Home is supposed to be the safest place to be. When the outside world is full of dust, pollution, viruses, and other health risks, home should be your safe refuge. When you’re at home, you must have confidence that you’re in a safe and clean environment. You don’t have to fear catching allergens, as you may do outside of your home.
However, everything isn’t always ideal, even for the best homemakers. How certain are you that your home is, indeed, as clean as you desire it to be? Don’t let pollen, mold, pests, dust, and other allergens make you sick, right in your own home.
Here are some tips you can apply as you clean your house to reduce, if not completely shoo away, allergens from your home.
- Use Eco-Friendly Disinfectants
Do you use eco-friendly disinfectants at home? Or are you still practicing the old way of using many chemicals for varied purposes in your home? If the latter holds true, making that switch to eco-friendly disinfectants is as good for the environment as it is for your health.
Reducing allergens in your home doesn’t only entail using bleach and other harmful cleaners. It can still be achieved, even with your own homemade cleaners made out of eco-friendly disinfectants.
If you run a search on the Internet, there are many cleaner formulas you can make using only the basics in your home: white vinegar, baking soda, lemon, and essential oils. Of course, you can always grab an eco-friendly disinfectant off some online or offline stores if you don’t feel you’re much of a home-styled chemist.
- Clean Your House Weekly
This second tip is truly important. If you want to keep a healthy home where allergens can’t thrive, then there’s no other way out of it but to clean regularly. Not a lot of homeowners like to clean. But they like to have a clean home. Hence, there’s a real need for regular cleaning.
By ‘regular’, you don’t necessarily have to clean every day. It’s just impossible to do that, with the busy and fast-paced lives of today. But, at least, give your home a thorough cleaning weekly. On top of that, deep cleaning is also highly recommended monthly, whether on your own or by getting the services of cleaning professionals.
- Take Special Care Of Your Bed And Bedding
Unknown to you, your bed may be the top breeder of allergens in your home. When was the last time you actually cleaned, steamed, or vacuumed your bed? Dust mites could breed if you haven’t subjected your bed to these in a while or have never done so. Rather than doing its job of restoring your health as you sleep, your bed may have now been making you sick.
If you have a handheld vacuum cleaner and a steamer, usually, that’s more than enough. If you don’t, schedule cleaners to take care of all your mattresses and even your couches, at least, quarterly. Then, make it a point to change your bedding weekly.
- Leave Allergens At The Door
Many households will have a mudroom or mud bench. This refers to that little corner outside of the home’s main entrance, where dirty and muddy shoes are left. Before bringing in those shoes, they should be washed and left to dry.
If you don’t have a mudroom, the best you can do is to make it a practice to leave shoes outside. Take them in only when they’ve been cleaned. Don’t walk around your house in them.
Also, vacuum your entryway, at least, once a day. Then, have an outdoor rug where you can wipe shoes off before stepping in.
This same principle applies as well to any dirty clothes. You’re likely used to wearing layers of clothes during the winter season. Remove those layers before going inside your home. If you have kids around, have a catch-all hamper where dirty football clothes, soiled clothing, and other dirty items can be dumped and taken directly to the wash.
- Vacuum Regularly
There are areas in your home where daily vacuuming may be necessary. Those include the heavy-traffic areas like the kitchen and dining room. Because that’s where you eat, it’s expected that there’s going to be a lot of particles all over.
For the other parts of your home, however, vacuuming twice a week will do. It’s enough to keep all the dust from settling in your home.
Takeaway
If you or anyone in your household suffers from allergies, you’ll want to be able to keep your home in its cleanest state. Otherwise, it can be the top culprit or contributor to your allergies. Cleaning can seem like a daunting chore, but not if you know how and when to clean. The tips above should leave you feeling more confident now about your home’s upkeep as allergens won’t have to call your home as theirs.
