The quality of air in your home truly makes a big difference to how you feel in your home both in mind and body. There are many factors that can influence the quality of the air. From mold spots to how regularly you clean your home, there are certainly some areas of concern in your home that are worth addressing if you spot them.
Being mindful of these potential health hazards around the home is crucial to ensure you and your household stay fit and healthy. With that in mind, here are the top eight ways to improve indoor air quality in your home.
1. Keep the home well-ventilated throughout the day
Ventilation is an important part of keeping your home clean of dirt and bacteria that might be traveling through the air. Ventilation of that air is important in order to keep your home nice and healthy when breathing in and out.
Opening the windows throughout the day can help with ventilation, particularly during periods of illness when there are a lot of harmful bacteria in the air. When it comes to viruses, you want to kill the potential for them to infect others, which is why clearing the air can be helpful.
If you’re looking to improve ventilation, especially when it comes to rooms that might have very few windows – or none at all – then you should look at extractor fans to help filter the air into the outside.
There’s a great deal of benefit that comes from ventilating your home, so make sure you’re doing what you can to ventilate it throughout the day, even on the coldest of days. It’ll make all the difference to your home’s air quality.
2. Ensure your air ducts are kept clean
Air ducts are responsible for filtering air from your heating and air conditioning to all the rooms within your home.
Naturally, there’s a lot of dust and debris in the air, and that air is being filtered through tubes that likely don’t get cleaned that often, if at all.
That’s why it’s important you check that your air ducts are clean, especially when it comes to the filters that help keep any dirt and debris from becoming stuck. Duct cleaning services are worth considering if you’d rather not touch this area of your home, or you wouldn’t know where to start.
The filters need cleaning regularly and replacing should they become worn and tired. If you’ve not tackled your air ducts recently, then this is a reminder to get them done in order to keep the air filtering from your systems, filtering clean air only.
3. Clean around your home regularly
Keeping your home clean is an important one, especially as there can be a lot of dirt that builds up in your home over the days and weeks. Throw in a couple of kids and you’re likely to find that your home gets messy and dirty very easily.
Granted, no one wants to be cleaning their home if they can help it but unless you have the disposable income to pay for a cleaner, the responsibility lands on those who are old enough to clean around the home.
That doesn’t mean just one person should clean though. Everyone who lives in the home, even the kids can do a little cleaning here and there to help out. Try to incorporate a cleaning schedule so everyone is doing their fair share.
Even if the kids aren’t old enough to be dragging out the hoover or tall enough to clean the kitchen surfaces, they can learn to make their bed or tidy away their toys. Not only is this helpful, but it’s providing them with helpful life lessons that are great for when they get older.
4. Avoid smoking indoors
Smoking indoors is something to avoid where you can, especially when you have children in the home. The reason for this is that smoke clings to pretty much anything. From your skin to your hair, to the furniture and walls in your home.
Once you start smoking indoors, the only way to get rid of the smell would be to strip everything back and throw all your belongings back.
Where possible, you should smoke outside and preferably away from the property doors and windows. While convenient to stand just outside your home, the smoke will likely travel into the home.
It’s worth noting though that even when you’re outside, that doesn’t mean you won’t bring smoke in. It’s good to be mindful though where possible to reduce the level of smoke you allow in your home.
5. Get carpets and fabrics cleaned on occasion
Carpets and fabrics are something to get cleaned on a regular basis. By doing so, you’ll pull away all of the dirt and debris that often gets stepped in from the outside. We all carry a lot of dirt on our feet too without realizing and over time, that can also get trodden into the carpet fibers.
It’s worthwhile having a professional carpet clean done every so often, that way you’ll ensure a thorough job is done on those occasions. You could always get a carpet cleaner yourself if you fancy giving it a go. However, it’s worth getting the right cleaning products and doing patch tests too in order to ensure that it doesn’t damage the carpets.
6. Invest in some indoor plants
Indoor plants are something that you can invest in, in order to make your home smell better. Indoor plants are great at purifying the air because they turn that harmful air into clean oxygen.
That’s why indoor plants have become popular in recent years, particularly from a home interior design angle.
It’s good to be mindful of what type of plants you can afford to keep in your home because not everyone has the time available to look after certain plants. If you’re not a plant or garden enthusiast, then it’s worth going for something that’s harder to kill.
7. Purify your air
Purifying your air is helpful when you’re trying to tackle the quality of air in your home. Look at air purifiers that are available, whether that be through electronic purifiers or ones that you just place in your home to purify the air by itself – like indoor plants.
You could also look at something like a portable air purifier to place around the home. These are great for reducing a lot of airborne contaminants that exist in the air including viruses. With the recent pandemic being something that many people would like to not experience in their lifetime again, using air purifiers is a good thing to implement around the home.
8. Control your humidity
Controlling your humidity is definitely something to do more of where possible. The more humidity that’s in your home, the more your home is going to be prone to mold and mildew. That lack of ventilation along with the humidity, makes it more difficult to manage the possible airborne bacteria in the air.
Try to keep your humidity levels in control by getting a dehumidifier for every room. These come both in an electronic form and one that will use certain materials to help draw and absorb the moisture in the air.
Improving the air quality in your home is definitely something that’s good to do, so with that being said, follow these tips so that you improve your air quality. Try indoor plants, control humidity with dehumidifiers, and be sure to clean your spaces regularly to reduce harmful bacteria floating around in your home.
