12 Ways to Naturally Keep Your Home’s Air Cleaner
Aug 16, 2010 Eco Friendly Home
I posted the other day about how to keep the air in your home smelling better naturally. Controlling the smell is only a part of the battle. You want to keep the air in your home clean and healthy. These are some steps you can take to help the air inside your home stay cleaner.
1. Take off your shoes when you come inside.
Shoes track in a lot of dirt when you come into the house. That’s anything you walked on that was outside. Even if you don’t use them yourself, others in your neighborhood probably use pesticides and fertilizers, which make their way into the dust and dirt around everyone’s homes. Your shoes track these and other dirt into your home.
Keep a mat
Fortunately, going barefoot is pretty good for feet. It gives them a break from being confined inside your shoes. If you really don’t like going barefoot, buy some slippers or other comfortable house shoes to wear only indoors.
2. Have hardwood, tile or other hard floor materials.
Hard floor surfaces are much easier to keep clean than carpets. You can keep your carpets looking clean, but they trap a lot of dust and dirt that make it into the air of your home.
You’ll probably still put in some area rugs, so pick ones that have low piles or can easily be taken outside to be cleaned.
For the carpets you can’t take out, use a vacuum with HEPA filters
3. Use natural cleaners around the house.
The more chemicals you use to clean your home, the more chemicals will build up in the air inside your home. Natural cleaners may still contaminate the air in their way, but their ingredients should be safer for your lungs..
4. Open the windows.
Outdoor air in most places is cleaner than indoor air. Let the air flow through when weather permits.
5. Use low VOC paints when repainting.
If you’re painting inside your home, choose low VOC (volatile organic compound) paints. They don’t smell as bad and release fewer compounds into the air of your home. Varnish and carpets also contain VOCs, so pay attention when buying any of these.
6. Check your air filters.
If you have a heater or air conditioner, check the filters regularly. Some filters can be cleaned
7. Don’t allow smoking indoors.
If you, anyone in your family or anyone who visits you smokes, ask that it be kept outside. The rest of the people in your home don’t need to breathe those chemicals.
8. Don’t let the car idle in the garage.
Air from the garage gets into the rest of your home. You know how bad car exhaust smells and that it’s unhealthy for you. Why would you want that inside your home? Be ready to pull the car out of the garage shortly after starting it to minimize the pollution it add to your home.
9. Keep the humidity down.
Daily life inside a home can increase the humidity of a home. Just think how humid the bathroom is after a shower. Humid air makes for good conditions for mold to grow. Run bathroom fans or open the window after showering or bathing to let the humid air out.
10. Don’t use pesticides indoors.
It’s tough finding out you have bugs in the house, especially hard to control ones. If you can at all help it, don’t use pesticides inside your home, as they will contaminate the air as well as the areas you sprayed them.
Prevention is best to keep the bugs away. If you’re starting to see them, figure out what they’re after. If you can clean it up, they aren’t going to be as interested, although you may need to take more steps to get rid of them.
Some pests can be gotten rid of more easily than others. You can get rid of some kinds of ants with a mixture of borax and corn syrup, for example. Others you will need to set bait traps.
11. Rethink your personal care supplies.
Some of the supplies you use in your daily personal care routine aren’t too good for your indoor air quality. This is especially true of anything you spray, such as perfumes and hair sprays. Look for options that you still like but don’t have as many VOCs.
12. Grow houseplants.
Houseplants
Tags: clean air, fresh air, indoor air quality
How Do You Make Your Home Smell Fresh Without Using Air Fresheners?
Aug 12, 2010 Budget Environmentalism, Cleaning Products
If there’s one home care product that falls consistently on my least favorite list, it has to be air fresheners. Most do nothing more than add a scent to the air, usually created by some chemicals that if you really thought about it, you wouldn’t be spraying in the air you breathe.
They’re usually unhealthy, minimally to poorly effective, and frankly there are better ways to handle the smells that build up inside a home. For people with conditions such as asthma, it can be vital to avoid many of the usual commercial air fresheners.
Remove the Source
You won’t always be able to do this, but if you can get the source of the smell out of your home, that’s the best way to get the smell to dissipate. That could be taking out the trash, cleaning the cat litter, and so forth.
Open the Windows
Weather permitting, opening the windows is the simplest way to make a home smell fresh. It lets the air circulate. The smells floating in the air in your home have a way to get out rather than continuing to build up.
It’s important to open your windows in your home when you can. Indoor air can be more polluted than outdoor air, especially if you use a lot of conventional cleaning supplies.
Use Natural Air Fresheners
Natural air fresheners may not work as quickly as the ones you buy at the store and spray around, but they’re better for you and I think they smell better.
Baking soda is a classic odor absorber. Place bowls of it out where smells are an issue. Sprinkle it on carpets that are having odor problems and let it sit for a little or even overnight before vacuuming it up. It doesn’t have a pretty scent, but that’s not the point of using baking soda.
Vinegar isn’t a favorite scent for most people, but it does help to control odors. Put a bowl of it out or spray it into the air. As it dissipates, the vinegar smell and the problem smell will go away. Add in a drop or two of a favorite essential oil if you want to cover the vinegar smell right from the start.
Different herbs can help make a room smell nice too. Sprigs of rosemary or lavender are good choices, especially if you grow them fresh yourself. If not, dried versions smell good as well.
Boiling herbs and spices works also. Many people like the scent of cinnamon boiled in water. Boiling a sliced lemon or lemon juice is another good smell. Vanilla, orange, peppermint, cloves and nutmeg also smell good when boiled.
Your favorite essential oils
Growing plants indoors
