We all make New Year’s resolutions. Some of us are committed to taking our responsibilities to the environment more seriously. 82% are focused on improving health, and cleaning up our financial pictures also top the list. Unfortunately, about 80% give up on resolutions by March.

If you have resolved to be gentler and kinder to the environment, there are ways that you can keep your resolution that are relatively painless. For example, instead of throwing away your old air conditioner, you can donate air conditioner parts and more.

Appliances Are Not Being Disposed of Properly

Defunct appliances are often referred to as white goods. You do not have to be an environmental expert to see the damages that old appliances are doing to our environment. They are often found filling up landfills, where they release dangerous chemicals into the ground.

If you donate air conditioner parts or old units, you become a part of the solution. An air conditioner often needs to be replaced. What do you do with the old system? Most people simply discard them, and they wind up in the landfill.

Sticking to your New Years’ resolution by making one simple change can help you stay on track. For example, thinking about where your old air conditioner will go after you have a new air conditioning system installed can be a great step in the right direction.

You can make arrangements to donate air conditioner systems and parts. You can even ask your HVAC service expert to not take your old unit with them because you want to donate air conditioner parts to a good cause.

The Proper Way to Dispose of Appliances

The absolute best way to dispose of any appliance is to recycle it. Many of us will replace things like mobile home air conditioning, stoves, and refrigerators before our appliances break down. We often will upgrade to something more energy-efficient or modern.

Around 6 million air conditioners are disposed of each year, 9 million refrigerators and freezers are disposed of. and about 1 million dehumidifiers are disposed of each year. These appliances contain refrigerants that are harmful to the environment. When they are not disposed of properly, it puts our water supplies at risk. The federal government regulates the handling of old appliances, but unfortunately, there is no real tracking or tracing involved to ensure that refrigerant, PCB’s, and mercury are actually removed from these appliances before they are sent to the landfill or scrapped.

Helping the environment and keeping in line with your New Years’ resolution can be as simple as resolving to do better when it comes to discarding appliances, electronics, and other waste. Proper disposal is vital to our environment.

What is the proper way to dispose of appliances? The best way to dispose of an appliance like your old ac is to donate air conditioner for parts. Of course, if your old window unit is still blowing cold, there is an easy way to dispose of it. Give it away to someone in your community who can use it.

If your appliance has some life left in it, you can donate it to someone local who needs it. A new homeowner just starting out can make good use of your old stove. A person on a fixed income who cannot afford a new ac installation would love to get a couple of years more out of your old one.

If you can’t find a new home for your old appliance, the best way to dispose of it is to connect with a trusted recycling company. All the refrigerant, mercury, and PCB’s have to be removed. In most cases, when you connect with a recycling company, they will strip down the appliance then sell off the parts that can be sold.

Donation is Best

A recycling company will strip apart your old air conditioner and sell off the parts that they can. When you donate air conditioner parts or the whole unit, you give the parts to a charity that can benefit from it.

Making a direct donation of your heating and air conditioning system to a charity cuts out the middle man and the profiteering. The main thing that keeps people from making these donations is that they have no idea where to start.

Who can you donate air conditioner, stoves, refrigerators, and other old appliances to? There are some good causes out there that would love to have your old appliances. Keep reading to learn more about which charities will let you donate air conditioner appliances, refrigerators, and other appliances.

Salvation Army

The Salvation Army may offer appliance pick up services in your area. The Salvation Army does a lot of good work. They have hundreds of thrift stores across the United States that support their programs. You can visit their website to learn more about appliance pick up services in your area. All you need to do is plug in your zip code, and the search engine on the website will let you know if they will pick up your appliances or if you can drop them off at a central collection location.

The Salvation Army has helped generations of Americans rise above poverty through a wide range of programs. They assist with education, housing, food, medical costs, shelters, and so much more. It is one of the longest standing charities in the United States.

The Salvation Army does request that the appliances are in working condition. They do not accept any types of gas-powered appliances. If your old air conditioner works, you can donate air conditioner to the Salvation Army. If it doesn’t, there may be some other options for you.

Habitat for Humanity

Habitat for Humanity is an international organization that builds homes for low-income families. They also accept used appliances for donations. These appliances are refurbished when necessary then sold in the Habitat Rehome stores across the country to support their programs. If you want to donate air conditioner units, refrigerators, or other appliances, call your local chapter to see if pickup is available.

Habitat for Humanity has built over 300,000 homes around the world. More than 1 million people live in a Habitat Home in over 3,000 communities. This organization makes a tremendous difference in many people’s lives. The Rehome Stores are thrift stores that resell appliances, furniture, building materials, and more. They build homes for the community using part of the proceeds from these donations, and they give new life to old appliances and more by selling them in the community at very affordable prices.

St. Vincent DePaul

This well-established charitable organization is a faith-based group with several programs in place to help people get the assistance they need. You can call your local chapter and inquire about appliance pick up services or drop off services. They run thrift shops throughout the US to help support their programs and help low-income people afford the goods they need.

St. Vincent De Paul Society has one goal in mind. They focus on fighting poverty through personal assistance with housing, food, and more. They have education programs to help people get the training they need to improve their lives. You can be a part of the good that they do by donating your old ac or other old appliances.

Donation Feels So Good

Donating to a worthy cause feels really good. Knowing that your old appliance is bringing someone else joy or that the proceeds from that appliance helps out your community is a hard feeling to replace. Of course, you can also feel good about your tax deduction.

We have been so focused on the environmental good that we forgot to mention when you donate air conditioner units, you get a nice tax deduction for it. Of course, you want to make sure that you are donating to a registered non-profit.

The value of your appliance can be assessed by the receiving non-profit, and they can provide you with a receipt for your tax records. According to the IRS website, your donation can be worth up to $500. You are allowed to claim the actual value of the appliance or the standard $500, whichever is higher.

That means when you make an old appliance donation, you get to help someone out, do something good for the environment, and save some money on your taxes. That sounds like a real winning situation. Don’t forget you can also move a little closer to making your “environmentally” conscience New Years’ resolution a reality. You win all around.

Ask a Professional

If you cannot find a charity in your area that will accept your donation, consider calling HVAC contractors and asking them where you can donate. Air conditioning contractors are very likely to know about programs in your area that will ensure that your old unit does not wind up in the trash heap. Inquiring about where to donate your air conditioner may even result in an offer to pick it up for you.

How Can You Reduce Waste

There are other ways to ensure that your old appliances do not wind up in the landfill. For example, before you buy new and replace, consider having HVAC contractors give you pricing for repairs. Keeping your old unit (unless it is seriously out of date) can be a great way to cut down on waste.

A trusted HVAC service will be honest about whether it is worth fixing your old unit or not. They will also let you know how long you can expect your old unit to last with the repairs. You can weigh out your options to decide if it is worth fixing or not.

Many people make the mistake of panicking when they need HVAC repairs, thinking that they will need to replace the unit. But in many cases, an inexpensive repair is all that’s needed. Before you jump the gun and buy new, consider fixing what you have.

Avoiding the Problem All Together

To avoid the dilemma of finding a place to donate air conditioner units is to take care of the ones that you have. Regular tune-ups and maintenance of your current unit do a few things:

• A well maintained unit uses less energy. Less energy use means being kinder to the environment.
• A well-maintained unit will last longer. You can extend the life of your unit by years if you ensure that it is getting the proper maintenance.
• Ultimately, a well-maintained unit is good for the environment and your wallet as well.

Part of the environmental movement is to use what you have instead of buying new. However, in some cases, keeping what you have may not be the best thing for the environment. Air conditioner replacement can be the smarter choice. Older units are not usually Energy Star compliant like the newer appliances are today. They can actually be more harmful to the environment to keep.

You and your HVAC professional can make the decision together as to whether it is better to keep or replace your old ac unit. If keeping it simply does not make sense, be sure that you look into places that you can donate air conditioner units to or speak to your HVAC specialist about what will happen to your old unit.

It is important to the planet that we all take responsibility for how white goods are disposed of and seek out ways to give them a second life if possible. Recycling your unit may mean donating it to a charity or sending it off with a bona fide recycling company. Either way, don’t just put it out at the curb and forget about it. Stick to your resolution to be kinder to the environment this year.

Do you know what the single most common New Year’s resolution is? If you guessed weight loss, you’re not far off: 82% of people say they want to improve their health in some way.

Health and wellness are extremely popular topics. When you consider that major problems like obesity and stress run rampant in our society, it’s not hard to see why. If you’re passionate about health and fitness, or you have valuable information to share on things like family medicine, you may feel that learning how to start a healthy living blog is the right step for you.

Of course, deciding you want to be a health blogger is one thing. Figuring out where to begin is quite another, as the process of starting any blog can be overwhelming.

When it comes to how to start a healthy living blog, facing your fears is going to be the first step. Many people who would like to start a blog are worried about what others will think of them, especially when it comes to sensitive subjects such as womens health, pediatric healthcare, and the like. Others feel that they aren’t qualified to write about healthy living and struggle with severe imposter syndrome. And lots of people who feel inspired to write about knowledge are fearful of being targeted by those with opposing views, or even by online bullies.

Sadly, these concerns are very much grounded in real life. Any time you put yourself out there and state an opinion, you’ll be at risk of being attacked by someone who disagrees with you, no matter how well-researched your ideas about CBD health supplements are. And when you’re writing about something as critical as people’s health, you do have a big responsibility to your community to make sure your information is accurate.

That being said, fears like these shouldn’t stop you from learning how to start a healthy living blog if it’s what you really want to do. Blogging is tough work, but it’s also one of the most rewarding and freeing things you can do. In this article, we’ll tell you everything you need to know how to start a healthy living blog.

How to Start a Healthy Living Blog: Choosing Your Niche

Once you know that blogging is what you want to do, and once you’re committed to doing the hard work to make it happen, the first step is choosing your niche. That’s not the same as choosing your category, or subject: in this case, your category is health. Your niche is like a sub-category of your category, like how womens health counseling is a unique niche within health advice and counseling in general.

Some categories have more niches than others, but the health category has several. This includes the following:

• Weight loss and diet blogs: These blogs either provide dieting information or document a personal weight loss journey.
• Health food blog: These blogs focus on healthy eating, with easy recipe ideas, advice, and food photography.
• Specialized exercise blogs: These sites provide helpful tools and information for people in niche exercise communities, such as runners, weight trainers, and yoga practitioners.
• Fitness professionals: These blogs publish articles and advice from personal trainers and coaches who sell their training services.
• Healthy lifestyle: These websites feature information on all aspects of staying healthy.

The most important question you have to answer when choosing your niche is, who are the people you want to help with your health information? This should usually be a group that you’re a part of, or a group you’ve had significant experience with. For example, if you used to be a yoga instructor, making a yoga blog would make sense. If you’re a passionate runner, a running blog would be the most authentic expression of your knowledge. And if you’ve had significant experience working the older people, a blog on elderly care might be a great idea.

Along those lines, it’s important to recognize that the categories listed above aren’t the only niches you an use. If you have an idea for a blog that combines niches or fits into a different niche altogether, it could still be a viable blog. The important thing is that there are other people out there in that community, who need that information. As long as those people exist and you understand them, your blog idea is probably worth pursuing.

Whatever niche you choose, it’s especially important that it’s something you’re passionate about. To become a respected and reliable blogger, you’re going to have to stay up to date on everything that happens in your space. If reading about health clinics and the different types of medical practitioners bores you to tears, you aren’t going to enjoy doing that kind of research for your medical advice and reviews blog. On the other hand, if you practically live and breathe weight training or bodybuilding, chances are you stay up to date on those things already. In this case, simply writing about what you learn would almost be a labor of love for you.

If you’re on the fence about what niche to write in, there are a couple of techniques you can try. First, start with a broad niche that you’re interested in, then narrow it down to a smaller sub-niche within it. For example, since you want to write about health, define what you consider to be the most important part of healthy living. Maybe the most important thing to you is food and nutrition. In that case, narrow your niche down further, to a sub-niche in the food category. This might be vegan or paleo diet foods, or even recipes that are compatible with popular brands like the Bulletproof Diet.

You can also incorporate aspects of healthy living with mental health. Here, you might be able to offer organizational tips for the home and talk about the benefits of going to a therapist. When it comes to organization, a clean home can help create a clearer mind. You’ll feel more relaxed every time you come through the door when you’re not worried about clutter getting in your way. Tuck your storage boxes safely behind your garage door to keep them safe from the elements, especially with winter on its way. You can even learn how to build storage above garage doors to keep your footpath clear should you actually use your garage for your car. Cobra garage door racks and similar brands are key in helping you organize your space.

But talking about the importance of going to a mental health professional is also key. You won’t want to offer any concrete advice unless you have a license. But talking about your own experience with a therapist can encourage other people who are struggling to follow suit.

The second way to choose a niche is to investigate what’s already popular. One of the best ways to do this is to find out what search terms people are using to find health information, and which terms aren’t producing many relevant search results. If lots of people are all searching for the same things, and no major health websites are providing significant information on those subjects, that’s a good sign that there’s high demand and low supply for that topic. Tools like Buzzsumo and Answer the Public both have features to help you discover what people are searching for online. This is also a great way to get started with search engine optimization, or SEO, which is an important part of how to start a healthy living blog.

Research and Plan Your Blog

Once you know your niche, the next step of how to start a healthy living blog is to do your research and make a content plan. This basically means figuring out what you’re going to write about, and getting the information and sources you need to write it.

Create blog posts that people not only find, but want to read, is much harder than it may seem on the surface. People are more distracted with more options than ever before, and blogs know this, with each one competing jealously for readers’ attention. If you want your blog to stand out and get read, it’s not enough to simply have accurate and useful information, especially if you want to appear in Google search results. Every time you write a blog post, your goal should be to write the best article on that particular subject. If you can write the first article on a given subject, that’s even better.

Even though your blog is still in its planning phase at this point, it’s still a good idea to begin outlining some of your future articles. Specifically, you should be thinking about something called evergreen content: the articles that matter most to your blog and your blog’s niche. These articles should be on subjects that people keep coming back to — topics that aren’t exclusively relevant to any point in time. For example, a long blog post called “everything you need to know to start losing weight” is going to be relevant for a long time, if not forever. On the other hand, a review of the latest smart watch device for health tracking is only going to be relevant until the next device is released.

You want to come up with as many ideas for evergreen content as you can because these are going to be your blog’s foundation. In many ways, they’ll determine whether people see you as a real expert or a wannabe, so it’s important that your information is accurate. Your presentation of that content should be clear and easy to understand, but it should also be presented in a way that expresses your unique style as a writer.

Besides planning and writing some evergreen blog posts, you should brainstorm other posts to publish between your evergreen pieces. Your first two or three posts should probably be evergreen posts, but after that, you want to sprinkle in some lighter, more timely articles in between your evergreen content. These should be easier to write. They might be things like book reviews, opinion pieces on latest diet trends, and interviews with local home health care services — things that aren’t really foundational to your entire blog’s niche, but still important to readers.

Begin Setting Up Your Blog

As you’re figuring out how to start a healthy living blog, the preparation should always come first. Choosing your niche, doing your research, and starting your writing is an effective way to make sure you really have a viable idea on your hands, and that you have what it takes to work at it. You don’t want to go to the trouble of buying a domain name and setting up your website if your idea hasn’t been validated first.

Now that you’ve got your research done, it’s time for the next step in how to start a healthy living blog: setting up your site. It’s at this point that you must decide what kind of blog you want yours to be. Will it be a laid-back, more personal blog, perhaps to document your experiences and research with healthy living? Or do you want it to be the next big contender in the online health space?

Setting up a website for a blog is a lot simpler than building a professional site for businesses like home care medical supplies stores. A simple, personal blog is easy to set up and start writing for. You can sign up for a free Blogger or WordPress site, and you don’t even have to buy a website address. You’ll be allowed to customize your blog’s appearance, although customization will be limited, especially on Blogger. You’ll also be able to set up things like an “About Me” page, a contact form for people to get in touch with you, and organizational and metadata tools for blogs.

The best things about simple blog sites like these is that they range from very cheap to completely free, and they’re relatively easy to set up and use. In fact, you won’t normally require any technical skills at all, once you figure out how the interface works. If you want the simplest user experience possible, Blogger is your best option, while WordPress is better if you need more options or want to upgrade to a professional site later.

If you want to launch a legitimate, professional blog to compete with the big health websites and magazines, you’re going to have your work cut out for you, but it can be done. Most professional bloggers use the WordPress platform on an external web hosting service, such as GoDaddy or WP Engine. This can become complicated if you use a professional hosting service like Amazon’s AWS, but most other web hosts offer streamlined interfaces with one-click WordPress installation.

Once WordPress is set up on your hosting service plan, setting up your blog is usually as easy as it is with a basic, consumer-version WordPress site. However, you will need to purchase a domain name (also known as a web address or URL) and connect it to your website. Depending on where you buy your domain name and what hosting service you use, this can become difficult. The simplest option is usually to buy a domain name from the same company that hosts your website because the two will typically be integrated together. For example, if you’re using GoDaddy to host your site, using them to purchase your domain name as well should result in a simpler setup process.

Start Publishing

With your website set up, the next part of how to start a healthy living blog is simply to begin publishing your writing to the web. If you want your blog to be as well-known and respected as your favorite therapist finder website, you should consider hiring an editor to proofread your writing as you publish it, or at least use proofreading software like Grammarly. When you write about sensitive or scientific health data, you must also remember to link to your sources, and it’s a good idea to have a medical practitioner approve what you’ve written.

From here, there are lots of ways for you to promote and monetize your blog. But this should be everything you need to know on how to start a healthy living blog.