safety and efficacy.
(Read: Dont just rub a cleaning product all over your hands because its marketed as natural.)
With all that in mind, the best cleaning product is the one youre actually going to use.
Does it fit in your budget?)
Product labels can be extremely informativebut past a baseline of effectiveness, theyre not the end-all-be-all.
How we tested air purifiers
Weve written extensively aboutair purifiersandhow to shop for them.
