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This article is not about what you may think it’s about. “Step Into Your Change” is about how each and every one of us could make simple, small changes in our everyday lifestyle that can have profound impacts on our lives, communities, nations and the world.
You see, the world as we know it exists not because of the handful of BIG things we do but because of all the small things we do every day. How we choose to think, what we eat-our food choices, the products we buy, the respect and value we place on one another to the rankings of our lifestyle choices and the environments we live in all drive the state of our being to define us whether we consider it to be good or bad.
A long time ago the marketing industry figured out what drives us and through repetition our pineal gland slowly became victim to truth persuasion of known lies. Our bodies strategically began to replace our minds and today it’s difficult to know if your opinion is really your opinion or even your thought because when things become uncomfortable, unknowingly our body takes over, because it does not like the feeling of change and overrides our mind to maintain the normal. Even if the normal feeds illness, sickness, misery or hopelessness it’s okay because it’s what our bodies are use to feeling.
I’m a Marketing graduate. In the process of getting my degree, I began to understand the power of data collection, word spinning and the art of saying just enough, long enough to get the mind hooked allowing the body to take over. Needless to say, I didn’t like what I was learning and envisioned for the future. So now here we are four decades later and I live in the time of my worst fear. Witnessing society being lead with our eyes wide open, just accepting thing as they are and asking few questions along the way. I am a business owner focusing on providing organic, natural and sustainable textiles, products and materials for the fashion and home decorating industry. I’ve spent a lifetime educating consumers about the toxic, hazardous and environmental consequences these industries impose on our health and world. I write, speak, host events and work one-on-one with clients to share my knowledge and expertise of the challenges that face us.
When you talk about something as simple as fashion, fabric, home furnishings and how toxic it is in our world today, you’d think people would do all they could to help facilitate change as healthy clean alternatives are readily available. Well, not so much so. The fashion industry has persuaded you that your worth is tied to how many cheap garments you can buy and discard with the least about of accountability. The home décor industry wants you to believe that nothing should last past five years, buy it cheap-we’ll even finance it because we know in five years, you’ll have to replace it whether you want to or not. We purposely made it to break down and designed it so you can't fix it. Trends rule so you should buy and throw out furniture at will with no thought of where it goes. By the way this also keeps you and your family in-flux where subconsciously your environment never feels secure or stable. Now that’s powerful.
Fast Disposable Fashion made using synthetic petrochemical fabrics is poisoning our land, making us sick, enslaving and destroying people’s lives, creating serious social justice issues and piling up all over our planet. The United States is the main culprit, a Country with vast resources, an insatiable appetite for over consumption and a population resistant to change. The industry is the second largest polluter on Earth. Multiple-able agencies around the world are now sounding the alarm about the full implications of synthetic fibres. Microfibers were recently found in samples taken from Antarctica and this scares me to death. To know that the fibers falling off my clothes have reached the Antarctic (can be detected in ice) and will directly impact nature as we know it as well as humanity is revolutionary for me. Link to the article is here: Synthetic Microfibres Found In Antarctica.
Fast Disposable Furniture and Furnishings is made using chemicals so toxic that a Federal law RCRA (Resource Conservation and Recovery Act) for furniture manufacturing and refinishing regulated by EPA (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency) was enacted in 1976 to oversee the hazardous waste and materials used. When I share this with clients my follow up question for them is, “what do you think is sitting in your home?” It’s those same materials.
The furniture industry has been transformed (not for the good) and it’s hard for those of us who know what “real wood,” quality craftsmanship and natural fabric is to see a light at the end of the tunnel without real active consumer participation halting the production. Cheap, plastic furniture has no value and the blow it throws is penetrating, dangerous and beyond concerning. Statistics reveal that 12 million tons of household furniture waste goes to the landfill each year where it takes 13 years for a wood chair to decompose and thousands for plastic components to degrade. They will never go away-just degrade. It frighting to know that it takes five to eight years for VOC’s (Volatile Organic Compounds) in home furnishings to dissipate and be considered non harmful. Phthalates is a dangerous chemical banned in most other countries but not the US it’s in our food, clothes, furniture and flooring. It’s most notable health effect concern is sexual differentiation and endocrine disruptor. What is sexual differentiation you ask, follow this link in the National Library of Medicine. Basically, it’s a chemical that has the ability to influence the pineal gland and endocrine system influencing male to think female and female to think male. The information is in plain sight. I hope you chose to research it on your own.
We are willingly creating this world. I’m here to tell you that you can choose to “Step Into Your Change” by making different decisions. Let go of the cheap mentality and demand quality. If you don’t living a good life will only be a fairy tale. Be concerned about your health-don’t buy things that are designed using stuff that makes you sick. There’s nothing good about human exposure to toxic chemicals, they are not meant to be worn on our bodies-for us to sleep on-breathe or digest period. All the talk about parts per million/billion and how safe they are is blatant deception.
A recently published World Population Review article deemed the United States to be the unhealthiest nation in the world. The article takes into consideration diet and lifestyle. The chemicals in simple products we use every day like clothes and furnishings are silent killers attacking our immune system, wreaking our bodies allowing Illnesses to invade. As a consumer you have the power to change that. Buy natural fiber clothes. Look for quality and use less. Ditch the polyester, rayon, nylon, microfiber, acrylic and faux’s. Choose real wood furniture and keep it, pass it down, resell, repurpose. Decorate your space with less, organize, clean and take care of what you have and believe it’s okay to respect it. Put your focus on beauty, forget trends, value your own opinion, seek to always feel, be present instead of just existing, look at the world-your world and commit to making it better through every action you do. It matters!
Know that it won’t be easy. Your body will tell you it doesn’t like the way that linen shirt feels or wrinkles (it likes the polyester better) but know that linen actually has the ability to heal wounds three times faster than normal and it’s used in surgery. Silk regulates body temperature and can repair damaged hair. Cotton is cool, soft and comfortable (the industry is always trying to mimic it with synthetics instead of just using the real deal), hemp adds biological carbon sequestration to the soil storing carbon dioxide- it naturally protects skin from UV rays (natures sunscreen) and wool is anti-microbial it provides a natural water barrier (no plastic needed).
The best thing you can do is ask questions, pull out your phone and Google something of value or seek someone to help you find real answers. Inherently, our minds know a lot about what’s right but through the disguise of marketing, repetition and the familiar our bodies guide us to the comfort of what’s wrong and harmful. I challenge you to take action and help turn things around. Step Into Your Change, whether you take big steps or small in the end it does matter. I’m committed to using my companies as a platform to do more, say more and provide resources to help turn things around and take control of our lives. I hope you join me. My name is Patricia Davis, I am the Owner of sntHOME Interior Design Retail Showroom, Silver Needle & Thread Custom Sewing and TAG Custom Bridal located in Jacksonville, FL. I’m a professional dressmaker, designer, textile expert, author, speaker, advocate, activist and world class fabric lover. I am grateful you took the time to read this article.