My Clean Living Journey

My Clean Living Journey – Simple Tips for a Better Life – Angie Cruise Blog

My Clean Living Journey – Simple Tips for a Better Life

A clean living lifestyle isn’t something that just happens without effort. It takes time and intentional change. Learn how to get started on this journey in your own home today with these tips.

If you’ve followed my blog for any amount of time, you might have already heard this, but I didn’t always care about the products I used or the food I ate. In fact, up until about a decade ago, I was as conventional as they came! As a young adult, I lived in the drive through. I couldn’t cook a meal from scratch to save my life, and my house wasn’t

Needless to say, I had a long way to go when I started making changes. That’s how most people start.

I love listening to the struggles, tips, and wisdom of others who have gone before me, no matter the journey. It’s so inspiring! And still, to this day, I love hearing about others’ clean living journeys as they share how they approached changing their lifestyles and what they found helpful.

And, because I love hearing everyone else’s stories, today I want to share mine. Whether you are brand new to clean living, green cleaning, and whole foods based cooking, or you’ve been doing it for a decade like me, I just hope to offer some inspiration and encouragement that you can take into your own life.

In this post, we’ll talk about my own family’s struggles, how we cleaned up our lifestyle, and the tips I’d give any beginner wanting to try and make changes.

I grew up in the 80’s and 90’s, and like anyone who grew up back then knows, nutrition advice has changed a

. Those decades are marked by a fear of fat and a high demand for convenient and fast options for busy families. Food manufacturers and their marketing departments ran with this, and gave us an entire industry of “low fat” convenient options. Just add water and heat!

Because of this mindset, things like processed artificial cheeses, low fat sugary drinks, and TV dinners were staples in my childhood.

Outside of buying low fat foods, we didn’t think much about nutrition back then. Food was food, convenience was king, and we were all full and happy, right?

The closest we ever got to thinking about what was in our food was in elementary school. I dealt with crippling headaches that were so bad I was getting sent home from school on such a regular basis that we had to get a doctor involved. They diagnosed me with what they called an “intolerance of MSG,” and told my mom to start packing my lunch instead of letting me eat the hot lunch at school, and that was it. That’s as deep as we ever dug into how food impacted our health. It wasn’t until much later in life that I experienced a higher level of food awareness.

I think my husband’s favorite story to tell about our early years is the first time I attempted to cook for him. We met while I was in college, and one weekend, I told him I was going to cook him spaghetti. He cooked for me

the time, so it was the least I could do, right?

Now, when I say I was going to cook spaghetti, I meant I was going to boil pasta and pour a jar of Ragu over it. To me, that was cooking, and it’s about the level of complication I could handle.

Or…at least I thought so….

Somehow, I ended up setting off the smoke detector while trying to bring the water to a boil, burned my hand, and -in the process of trying to open a window to let the smoke out – broke my finger.

After that, he cooked

It wasn’t until I was very pregnant and staying at home all day that I decided to try my hand at cooking again. I found some simple recipes on AllRecipes.com, and decided to surprise my husband with a home cooked meal that night.

I’m super proud to say that I didn’t fail him a second time. From then on, several times a week, I attempted new recipes, and made dinner. Those early dinners were

like what I cook now, but they were a start.

I cooked things like baked chicken using Kraft dressing as a marinade, pasta with jarred sauce, veggies in the bags you could steam in the microwave, and

of scrambled eggs with salsa and cheese.

How Motherhood Opened my Eyes

For most of my life, and well into early adulthood, I really didn’t give a thought to nutrition. Food was there to fill me up, and I ate what tasted good. Sure, I ate fruits and vegetables, but I also ate in much the same way as I did growing up. Fast food, meals from a box, and overly processed foods were the staples in my diet. Fruits and veggies were the extras.

Of course, as I went through my first pregnancy and my daughter was born, I started getting introduced to those first ideas that blossomed into the clean living lifestyle I live today. I’d read about aspartame, and how you should avoid it while pregnant, and that was my first introduction to actually

an ingredients label outside of checking fats and calories.

This started a gradual process of cutting out ingredients, one by one. And, by the time my daughter was 6 months old, I’d decided on following the Baby Led Weaning principles. If you’re not familiar, that means you start your baby directly on soft finger foods and foods you’re already cooking. Of course, I wanted my baby to get plenty of fruits, veggies, and healthy foods, and so…I had to reevaluate my own diet to match.

This prompted our biggest diet change so far. One that allowed me to give my daughter food off my own plate, and know that I was feeding her pure, nutritious foods.

Gone were the boxes of convenience foods, and the processed cheeses, and many of the other foods I’d eaten most of my life. Instead, I was focusing on lean meats, healthy fats, fresh fruits, veggies, and whole grains for the first time in my life.

It’s not all about the food

Of course, when most people hear the term “clean living,” they immediately think of food. It’s the biggest culprit for sure, but it’s far from the

The more I read about becoming healthier, the more I learned. And, the more I learned, the more I wanted to change.

My daughter had struggled with eczema her entire life, and despite her pediatrician insisting it was normal, I

something was causing it. (

Spoiler alert: I was right).

I started inspecting

I brought into my home. I’d already learned that many of the food products I’d previously eaten had bad ingredients. Was it that far fetched that

other products had ingredients I didn’t know about

Every time I cleaned, I got a headache and a cough, so I knew I was onto something. Gradually, I started learning about making my own cleaners, and one by one, I replaced all the products in my home.

This was about the same time that I decided to start my first blog. I wrote about life as a new mom, and documented a lot of what I learned there.

Over time, I started to build a community, share tips, and trade recipes with other moms who were trying the same things I was trying. We all grew together, and shared ideas as we went. To this day, I’m still thankful for those women entering my life, and still keep in touch with some of them.

Through this community, I started finding recipes for

, what soap brands were best, and

how to remove laundry stains and soap scum without harsh chemicals

Honestly, I owe so much to that first blog, the friends it brought me, and the things I learned in those early days of my journey.

Because going against the “norm” requires a community, people who can hold you accountable, and share their ideas. It’s what I try to create in this space now as much as possible.

If that’s something you’re looking for in your life, I encourage you to

sign up for email updates

join the Facebook community

! You’ll get to stay up to date on all sorts of ideas, recipes, and new things to try.

Growing and changing

For years after that, my life just kind of trucked on. We were happy, healthy, and felt pretty confident in the life we were leading.