20 Indoor Plants That Keep You Sane

Time to bow down to plants again. As has been discovered previously, plants rule. While I spend most of my time with plants al fresco, it’s advised by knowledgable third parties who have earned Ph.Ds that plants are great indoor pals, too. Why? For starters, they breathe life into a room. They give it an added dimension. But also they clean the air that is polluted with airborne toxins that float sinisterly out of your upholstery, carpets, and flooring, from plywood, detergents, and dyes. Maybe that headache you get at the office isn’t from work after all??? Maybe, just maybe, you’d feel a little more sane at the end of the work day if you had a plant in your office space or in your living room.

This list compiled by experts at the University of Hawaii, Manoa tells you which plants remove what toxins. Cool, right? And the university got their info from a NASA study. We prefer to think of these plants like sanity pills. Or environmental housekeepers.

We’ve copied a version of the list below (and prettied it up) for your perusal. So what’s your sanity drug of choice? Will it be a dose of Chinese evergreen? A big inhale of Janet Craig? A quick brush with the mums? OR will you float off into pure intoxicating healthiness with the spider and the snake?

For those who are all about reading scientific studies that are two decades old, we’ll refer you to the original NASA papers. In what could have been a dry dive into off-gassing and plant life, the authors show a little sass. One of our favorite lines:
“Since man’s existence on Earth depends upon a life support system involving an intricate relationship with plants and their associated microorganisms, it should be obvious that when he attempts to isolate himself in tightly sealed buildings away from this ecological system, problems will arise.”