“Inside every problem is an opportunity”, mom used to say.
And of course she was right—even when it comes to making some environmentally-friendly choices around the house to reduce your family’s exposure to chemicals and just generally keep a watch out for Mother Earth. So here are a few opportunities we’ve recently capitalized on ourselves as we inch towards a darker shade of green for our homes:

Opportunity: Reduce exposure to potentially irritating laundry softening chemicals and save some money too.

Solution: Now that we’ve discovered that traditional laundry softeners work by leaving a thin layer of (flammable!) petro-chemical product on your clothes and linens, which reduces absorbency in things like towels and can off-gas things we can’t pronounce like toluene and trimethylbenzene, we’re a little obsessed with our Nellie’s™ Dryerballs. You just throw the two bumpy oval balls in the dryer with the wet laundry. As they tumble around, the balls lift and separate clothes to improve the air flow so things dry faster (Money Saver #1—up to 25% faster means less energy required) while the bumps relax the fibres of the fabrics, making them softer. Money Saver #2? A couple of boxes of your usual stuff costs more than the $25 or so a set of Dryerballs will set you back, and they last for years. Available online, at Roots Yoga Studio and at London Drugs.