Usually the most effective way to improve indoor air is to eliminate and reduce the source by taking some simple steps like:

• Increasing the amount of fresh air indoors – open windows and doors, or run an air conditioner with the vent control open. Bathroom and kitchen fans that exhaust to the outdoors also increase ventilation and help remove pollutants.
• Changing air filters regularly.
• Minimizing indoor humidity to reduce the concentrations of some indoor air pollutants.
• Using non-toxic cleaning solutions for general purpose cleaning.
• Following a Whole Home Action Plan.
• If your allergies and asthma attacks are triggered by indoor air pollutants, seek the advice of your doctor.

One way to eliminate clutter is to rid yourself of items you don’t use and commit to not replacing them when they are gone.  Another consideration is to reduce consumption and rethink what you throw away and how often.

Other options include:

• Designing out waste buy creating systems of organization that support the habits and behaviors of individuals in the home. One very simple way to design out waste, is to live smaller.
• Creating structures or areas in the home that don’t allow for the accumulation of things.
• Making optimum use of things you already have to create a healthy, sustainable decor.

So says Erik Assadourian, senior researcher at the Worldwatch Institute and project director of a provocative and timely new book called 2010 State of the World: Transforming Cultures from Consumerism to Sustainability. Its argument is simple: The most important driver of the world’s ecological crises, including climate change, is not venal oil or coal companies or indifferent politicians but western consumer culture — that is, us.

Global consumption has grown dramatically since World War II, reaching $30.5 trillion in 2006, up sixfold since 1960. This is, in part, a very good thing — billions of people have emerged from poverty — but today’s prevailing consumption patterns are, quite simply, unsustainable. The rich (meaning you and me) are the worst offenders but ecologists say that even at income levels that we think of as substandard — say, $5,000 or $6,000 per person per year — people are consuming at rates that will deplete the earth’s resources, cause catastrophic climate change, wipe our species and generally trash the only planet we have. About a third of the world’s people live above this standard, and the others, presumably, aspire to do the same.

Most people understand — and psychological studies of happiness confirm — that after we have achieved basic economic security (itself a cultural norm), what really makes us happy are close relationships, meaningful work, connections to community and good health.

You can’t buy those things at the mall.

“Two centuries of intentional cultivation of consumerism has led to us seeing it as perfectly natural to define ourselves primarily by what and how much we  consume,” he said. Consumerism is so embedded in our culture today that, most of the time, it’s as invisible as the air we breathe.

So how do we get from here to where we need to go? “The good news,” Assadourian went on, “is that we can replace our consumer culture with a culture of sustainability.”