SPRING HAS SPRUNG!

This past few weeks have been just plain wonderful! We have had plenty of sunshine and temperatures often in the 60’s, while our family, back in the East Coast, is experiencing a marathon of snowstorms and cold weather. Living in Colorado often feels like a privilege and we have declared in our home: Spring has Sprung!

With the higher temperature spring also brings a lot of chores, it’s time for Spring Cleaning. But, today, I do not want to talk about your home or give you tips on how to spring clean your space. Rather, I want to talk about spring cleaning your life!

If you take a moment to think about it, spring changes radically our behavior. We have had months in which we spent way more time indoors than outdoors, be it inside your home, at museums and movie theaters, winter is just time to look for a warm shelter. A soon as the weather changes, so do our behavior, and here we are: my husband is biking to work, we are going on more afternoon walks, there are plans for picnics at various Denver parks and hike dates in our calendars. It’s just a welcome departure from winter! Life changes with the seasons and, boy, are we glad it’s spring?!

In our home, every spring it’s time to try and live a healthier lifestyle. We stop cooking heavier foods and start eating more salads, we exchange all the filters (water, humidifier, fridge, shower, furnace, etc), and plan for a fun herb garden!

The farmer’s markets are back! We, automatically shop more for local, organic, fresh and whole foods than during the winter! It’s just there: easier to find, more accessible!

And here are other things you can do to enjoy a healthier spring:

– Join a local CSA! That’s a community garden or community supported agriculture, where you pay upfront for your share of the harvest and collect your fresh produce weekly, the entire season!

– Colorado has plenty of options for fresh produce delivered to your door! Families that are generally busier and cannot commit to visit a local farmer’s market every week can benefit from these services for a healthier lifestyle!

– Start a spring garden! If you are a newbe, there are plenty of “hard-to-kill” herbs your could start with! It will help you make tastier and healthier meals at home and it can look really good! We purchase our seeds here, Botanical Interests is a Colorado company and they will deliver a beautiful box of seeds to your doorstop with plenty of instructions!

– Visit a nursery: bring into your home a large amount of air-claning plants! Not only it will make your home look amazing, but it will improve the quality of air your are breathing. If you are not sure what to choose, any flower market/nursery can help you and there are so many TED Talks on the benefits of air-cleaning plants for a better indoor air quality you can watch!

– Visit a local farm and bring home plenty of fresh produce! Spring is traditionally time to visit farm, bring the kids to see some farm animals and there are countless benefits of eating fresh produce! Did you know, food that needs to travel to reach its destination and is, normally, older than 1 week old looses an average of 50% of its nutrition?

–  Farmer’s Markets are everywhere and you can make a visit to your local one a date night! Often in Colorado, there are plenty of options of food trucks and local food stands at our farmer’s markets! Why not pick up fresh produce for the week, support your local farmer and make a date night out of it?!

– Get rid of, at least, one unnecessary chemical product from your home! The organic cleaning products, health and beauty industry has advanced so much in the past few years! Today, you don’t need to compromise quality for a healthier lifestyle. At home, we started slow: at first, we exchanged all our hand soaps from the bathroom and the kitchen for organic, natural soaps. It’s one step at a time, but it can make a world of difference in the quantity of chemicals you come in contact with!

– Participate on a community-type natural food dinner party! On February 28th, the Denver Botanical Garden will host the next gather, a pop-up dining experience featuring  a five-course meal designed by the Watercourse Foods chef Rachel Kesley. The best part of it? No two Gather dinners are alike! You are in for a delicious surprise! 

– Take a Healthy cooking class! Our friend, nutritionist Heather Braaten holds amazing and fun cooking classes around town, including inside the Whole Foods Washington Park and Capital Hill as well!

Do not obsess over it! Today, any action towards a healthier lifestyle is a HUGE one! Slowly you can change old habits and incorporate more aspects of a healthy lifestyle into your home!

How else does spring changes our lives? Well, the Real Estate market is one of them! Sales pick up in the spring! People are feeling more positive and ready to change their lives and comfortable enough to spend their days outside, looking at homes! Check out this graph from the home sales from Highlands Ranch: it’s absolute proof that sales pick up in the spring and spring is an excellent season lead-in, because summer just looks like a winner!