Allergy-Proof Your Home

Allergy-proof your home for spring!

Here are ten home remedies for allergies, some that help you allergy-proof your home with spring cleaning techniques.

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With the arrival of the spring season, you get to enjoy the warmer temperatures and longer brighter days.  You’ll be tempted to open your windows and let the fresh air in and blow out all the dirt, dust, and other allergens that accumulated over the winter.

But with allowing that fresh spring air into your house, you are at risk of giving an entry to the airborne particles like pet dander, dust mites, mold, pollen and chemicals that can make the air in your home intolerable for you and your family. Also, these irritants can cause spring allergies like coughing and sneezing, red eyes, itchy throats, and runny noses.

Drug-free home remedies for spring allergies

Severe allergies may require doctor’s attention. But if it’s not medically serious, it may be treated naturally at home. Some home remedies for treating a spring allergy are:

• Neti Pots: good remedy for allergies and sinuses. It takes a little getting used to, but once you get the hang of nasal irrigation, you’ll love the clean feeling you get after time at the sink with your Neti Pot. You can try a traditional Neti pot that looks like a teapot, or you can use a squeeze bottle like this.

• Taking a hot shower: a steaming hot shower will clear your sinuses and nasal passages and will also remove all the outdoor pollen from your body. Rinsing dust and pollen off your hair and keeping all that off your pillowcase can really improve your allergies. You aren’t stewing in allergens all night! In the shower, try some aromatherapy, like these shower tablets with essential oils to help open your sinuses.After a shower, try a lavender body lotion that supposedly makes you go to sleep faster and sleep more deeply. Lush has a lavender lotion people swear by, but there are much less expensive choices that work great for me.

• Eucalyptus Oil: this essential oil has a strong piney aroma you’ll recognize. It’s the main scent in several over-the-counter remedies like Vick’s Vaporub. Its biting, aromatic smell will help open your sinuses almost every time. Use the essential oil in a diffuser on your nightstand.

• Take a little butterbur: the extracts from butterbur are claimed to cure headaches, fever, and nasal allergies. It can be consumed as a tea or you can buy butterbur tablets in a health food store. Please discuss this and any other treatment with your doctor in case there is a contraindication with your health or any other medicines and supplements you are already taking.

• Use a salt lamp: The last time I went to my brother’s house, he had a salt lamp in the living room. They use it to reduce the allergens they have from their cat.When the lamp is on it heats the salt so the salt emits negative ions. According to Himalayan Salt Shop, negative “ions clean the air by removing dust, pollen, dander, cigarette smoke and bacteria. They also offset the effects of the positive ions produced by computer monitors, TVs and other electrical devices.” It really did make the air smell fresh without adding a scent.

We hope some of these treatments help soothe your seasonal allergies!

After knowing how to treat allergies in natural ways, it’s also important to know how to allergy-proof your home for spring. A clean home can greatly reduce your spring allergies in the first place.

Allergy-Proof Your Home by Spring Cleaning!

Here are some ways to get rid of dust, mold, dander, and other allergy causes during the spring season:

• Schedule an appointment for HVAC maintenance

Spring is a primary allergy season, and is the best time to schedule an HVAC maintenance appointment. Regular maintenance and duct cleaning by a professional will keep your heating and air conditioning system healthy, will reduce indoor allergens, and will keep your system dust- and blockage-free.

In the meantime, make sure to change your system’s filters regularly. We use these 3M filters and mark on the calendar when it’s time to change them every three months. Take a garbage bag right to where the dirty filter is and pop it directly into the bag. This reduces any of its trapped dust, mold, and pollen getting back into the air. Filters vary by size, so make sure to check the size your system takes.

• Remove the debris around your HVAC unit

The outdoor unit of your HVAC system draws in the air around it, then that air circulates inside your home. So it is important to remove debris and allergens like leaves and weeds from around the outside unit. This will help avoid drawing those allergens inside your home.

Same as the outdoor unit, even an indoor unit will circulate dust and pollen in your home, so sweep, vacuum and clean the area around the indoor unit to get rid of the allergens in your system.

• Thoroughly clean your carpets

It is important to vacuum your carpets once a week to remove the allergens from the carpets’ fiber. Make sure you use a vacuum with a HEPA filter that traps tiny particles and stops them from spreading into the air.  You don’t need an expensive unit. This upright is what I’ve used for years, though this canister vacuum my son has is top rated and is super useful for cleaning stairs and nooks and crannies.

Apart from vacuuming, consider hiring a professional carpet cleaner who will clean your carpets with hot-water steam. This will kill the dust mites and tiny organisms and bacteria present in your carpet. Gross, right? In between professional cleanings, use a small carpet spot cleaner like this, or a carpet cleaning spray. This brand works, but spot test it first. This brand is slightly less effective, in my opinion, but it’s green and considered pet-and child-safe.  like this.

• Check for mold

Mold tends to grow in the humid and moist atmosphere of kitchens and bathrooms. So make sure that when you are cooking or taking a shower that you switch on an exhaust fan.

In our smaller hall bathroom with poor ventilation, I actually have the kids open the door when they leave the bathroom after a shower and turn on a box fan like this. It has way cut down on mold in the shower, especially on the shower curtain. When there is a bit of mildew in the shower, I find nothing beats this cleaner. It’s cheap and it works. Cheaper still is one part Clorox bleach to nine parts water in a spray bottle. Only mix up what you need that day.

Also, in the kitchen, check the stove ducts and drip pans routinely to check for signs of mold. If you find mold growing on your floors or walls, immediately call a professional to get rid of it. Mold on wood or drywall is serious business and needs to be handled by a pro.

• Get an air purifier 

One thing that’s made a big difference in my husband’s allergies was using an air purifier with a HEPA filter in our bedroom. We bought one that was highly recommended on Consumer Reports, if I recall correctly. What I like about it is that it can run on auto and only come on if it senses particles in the air. Usually we keep it running during the spring. At night it does double duty as a white noise machine, although it’s quiet on its lower modes.

It’s run great for two or three years now and only requires a filter change periodically.

Downstairs we run this humidifier “air washer” from Venta. Venta sent it to me last year, but have not sponsored this post. The Venta evaporates water into dry air while also removing dust, pollen, and dander from the air and trapping it in water. It’s really very cool in its simplicity. I’ve noticed I dust less, my skin is softer, and our seasonal allergies are way down. It’s helped remove any particles that float in the air and make you sneeze!