Greening Your Home: Houseplants

I love my home. It's clean, modern and new (ish, it's from 2005). But being in a new space has a few pitfalls that plague me in the winter. Most specifically, dry air.

I find that if I don't slather on moisturizer, drink lots of water, and hope for the best, my skin is dry and I'm constantly parched. Part of it is that it's a new building without any moisture intrusion issues (knock on wood), and part of it is that our ceilings are 14 feet tall, so there's a lot of space for moisture to dissipate.

I've found that in addition to the water, moisturizer, and a major humidifier, having plants in the house makes a huge difference. Aesthetically, I love the impact they make, but they also provide cleaner air, and the moisture in the soil helps keep the room's moisture in the air more level.

Unfortunately, there don't seem to be many resources out there for people who have (a) a modern space and (b) cats. I'm not going to promise success, since I'm still fairly new at this, but, here are some plants that I have found to be fairly easy for a novice, fit our space, and haven't killed our (very interested and nibbly) kitties:

• Orchids
• Sanseveria (or Mother in Law's Tongue)
• Ponytail Plant (although our cats like to trim the leaves off)
• Christmas Cactus
• African Violets (not as modern, but fairly easy to grow) (our cats also like to trim the leaves and flowers off this)
  
  

Everyone says that spider plants are easy, but our cats completely kill them with how much they clip off the leaves. They also like to chew up succulents, so we haven't tried those either (some are cat toxic, some are safe- we don't want to risk a mistake there). 

I have pothos and philodendron in my office at work- both are NASA approved to clean air and very easy to grow, but unfortunately are not cat friendly. 

Note: the plant in the photo is a money plant- this is not cat friendly and was disposed of right after this picture was taken.