Creating A Healthier Home Environment For Your Family
The main objective and purpose of any home should be to protect and shelter the family within it. It keeps you out of the cold, the rain, the summer heat, and more, but what bout the potential risks to your health that might be lingering inside, as well? Choices in the home can contribute to your rate of sickness much more than you think, but there’s also plenty that you can do to make it a force for good.
Focus On Air Quality
One of the fundamental ways that a home is able to affect your health is through air quality. If you’re not careful, your indoor air can become much more polluted than the air outdoors, due to contaminants like dust, pet dander, mold spores, and chemical fumes. These can legitimately affect your respiratory health, resulting in coughs, irritation, and allergic symptoms. Make sure that you take steps to ventilate your home, such as opening windows for a start. Check that your extractor fans in the kitchen and bathroom are working effectively, or consider having them serviced if you can’t feel strong airflow around them when they’re turned on. For rooms that have worse air quality, quality air purifiers with HEPA filters can capture fine particles, making a noticeable difference for children and allergy sufferers.
Choose Your Paint And Finishes With Care
If you’re planning to repaint the home or to apply any new finishes, varnishes, or sealants to your cabinetry and furniture, you should check carefully what they contain before you use them. Some of the more traditional options can have what are known as volatile organic compounds, or VOCs, that can be released over time, even long after the paint or finish has dried. These compounds have since been discovered to be a common cause of headaches, dizziness, and respiratory health issues, especially among younger children. Thankfully, the market is becoming a lot more aware of these risks, so there are a lot more low-VOC or non-VOC options on the market, as well.
Maximize Your Natural Light
If you want to make your home not just a healthier place but also a happier place, natural light can be one of the absolute best elements to focus on. Our access to natural light is not only important for vitamin D production, but it also improves our mood and helps us better regulate our sleeping patterns, which, in turn, leads to better emotional regulation, as well. Keeping your windows clean and unobstructed, such as by moving furniture away from them and investing in lighter window treatments, like blinds instead of curtains, can help you get a lot more natural light in the home. Using mirrors and reflective surfaces can ensure that your interior spaces are able to make good use of that light, as well.
Opt For Healthier Flooring, Too
Your flooring can be one of the biggest impacts on the general air quality in the home. Aside from paints and varnishes, many conventional carpets and synthetic floors are some of the biggest sources of VOCs in the home, and can emit them over the course of literal years after installation. Carpets and soft flooring can also trap a lot more dust and allergens, too, if you’re not able to maintain them as often as you should. Choose eco friendly flooring options like solid wood, bamboo, or cork that’s low VOC and organic, making the air much healthier in your home, while ensuring you have floors that are durable and easy to maintain. They also help you maintain a more sustainable home, reducing your impact on the environment.
Enhance Wellbeing With Some Houseplants
Houseplants can do a lot to help decorate and bring visual life to a space, which can improve your mood. However, they can also make for a much healthier home environment, as some plants can improve air quality, absorbing pollutants and releasing oxygen. There are plenty of houseplants that are easy to take care of, such as snake plants, spider plants, and peace lilies, that you can choose for the home. Aside from their air quality benefits, plants have also been proven to help reduce stress and create a more calming atmosphere. They can even improve focus in workspaces like the home office.
Avoid Harmful Cleaning Products
Taking care to clean the home on a regular basis is important, as deep cleaning can help ensure that you’re able to rid the home of most lingering pollutants and allergens. However, when you’re doing it, you want to avoid the harsh chemicals that are found in many household cleaning products, which can irritate the skin, eyes, and even the lungs. You can easily make your own natural and eco-friendly cleaners with household items like vinegar, baking soda, and lemon. You can just as easily switch to the brands that are starting to become more common in stores, which tend to be made of plant-based ingredients and leave no toxic residues behind. Using microfiber cloths to wipe down surfaces can also lift a lot of dirt and dust without the need for any cleaners.
Choose More Health-Conscious Habits
A healthy home isn’t just about the products that you choose, but the habits that you stick to, as well. Regular handwashing is one of the most important things when it comes to maintaining hygiene and preventing the spread of any germs or bugs. Removing shoes at the door can prevent people from tracking in allergens from the outdoors, especially during days with high pollen counts. Keeping clutter to a minimum gives dust, moisture, and allergens fewer surfaces to build up on over time. Combining these mindful routines with the design choices mentioned above can ensure that your home is as healthy as can be.
The right combination of good habits and good decor choices can make your home a much healthier place across the board. Think about the tips above and which lingering risks in your home might be worth addressing first. Refreshing the home can make it not just healthier, but a much happier place to be, too.
