The secret to being a patient, present father? It's in my basement



Every year on Father's Day, I'm reminded of how grateful I am for my family. I'm also reminded of what helps me to remain grateful: that little oasis of tranquility just down the basement stairs — my home office.

I love my office. I also need it.

I try to get my wife to take advantage of the office. I tell her she can use it whenever she likes, but she never takes me up on it.

It's very simple. If I can't get my work done, I go crazy. I can't get any work done without an office. Therefore, in order to remain sane, I need an office.

Mobile threat

I tried not having one about six years ago when it was just my wife, my son, and me in a little ranch we rented one block over. I had my desk set up in the corner of the living room. I had two computer displays, which, kind of I guess, created a little barrier or faux-wall separating myself from the couch and the television on the other side of the room. It worked, barely, but it was better than nothing.

Then, our firstborn starting walking. And talking.

Fortunately, we moved around the same time. The first thing I did in the new house was to make an office.

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Notes from underground

The new house is small too, with the same layout as the old one: three bedrooms and one bath on one floor. But the new house also has a basement that is about 50% finished. On the east end of this basement, there is a separate room, complete with its own bathroom and a solid door you can actually close.

The floor had been painted red probably 25 years ago. When we moved in, it was chipping and ugly. The walls were covered with equally old wallpaper that ended halfway to the ceiling. People did that in the '80s and '90s a lot. I remember because my mom did it with one of our walls when we were growing up. The bathroom was just as bad. Same red paint, same flowery wallpaper, same '80s horror vibe. But the walls were drywall, and there was a ceiling too — drop in the bathroom, drywall in the main room.

As soon as we finished moving the last box into our new place, I got to work rehabilitating the '80s horror show downstairs.

I ripped the wallpaper down over the course of a few days. I repaired the holes with putty. I painted the walls and ceiling bright white and the floor dark gray. I hung a big mirror in the bathroom, bought a shower curtain, and set two imitation stained glass pieces of plastic film over the small windows. These fake stained glass inlays are pretty cheeseball and not ideal, but it’s better than looking at the weeds through the window up near the ceiling.

I laid a big rug down in the main room and smaller ornate ones around on the still-exposed concrete. I installed a dimmer on the light switch, replaced the old door knobs with new ones, moved in my desk, tables, bookshelves, lamps with warm bulbs, stereo and speakers, microphones, cameras, and everything else that I use for work.

Hole for one

That was six years ago, and since then, I have spent too many hours to count down in my little subterranean sanctuary. Every year, I make it a little nicer. I hang some more photos, organize a little better, buy some more lamps, and try to keep my desk cleaner.

My most recent improvement came in the form of some Oasis lamps, which are advertised as providing warm ambient light. I’ve got four in my office set on “candle mode,” and I can confirm the light is both ambient and warm. It feels nice and light in here despite it being in the corner of a cold basement.

I try to get my wife to take advantage of the office. I tell her she can use it whenever she likes, but she never takes me up on it. I don’t think she likes the basement that much. I understand. The rest of it is kind of a hellhole. The kids play down there a lot, and more often than not, I find myself stumbling over toys and puzzles on my way to my hallowed little haunt of soft lighting and soft music.

A quiet place

We’ve got a small house and three homeschooled kids who use their imaginations instead of iPads. It’s a chaotic environment to say the least. I hear the yells outside the bathroom window, which is near the deck, and I hear the running across the floor of the living room from my desk directly below.

I think what gets to us as parents is the slow grinding down of our patience over the course of the day. It’s also that our stuff is always going missing or something is always being broken. It’s the constant questions and it’s the feeling like we have no space to ourselves anymore.

This is why dads have notoriously taken so long in the restroom and probably why moms take so long when they go to the grocery store by themselves. They are just trying to get some peace and quiet.

That is why I need an office. And while my workspace in the basement isn’t much, it has come a long way since 2020, and it’s more than enough. It’s a little peace and quiet.

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Finally: Vaccine guidelines that make sense for parents



Filmmaker and mother Jessica Solce was frustrated by the difficulty of finding healthy, all-natural products for herself and her family. To make it easier, she created the Solarium, which curates trusted, third-party-tested foods, clothing, beauty products, and more — all free of seed oils, endocrine disruptors, carcinogens, and other harmful additives.

In this occasional column, she shares recommendations and research she has picked up during her ongoing education in health and wellness.

On Wednesday, the CDC moved six childhood vaccines out of the “recommended for all” schedule.

For those of us advocating for the right to oversee our own children's health, it was a day we thought would never come. It is a moment of triumph, but also a reminder of the fear and pressure we have had to overcome.

When my child was just three days old, I was yelled at and expelled from a pediatrician’s office for simply asking about delayed vaccination.

I joined the fight in 2009, not long after becoming pregnant with my first child. My parents brought me up to question and test everything; as I prepared to become a parent myself, this tendency quickly found a new target: childhood vaccinations.

While many mothers-to-be were already signing their future babies up for preschools, summer camps, and Mandarin lessons, I was staying up at night immersed in research that challenged conventional wisdom about children’s health. In 2009, that kind of information was far harder to track down than it is today.

Mother lode

But track it down I did. That’s how I found the work of the Weston A. Price Foundation, as well as the writings of Dr. Lawrence Palevsky. I began reading with the intention of writing a kind of thesis paper — something rigorous enough to convince myself and honest enough to defend to my family.

At the time I encountered his work, Dr. Palevsky was not what most people would call “anti-vaccine.” He recommended delaying vaccination until age two, avoiding live-virus vaccines except for smallpox, spacing doses by six months, and administering only one vaccine at a time.

This seemed reasonable to me.

Brain drain

Why? [Checks 2009 notes.] Based on Dr. Palevsky’s work, I believed that vaccines could activate microglia — the brain’s specialized immune cells — and that closely spaced vaccinations might overstimulate this system during early brain development.

The most rapid period of brain development begins in the third trimester and continues through the first two years of life. Vaccinating children under two, according to this line of thinking, could increase the risk of neurological issues, asthma, allergies, autoimmune conditions, and chronic inflammation. By age two, the brain is roughly 80% developed, and the view then was that certain vaccines could be introduced very slowly after that point.

So I weighed risk and reward. With a healthy baby in my care, why would I take what I believed to be a neurological risk?

That was enough to harden my resolve. I armed myself for what became a 10-year battle in New York City.

Dr. Doomer

When my child was just three days old, I was yelled at and expelled from a pediatrician’s office for simply asking about delayed vaccination. I had printed multiple copies of my small “thesis paper,” like a diligent student, and in a moment of panic and adrenaline shoved them into office drawers as I held my newborn and was escorted out.

But the doctor’s tirade — invoking her intelligence, her own vaccinated children, and her authority as a physician, all while calling me an idiot — only strengthened my resolve. To me, it suggested someone constrained by her own choices, guilt, and lack of curiosity.

Even my father, a physician himself, was initially stunned when I began laying out my reasoning. But through heated debate, shared papers, and real discussion — the healthy kind — he eventually reflected on his own training and acknowledged that he had been taught to comply, not to question.

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Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images

Hold the formaldehyde

For anyone ready to do some research of their own, I recommend starting with the CDC's Vaccine Excipient Summary, which lists the inactive ingredients contained in licensed vaccines. Perhaps you'll ask yourself, as I did, whether you want substances like formaldehyde, aluminum phosphate, polysorbate 80, β-propiolactone, neomycin, and polymyxin B injected into your child’s developing body.

Once I began asking that question, it was impossible not to look at how vaccine policy had evolved. A major inflection point, in my view, came in 1986 with the passage of the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act, which shielded vaccine manufacturers from direct liability and moved injury claims into a federal compensation system. After that, vaccine development accelerated.

Today I'm in a celebratory mood, despite how long it has taken to get here. I don’t regret the fight for a second; I only wish I had had more courage and stamina at times. Still, I rejoice in every freedom of choice returned to parents in the United States.

Let’s go, MAHA. Now do the EPA.

Caregiving decisions begin in the bathroom



The holidays have a way of forcing conversations many families would rather postpone.

Every year, as adult children come home and aging parents gather around the table, familiar signs emerge. Someone struggles with stairs. Someone tires more easily. Someone forgets what was once routine. And with those observations come discussions caregivers know well.

The promise.

“I’ll never put Mom or Dad in a nursing home.”

It is often spoken years earlier, in healthier days, and always with sincerity. At the time, it feels like a declaration of love and loyalty. Assisted living seems distant, unnecessary, and meant for other families, not ours.

The problem is not the promise. The problem is that life keeps changing.

Circumstances change. Strength ebbs. What once worked may no longer work safely or wisely.

Over time, what began as devotion can quietly become more than one person can manage alone. Needs grow. Safety becomes a concern. Medical issues multiply. Caregivers often find themselves trying to do, by themselves, what normally requires trained professionals, proper equipment, and constant oversight.

At that point, the issue is no longer love or loyalty. It’s capacity.

That reality came into focus during a recent conversation with a friend. He had offered a small cottage on his property to help a friend relocate aging parents closer to family. The mother now uses a walker. The father has been her caregiver for years, but serious heart problems have begun to limit what he can safely do.

Still the conversation kept circling back to the same refrain: Neither would ever go into assisted living or a nursing home.

Their adult son is caught in the middle, trying desperately to make everyone happy. That is a fool’s task. In my work with fellow caregivers, I call this the caregiver FOG — fear, obligation, and guilt — because it blurs perspective, narrows options, and makes even familiar paths hard to see. No one wins.

It is like driving into actual fog. Visibility drops. Muscles tense. Judgment narrows. We try to peer miles ahead when we can barely see the hood of the car.

Every highway safety officer gives the same advice: Slow down, turn on the low beams, and stop trying to see five miles down the road.

Caregiving requires the same discipline.

My friend asked what I thought.

I suggested we lower the emotional temperature and start with one concrete issue.

Not the promise. Not the arguments. Not the guilt.

Start with the toilet.

Laugh if you like. It sounds abrupt. But it has a way of clarifying reality quickly.

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The bathroom is often ground zero for caregiving challenges. If the toilet is not safe and accessible, the demands on the caregiver escalate immediately. Transfers become harder. Fatigue compounds. Falls become more likely.

Once the toilet is addressed, you move outward.

The shower. The bedroom. Doorways, lighting, entrances.

Sometimes modest changes are enough — grab bars, a raised toilet seat, a walk-in shower. None of these are exotic ideas. But determining needs honestly requires facing the limits of strength, balance, and endurance as they exist today, not as we wish they were.

While politicians and toilets often deal with similar subject matter, toilets remain refreshingly honest. They simply reveal what actually works.

When families do this, reality follows. Cost. Time. Budgets weighed against needs. Timelines measured against declining strength. What once felt like a moral standoff becomes a practical evaluation.

Fear, obligation, and guilt begin to loosen their grip. In their place come planning, stewardship, and direction.

This matters because emotional decisions often rush families into choices that create larger — and sometimes far more expensive — problems later. We see this dynamic everywhere, including politics. While politicians and toilets often deal with similar subject matter, toilets remain refreshingly honest. They do not respond to intentions, promises, or speeches. They simply reveal what actually works.

Families do not choose assisted living or nursing homes in the abstract. Toilets always have a seat at the decision table.

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Surveys consistently show that most older Americans want to remain in their own homes as they age. That desire is sincere and understandable. But staying home without meaningful accommodations transfers an enormous burden onto the caregiver. The home may remain familiar, but the cost — physical, emotional, and relational — often rises exponentially.

Most promises are made sincerely. They are also made without a full understanding of how disease progresses, how bodies change, or how deeply caregiving reshapes everyone involved. Honoring a promise does not mean freezing it in time. It means continually asking how we can care well, given today’s realities.

Assisted living is not a surrender of care. In many cases, it is an extension of it. It allows families to return to being sons, daughters, and spouses, rather than exhausted amateur medical staff running on guilt and fumes.

We are not obligated to preserve every arrangement exactly as it once was. We are called to steward what has been entrusted to us — finances, time, energy, relationships, and the caregiver as well.

Circumstances change. Strength ebbs. What once worked may no longer work safely or wisely.

Important decisions are best made with clear heads, honest assessments, and wise counsel — not under the duress and resentment that so often accompany them. The days after the holidays are not a verdict. They are an invitation to slow down, think clearly, seek experienced guidance, and choose what is best not just for one individual but for the whole family.

The path forward is rarely determined by emotion, decades-old promises, or guilt.

More often, it is clarified by something far more unassuming — and far more truthful.

The appliance in the nearest bathroom.

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Kerosene lamps: Your escape from the sickly glare of LEDs



It’s my favorite time of year. When it gets cold, I fuel up four or five of the dozens of antique kerosene lamps I own. I use these to heat and light my house in winter; the charm and warmth make the cold and dark more bearable.

In past columns I’ve tried to convince you to abandon new, low-quality appliances and buy old workhorses. This time I want to persuade you to go even lower-tech and give flame light a try. You want to gather around the lamp with good people. You’ll find yourself staring into the flame, noticing the warmth it radiates (literal and metaphorical).

My center drafts have saved me during electricity outages in winter, giving enough light to work by as well as heat.

No electric lamps will make you feel this way. Some are very beautiful, of course, and the most charming use the original Edison-style incandescent filament bulbs. But they’re almost gone.

Thanks to meddling safetyist government, we live under the ghastly glow of LEDs. Before that, it was compact fluorescents. And before that, it was the sickening, flickering off-green morgue illumination of the overhead fluorescent tube, the appropriate furnishing for the inhuman Brutalist aesthetic that has infected 90% of commercial office space in the U.S. since the 1960s.

We weren’t made to live this way or light this way. We did not evolve under unnatural artificial light stripped of whole swaths of the color spectrum, drained of infrared.

We evolved by the campfire. For most of human history, the communal fire was the only source of “artificial” illumination at night. Firelight is a first cousin to sunlight, the original illumination that gave rise to all life on earth.

I’m going to give you basic tips on buying and running lamps, from simple to more complex. There’s a kind of kerosene lamp for everyone.

Sensible safety

Use common sense. You’re working with fire, and larger lamps put out a lot of heat, so be mindful that there’s plenty of clearance between the top of the chimney and the ceiling.

Keep charged fire extinguishers (you should anyway).

Yes, of course it’s possible to tip over a lamp, but in practice, it rarely happens unless you’re careless. They’re weighted to be fairly stable.

People also ask if my cats knock over the lamps. The answer is no, but you must use your own judgment because you know your animals and the layout of your house. My cats love to sleep near them for warmth and will walk on a table to get to them. But they don’t bump them. Again, you must exercise your own judgment.

Shredder the cat dozes by a center-draft lamp. Josh Slocum

No, you’re not in danger of carbon monoxide poisoning. Do you have a gas cookstove? Did you ever worry that you would get carbon monoxide poisoning from having your gas cookstove running? If you’re not afraid of your gas stove giving you carbon monoxide poisoning, there’s no physics-based reason to fear it if the flame comes from a kerosene lamp instead.

Carbon monoxide results from incomplete combustion. No combustion is 100% complete, but these lamps are burning close to it. I have been running kerosene lamps for about 15 years. They’ve never even blipped my smoke or carbon monoxide detectors.

No, the lamps won’t “suck up all the oxygen.” Your house is not hermetically sealed. The air is changing over all the time, even with your windows closed. You’re not in a pressurized submarine hull.

But “fumes,” you say. Every time you burn your favorite scented candles, you’re doing the same thing at a small scale, but no one is afraid of “fumes.” I think “fumes” is just miasma theory of disease, like how people used to falsely believe that bad odors from graveyards could transmit sickness to the living.

The only “fumes” you’re going to get with a lamp using clean kerosene are a bit of kero smell on lighting and on extinguishing. If it bothers you, take the lamp outside to light and extinguish. Remember that your ancestors right here in America all lit their homes this way, rich or poor. People weren’t dying of “fumes” or “lack of oxygen.”

The right stuff

Burn only clear, undyed kerosene. Not “lamp oil.” Not “lamp fuel.” These lamps want one thing only: the specific chemical we call kerosene. It’s a petroleum distillate similar to (but much less stinky than) diesel. Kerosene is not explosive like gasoline; don’t fear an explosion.

If you’ve experienced stinky oil lamps, it’s almost certainly because someone was burning “lamp oil,” which is liquid paraffin wax. This stuff clogs up wicks, it burns half as brightly as kerosene, it can smoke, and it smells awful. Stick with clear kerosene labeled “K1” or “1K,” found in your hardware store, Tractor Supply, Walmart, and similar stores.

Level I: Flat-wick lamps

Let’s introduce you to lamps. I categorize as Level I, Level II, and Level III. We’re going to go from simplest and least expensive to more high-powered lamps. If you’re new to lamps, start with Level I, the flat-wick lamps.

Everyone knows these lamps. These are what come to mind when you hear the phrase “oil lamp.” You remember lamps just like this from "Little House on the Prairie" on television.

These are called flat-wick lamps because, you may have guessed, their wicks are flat. This is my “sewing lamp,” so called because it’s tall enough to sit on a table by you for handwork.

Josh Slocum

Consider a wall-mounted flat-wick lamp, too. These can fit in beautiful wrought-iron brackets. Mount them to a stud in the wall and enjoy the character they add to your room. Below is one of my Victorian wall-mount lamps with a mercury reflector.

Josh Slocum

Level II: Center-draft lamps

So-called “center-draft” lamps are my personal favorite, and I recommend that you get at least one of them. They draw air from a central tube in the middle of the burner. Unlike flat-wick lamps, center-draft lamps have a round wick. They're larger than most flat-wick lamps, so they put out about three times the light and heat of a basic lamp.

One center-draft lamp is enough to heat a medium-sized room, and you can cook over it in a pinch by rigging up a trivet. My center-draft lamps have saved me during electricity outages in winter, giving enough light to work by as well as heat. They’re essential equipment for anyone who is into prepping for emergencies. Plastic electronic LED lights with fancy solar panels can’t hold a candle to the rugged practicality and versatility of these.

Here’s my favorite, the “New Juno” model, made from 1886 to about 1915.

Josh Slocum

Any center-draft lamp is a good buy as long as it has all the parts necessary for operation (be sure it has a flame spreader). At the end of this article, I’ll link to businesses that specialize in advice and replacement parts. Do a little bit of reading, and you’ll learn everything you need to know before you buy.

Level III: The magical Aladdin lamp

Technology becomes as fun as it will ever get when one tech is declining as another rises. The old tech has to compete with the new, so the old tech gets refined to its highest potential just before it becomes obsolete.

That’s the Aladdin lamp. “Aladdin” is a brand name, not a generic type. These lamps are the zenith of kerosene technology that was competing with new electric light. These are mantle lamps. What does that mean? Bring to mind the Coleman lanterns you remember from camping. The ones that hiss and put out a very bright light. Those are mantle lamps too.

Aladdin lamps are mantle lamps, but instead of burning compressed gas, they burn kerosene.

In mantle lamps, the light does not come from the flame. The flame is used to heat the incandescent mantle. This is a thin, delicate mesh impregnated with rare-earths and mineral salts. These elements glow white-hot under heat. This is how the Aladdin lamp can produce a light that matches modern electric bulb output.

They are wonderful devices, and I have a few, but they are more finicky. They need a mantle, and you have to be very careful to keep the wick absolutely level, or you’ll get flame spikes that leave black carbon deposits on your mantle. The solution is to turn the flame low and burn off the carbon slowly.

Here’s my 1936 Aladdin Model B in green Corinthian glass:

Josh Slocum

Hopefully this has tempted you to get your first kerosene lamp. There are some dependable businesses run by people who love these lamps and know everything about them. Most breakable and replaceable parts like the glass chimneys and the wicks are still made and readily available from these purveyors and others.

Nobody knows more about lamps, and nobody has a wider selection of wicks, chimneys, diagrams, and how-to articles, than Miles Stair on the West Coast of the U.S. Go to his site first whenever you have a question.

Woody Kirkman of Kirkman Lanterns manufactures and sells quality reproduction lamps and replacement parts for antiques. You have likely seen his work in period films and at Disney parks and like. He is often hired to supply kerosene and gas lighting fixtures for movies and TV and for theme parks.

Gather those you love around you, and light your lamp.

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Is your home trying to kill you?



Filmmaker and mother Jessica Solce was frustrated by the difficulty of finding healthy, all-natural products for herself and her family. To make it easier, she created the Solarium, which curates trusted, third-party-tested foods, clothing, beauty products, and more — all free of seed oils, endocrine disruptors, carcinogens, and other harmful additives.

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Your refrigerator is filled with unprocessed, natural foods. Your medicine cabinet is free of toxic pharmaceuticals. Your faucets dispense filtered, chemical-free drinking water.

In other words, you've optimized your family's home life for health. But what about the home itself?

Pillows, sheets, and furniture also contain toxic flame retardants, a grimly appropriate name given their tendency to reduce IQ and cause developmental delays.

Sadly and shockingly, virtually all houses harbor seemingly innocuous products and materials that silently poison us, day in and day out.

Take your bed, for example.

You spend a third of your life sleeping, so get a good mattress. This is solid advice. It also happens to be incomplete. A restful night's sleep shouldn't mean eight to 10 hours inhaling microdoses of toxic, flame-retardant forever chemicals.

But that's exactly what you get with much modern bedding.

And the situation in other rooms is generally no better.

To go through all of what may be poisoning us in our homes would require an article of epic proportions; it would also be overwhelmingly depressing for me to write and for you to read.

I encourage you to do more research and to consider the specifics of your own situation. In the meantime, for the sake of both of our sanities, I’ll limit myself to outlining the major offenders — as well as what to replace them with.

My hope is that I can give you a good start in ensuring your home is a haven for healing, not a den of disease.

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Getty Images/Camerique/The Solarium

Starting slow

Spend any time on health-oriented social media, and it feels as if every week brings news of some new toxic product ready to kill you, from paint and plastics to petroleum-based perfumes.

So when we first set out to evict the enemy from our abode, we quickly realize the hydra-esque task we've taken on. No sooner have you rooted him out of one hiding place than you discover him popping up in two more.

As someone who's navigated this kind of purge myself (inspiring me to create an online marketplace of healthy products to help you do the same), I strongly advise against a scorched earth, “No Impact Man” approach.

Rather, you should employ a method of gradual change where you make small, conscious swaps for healthier alternatives. Trust me, it’s easier on your wallet and your mental well-being.

No impact, man

That said, the aforementioned 2009 documentary is an eye-opening watch. “No Impact Man” is the story of a New York City family — journalist Colin Beavan, his wife, Michelle, and their toddler, Isabella — undertaking an experiment to live for one year, while making as little impact on the environment as possible.

One scene in particular floored me: when Michelle throws away all of her makeup and bathroom and beauty products.

It wasn't that she voluntarily parted ways with her precious and pricey creams and unguents but the sheer amount of them she'd managed to stockpile in their small Manhattan apartment.

Imagine how much more the bathroom of the average American house in the suburbs holds. Unfathomable amounts of money spent on unfathomable amounts of toxic junk.

As thought-provoking as "No Impact Man" is, I'd advise against going to such extremes, at least at first. Above all, you want to make sure this is something you can sustain.

In my experience, that becomes easier the more you learn how to spot these home-borne toxins — and the more you understand the potential damage they can do once they get into your lungs, bloodstream, and cells and mitochondria. Removing them from your life will not feel like a burden but a no-brainer necessity.

Here are some simple first steps to get you started.

Open your windows

Even without getting rid of anything, this age-old method of improving ventilation and air exchange can have a major impact on the health of your home.

A 2020 review of 37 separate environmental studies found that elevated indoor carbon dioxide levels associated with poor ventilation impaired high-level decision-making and reduced cognitive speed, especially on complex tasks.

Remake your bed

As mentioned, where you rest your head at night is very important. We sleep an average of 2,700 hours a year, or 114 days out of 365. And it's not just your mattress you need to worry about.

Pillows, sheets, and furniture also contain toxic flame retardants, a grimly appropriate name given their tendency to reduce IQ and cause developmental delays.

They can also cause metabolic problems like obesity and insulin resistance, while endocrine disruptors they contain cause thyroid problems, infertility, hormone disregulation, and hormone-related cancers. Nasty stuff.

Because kids tend to put their hands on everything and everything in their mouths, they're even more prone to ingesting these retardants. Especially when they're in the pajamas they wear!

One retardant ingredient is formaldehyde. You know ... embalming fluid. Many of us are sleeping on literal deathbeds.

So what can we do?! For pillows and comforters, find goose down or wool. One excellent option for pillows is the wonderful U.S. company the Woolshire. Avocado is a great source for mattresses. You can find 100% cotton and/or linen at a wide range of prices, from made-in-America luxury brands to Target's in-house bedding line.

Clear the air

Nothing like lighting a scented candle or two to make a home feel clean and inviting. Just make sure you know what you're burning

While marketed as "natural," many soy candles contain synthetic fragrance oils and chemical additives that release harmful pollutants. A pair of recent studies found that scented candles emit formaldehyde, benzene, and other carcinogens, with risks to lung and nasal cancers, respiratory harm, and cognitive decline.

The aforementioned chemicals are known as volatile organic compounds, or VOCs, not because they are organic in the farmer’s market sense but because of their specific chemical properties.

“Volatile” refers to their ability to turn into gas at room temperature, “organic” refers to their carbon bases, and “compounds” means they’re highly complex — all to mean these things are absolutely not fit for human consumption or contact. If they are in your home, they can “off gas” into your air without being heated or physically disturbed.

In addition, the European Commission’s Scientific Committee confirms that fragrance ingredients are among the leading causes of allergic contact dermatitis (allergies, eczema, rashes) in Europe. Another study confirms that regular indoor scented candle burning “can expose us to dangerous levels of organic pollutants” and ultra-fine particles.

These harmful VOCs are not inherent in the unburned wax but formed as byproducts of incomplete combustion when the candle is burned; the additives, wicks (sometimes made of lead!), and added fragrances and dyes increase the levels of VOCs. Synthetic scents can also trigger asthma, allergic reactions, and breathing problems.

A 100% unadulterated beeswax candle with a cotton or paper wick and no added dyes or fragrance is the way to go.

This is the cleanest candle possible: not 100% free of VOCs but with significantly lower emissions. It's also completely unprocessed — made of wax that comes straight from the beehive.

Along with the lovely natural scent, beeswax candles may also produce negative ions that help settle positively charged particles like dust, pollen, mold spores, and some airborne toxins.

"Why can’t I just get some air fresheners from Walmart?" Don’t bother. They emit a cocktail of carcinogenic VOCs and phthalates (endocrine-disrupting semi-VOCs). If you have these in your home or in the car, this is step one: Get rid of them pronto.

Once you stop using chemical air fresheners, you’ll start noticing how foul and unnatural they actually smell. As luck would have it, we now have a nice, natural option thanks to the small French company &Eden.

The scents you put on your body can be just as harmful, especially considering that you absorb them directly through your skin as well as through your lungs. When you are ready to make the swap, consider these cleaner, nature-based soaps and fragrances.

Let the light in

The convenience of artificial light comes with a major cost: the disruption of our body’s innate circadian signaling and repair processes.

Moreover, our bodies our designed to absorb the entirety of the sunlight spectrum, from infrared to visible to ultraviolet. But our ubiquitous screens isolate and maximize our exposure to certain parts of the spectrum. The computers, phones, and tablets we use indoors continually bathe us in unnatural amounts of blue light.

One way to mitigate this constant onslaught is by wearing yellow-tinted blue-light-blocking glasses while at the computer.

You can also change your lightbulbs to more closely resemble full spectrum sunlight. I did this first in my bedroom, creating a warm, amber glow like candlelight. I highly recommend it.

There are emerging tech solutions as well. The Daylight Computer can be used outside without glare issues and eliminates the blue light problem by harnessing ambient light or using red light for a backlight. Its display resembles conventional E Ink displays but with a faster refresh rate.

If you want to learn a whole lot more about blue light, you can read my three-part series about its effects on your body.

Clean house

Say goodbye to the likes of Mr. Clean, Lysol, and Formula 409. They all come with excess baggage: quaternary ammonium compounds, or "quats" (antimicrobials that can cause skin and respiratory irritation), synthetic fragrances, preservatives, and ethanolamines.

RELATED: Trump EPA takes aim at forever chemicals

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In addition, common cleaning products often contain endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs) that can impair fertility in both sexes. The phthalates found in many synthetic fragrances have been strongly linked to reduced sperm quality, lower testosterone, and altered ovarian function.

Instead, make your own all-purpose cleaner with vinegar, water, essential oils, and a glass spray bottle. You can also experiment with different combinations of baking soda, hydrogen peroxide, isopropyl alcohol, and lemon juice.

Other fertility disruptors that may be lurking in your home include:

  • Bisphenol A (BPA), a common ingredient in plastic products and thermal receipts, which has been connected to reduced egg quality, Polycystic Ovary Syndrome, and implantation failure;
  • PFAS, or "forever chemicals," in stain‑resistant fabrics, non‑stick cookware, and some cosmetics, which are associated with longer time-to-pregnancy and lower fertility rates; and
  • Household flame retardants present in furniture and electronics, which have been linked to failed embryo implantation and decreased sperm motility.

Pesticides, particularly organophosphates and glyphosate, have been associated with reduced fertility, hormone disruption, and increased miscarriage risk. Which leads us to our next step ...

Weed out pesticides

According to NASA’s famous Clean Air Study, certain houseplants do more than just look good — they can help filter common indoor air pollutants often released by furniture, cleaning products, and household materials.

This is technically true, but ventilation is still more effective; it would take a huge number of plants to make a difference in home air quality.

Then again, I do think that cohabitating with plants benefits us in less quantifiable ways, such as fostering a healthy sense of connection to nature.

Just be aware of the soil you use — inside and outside the home. Conventional soils are filled with synthetic pesticides like herbicides, insecticides, and fungicides as well as synthetic fertilizers that alter soil biology, killing nutrients and introducing heavy metals (arsenic, lead, cadmium) into your gardens and eventually into your body.

Kids play outside, roll in the grass, and jump into leaf piles. They also come into close contact with pets who do the same. This soup of pesticides gets on their skin and is inhaled, raising their risks for blue baby syndrome, colorectal cancer, birth defects and sexual deformities, neurodevelopmental harm in children, and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

A 2015 Harvard School of Public Health study determined a 26% increased risk of leukemia in children exposed to herbicide. Indoor insecticide exposure showed a 47% higher risk of leukemia and a 43% higher risk of lymphoma. Even parental exposure before conception can raise cancer risk.

Most of us have heard of Roundup, the notorious herbicide that's cost Monsanto billions in legal settlements with people who claim it gave them cancer.

Despite this, the EPA continues to approve the use of Roundup, which kills weeds while sparing crops genetically engineered to resist it. The problem is that weeds tend to develop their own resistance.

The common solution is to add 2,4-D, a pesticide I'd never heard of before researching this article. Despite mounting evidence that 2,4-D is at least as harmful as Roundup, the EPA approved the use of this combination in 2014.

This is all the more reason to prioritize buying pesticide-free, organic, and regenerative soils for your indoor and outdoor plants. It's also important to stick to meats and vegetables raised on such soil. What our food sources eat and consume, we consume, entering us into a cycle of life and vitality or death and degeneration.

What I learned from having 3 kids under 3



Implausibly, October is here. My eldest turned four yesterday. Dare I say that disbelief at the pace of the passing of time — whether the unbearably long days or the unfathomably short years — is a universal maternal experience?

Oh, the melancholia of motherhood ... the slippery seconds, the diamonds raining from the sky, the inability to catch them in your hands for longer than a moment.

Because our social lives as moms have been so hollowed out by technology and the changing participation of women in the workplace, all of these little things in their little ways now require courage, consistency, and creativity.

Now that I no longer have three three and under, I thought I’d share my lessons learned from the experience, because people often ask how I manage.

I don’t know if I’ll ever feel fully qualified to proffer parental wisdom. The proof of the pudding is in the eating, and my kids are underbaked. But in terms of keeping one’s sanity and smoothing day-to-day operations, I think I have some helpful tips to share. My advice boils down to three virtues: courage, consistency, and creativity.

Courage

Victim mentality is the antithesis of courage. It is pervasive, and it is practically, spiritually corrosive. Reject it.

One of the defining spirits of the modern age — unfortunately for everyone — is that which defines the self as a perpetual victim of circumstance and makes appeals to others, for pity or provision, on those terms.

This is the heart of identity politics, and of leftism generally, and so plays a major role in formal political discourse domestically and internationally. But the political right is not a stranger to this pattern of thought. In fact, self-identified right-wing people often indulge it while they denigrate it in others.

Take for example the ascendant “meninist” movement, which in many cases has retained the icon of victimhood but simply switched its subjects from women to men. As a Catholic, I cringe to see the same tendency in reactionary traditionalist movements that seem to relish their status as perpetually persecuted. Social media enables it by structurally prioritizing talk over action.

Victim mentality is dangerous, especially at scale. I would argue that it paves the way for totalitarianism. This mindset arrests the individual’s capacity to self-govern and achieve real things in the real world by redistributing responsibility through externalizing locus of control. It relieves persons and groups of the culpability and consequences of their actions.

To a mind colonized by a victim narrative, free will is alien, and the triumph of the will over challenges big and small is regarded as impossible. If someone succeeds, it must have been either a matter of luck or corrupt scheming.

But rarely does victim mentality result in true openness to the circumstances of life; instead, it encourages what Nietzsche called slave morality: cowardice, passive aggression, pathological consumption, and parasitical claims on the goods and services of others to compensate for one’s own impotence and discomfort.

Modern mothers are no exceptions to the zeitgeist. We are all subject to mainstream media and cultural narratives encouraging us to indulge our own sense of victimhood when things get hard. The nature of modern technology encourages passivity. And if we aren’t careful, we can wallow. Life is unfair. No one is helping me. My husband doesn’t do enough for me. Society doesn’t do enough for me. My kids don’t do enough for me. There’s no sense in trying; things will never get better. This is too hard.

It’s easy to indulge because it’s plausible and because selfishness is wired into humanity’s genetic code. Raising children under the current socioeconomic conditions can be a real challenge.

Sometimes our kids scream through the grocery store from entry to exit without ceasing, responding neither to discipline nor to desperate pleas for cooperation. Sometimes our husbands disappoint us. Sometimes our efforts seem futile, and the “payoff” for maternal investment remains unclear for a very long time, by definition.

But it has been so unspeakably important, in my experience, to resist the temptation to indulge these kinds of thoughts because they lead directly to passivity, despair, and consumerism.

We can confront and negotiate the problems in our lives, and even the selfishness of other people, without allowing ourselves to self-identify, explicitly or implicitly, as victims. In order to resist, we must put ourselves in the driver’s seat.

  • Stop complaining. This is the one-way street to victim mentality. Realize that however much we may be disappointed by others, we disappoint them too. If we must negotiate our problem, orient speech toward action.
  • Evaluate circumstances objectively, and wonder at, first and foremost, possibilities for action. Seek, and ye shall find. If you seek reasons to despair, you will find them. If you seek reasons to push, to reach higher, to go deeper, to forebear, to love, and to have courage, you will find them. This is a fundamental mindset shift toward positivity and production rather than negativity and consumption.
  • Find the courage to fail. Believe in the possibility of action and results, and make goals — but choose action despite the possibility of failure. Objectively observe your own role in the order-to-chaos ratio of your life. How can you improve for the sake of improvement regardless of how you might be immediately gratified?

Consistency

An object in motion stays in motion. Take this literally and figuratively.

One of my earlier essays covers how retraining my brain to operate like an athlete’s made me a better mom. In terms of mindset, this dovetails perfectly with what I’ve just written about victim mentality and goes farther to emphasize the importance of literal physical activity.

I cannot overstate the degree to which prioritizing my physical health, mostly by lifting heavy almost every day, has given my days structure and magnified my energy in every other area of my life. This principle works just as well for intellectual goals as for bodily goals.

Whenever I feel depressed or anxious, exercise is the silver bullet. But how do you find the time?

Simple: Choose it, and stop making excuses. Establish routine and structure, buoyed by the resolute determination to get out of the house every single day. Holding myself to this simple principle by continuously making the choice to embrace the annoying transition from the house to the car to the stroller and back again has done wonders for my mental and physical health. If you can simply make consistent movement a habit, it compounds. Over time, it becomes pleasurable.

Creativity

Find your community, no matter how unconventional the means.

The final helpful lifestyle shift that I believe is foundational to a good motherhood experience is twofold: creativity and community. These things go together. Creativity fosters community, and community fosters creativity. When you find what you love to create, it attracts like-minded people. When you find people you love, you will be energized to create on their behalf.

To make community work in the modern world, one must be willing to be creative in pursuit of it. A combination of the previous mindset shifts (“I have agency over my circumstances, and I can move freely in the world to achieve my goals”) must be present as well as a willingness to try new things in order to meet people and maintain friendships.

Loneliness is one of the primary factors in poor mental health for modern moms. Isolation feels baked into the cake of American society, but this isn’t inevitable! No one ever said fellowship would be easy.

The victim mentality would have lonely people believe that they are lonely because no one is reaching out to them. The couch potato mentality would have lonely people believe that because getting out of the house to commune with friends is difficult that there is only one way of doing this and that it is unworthy of doing.

Here’s where all the principles dovetail together. The COURAGE mentality encourages lonely people to find friendship in the world despite potential rejection. The CONSISTENCY mentality fosters a willingness to fail or to be rejected, and once friends are found, keeps them close through a sense of mutual duty and sacrifice. And CREATIVITY helps on the front end to find your people, and all throughout, to keep in touch with them.

Start the group chat. Start the playgroup. Ask someone to work out together. Attend birthday parties. Bake the cookies. Deliver the postpartum meals. Volunteer. Throw the cocktail parties. Buy outdoor art supplies for the kids and invite moms over for tea.

These actions seem mundane, perhaps antiquated. Because our social lives as moms have been so hollowed out by technology and the changing participation of women in the workplace, all of these little things in their little ways now require courage, consistency, and creativity. Despite whatever difficulties I endured moving from zero to one, they are what have made my life as a young mom of three boisterous little children not only bearable but deeply enjoyable.

Hope these were helpful. I’d love to hear your perspective in the comments section: What helps you persist in motherhood?