Reducing Indoor Allergens at Home

While those who suffer from allergies know they often appear when least expected, winter time can be especially difficult. During the winter, more time is spent indoors, and those indoor allergens can trigger allergy sufferer’s symptoms quickly. While frustrating, you can reduce indoor allergens at home and provide relief to those with allergies by making your home an allergen-free zone.

If you have allergy sufferers at home, you already know that for those with allergies, dust, pollen, and pet dander trigger the immune system to attack the perceived threat. When this occurs, the body’s antibodies go to work and produce allergy symptoms like sneezing, itchy eyes, coughing, running noses, and more.

Allergy Triggers

There are a number of allergy triggers but the most common are, in fact, inside your home. Knowing the triggers is the first step in eradicating them. Among the most common are dust and dust mites which seem to be everywhere at once. Dust mites feed off dust and flourish in humidity. You can find them living happily in all the fabrics in your home from bedding to furniture to curtains. Mold is also a common allergy trigger, growing fast in the damper regions of your home like bathrooms. Mold also thrives where there is tile, underneath sinks, on windowsills, and even in your AC unit. Pet dander, those tiny pieces of dead skin from your pet, are another common allergy trigger.

Reducing Indoor Allergens

Now, that you know about allergies and the most common of allergens in your home, let’s get rid of them! Given this information, you may already suspect that regularly dusting is one of the easiest ways to help rid your home of allergens. Each day, you should dust windowsills, tables, and other commonly used surfaces using a microfiber cloth to keep dust away. Weekly, dusting blinds, molding, floorboards, and fans with a clean microfiber cloth will reduce the dust in your home. You want to avoid using a feather duster which simple spread the dust, without removing it.

Sweeping and Vacuuming is also important in the battle to rid your home of indoor allergens. Remember to dust first, as sweeping and vacuuming after will help get up any dust or other particles which made their way to the floor. Pet dander and dust are found on all kinds of flooring. Sweeping your hard surface flooring, like hardwoods, tiles, and vinyls, should be swept weekly. Carpets will need vacuuming more often – at least every few days. If you have pets, you’ll want to clean more frequently, particularly your high traffic rooms, daily is best, if you can to prevent the build-up of allergens in those spaces.

Lowering the humidity levels in your home is also a big help, especially in regard to dust mites which increase as the humidity increases. Keeping home humidity below 50 percent is best, reducing and even eliminating these allergy triggers.

If you don’t already have one, adding an air purifier can filter the air in your rooms and help keep common allergy triggers under control. Air purifiers work best in individual rooms where it cleans the air, cycling it through multiple filters. High efficiency particulate air (HEPA) filter air purifiers are the best available today, capturing up to 99.97 percent of pet dander, dust, dust mites, mold spores, and other common indoor allergens.

Now, armed with a greater understanding of indoor allergens and where they thrive in your home, you can prepare to eliminate them with these helpful tips. And should you need assistance along the way, Signature Maids is ready to help you get your home allergen free this winter and keep it that way all year long.