Breathing fresh air is one of the luxuries of life that often gets overlooked. It’s hard to care about what we can’t see. Unlike noise pollution which you can’t ignore, or light pollution which makes it hard to sleep or relax, people can suffer air pollution without even realizing it. Whether you bought a house in Florida and want to deal with the humidity, or a house in New Mexico and are battling with the dust, we’ve put together an easy 8 ways to improve indoor air quality in your home.
Change Your Home HVAC air filters regularly
You should be changing the filters in your home HVAC system every six months. HVAC (Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning) systems are one of the primary means of keeping your home’s air clean. However, the system doesn’t work if you don’t change out the air filters. Not only do dirty filters hamper your indoor air quality, they cost you money too, as the HVAC system has to work harder and use more energy to do its job.
Use your stove vent fan and your bathroom vent fan
Believe it or not, cooking indoors is a major contributor to poor indoor air quality. Whether you’re using a gas stove or frying chicken in a pan, you’re releasing particles and probably smoke into your home atmosphere. Turning on your stove vent will help you keep all the pollutants released during cooking out of your kitchen, as well as reduce the levels of grease that is the common foe of all home cooks.
Gas stoves, when cooking with high heat, produce formaldehyde, CO2, nitrogen dioxide, and other nasty sounding pollutants that a good stove vent can keep out of your home’s air. Though electric stoves don’t produce nearly as many pollutants as their gas counterparts, they do produce polluting particles and moisture via cooking.
Moisture can be your biggest enemy when it comes to improving indoor air quality. Bacteria and molds love humid air, and there’s usually no other place in your home that gets more moisture in the air than your bathroom. So be sure to always use your bathroom vent fan when showering or cleaning, and be sure to replace that vent’s filter frequently.
Open Up Your Windows Every Now And Then
Obviously only do this if you live in a place with relatively clean air. Chances are the air outside will be cleaner than the air inside your home anyway, especially if you live in a state like Hawaii, which has the cleanest air out of every state in the U.S. Letting fresh air into your home every now and then is a tried and true way to improve indoor air quality. Don’t just take our word for it, the EPA also recommends you open up your doors and windows. Do this on a cool breezy day in the Spring and Fall and it will do wonders for your indoor air quality (and your mood too). Couple it with a day of spring cleaning and your house will feel brand new. And if you’re worried about bugs getting in the house, just use a screen.
Manage Your Dust!
The best air filtration system in the world won’t do anything for you if you’re not regularly dusting and sweeping. There’s no end to the chore of dusting. It’s true, dust is mostly dead skin cells, but also uplifted soil, volcanic ash, and even particles from burnt-up meteorites! Someone out there probably likes dust, but your lungs don’t, so make sure to dust your home regularly. To help you with that, we have some dusting tips.
Start from the top and work your way down. If your home is multiple stories, work from the topmost floor to the bottom. Why? Dust falls. Dust the top corners of your walls, your ceiling fans, light fixtures, and stuff like that. Then work on the tops of your bookshelves and cabinets, then table tops, and finally the floor itself. Wet paper towels, cleaning wipes, and even a spray bottle are all good for wetting the dust so it doesn’t just billow around you. Finish off by vacuuming the floors and you’ll have done a good dusting. Do this once a week, or every other week and you’ll be set.
Also be sure to vacuum your carpets, and dust your curtains too. Fabrics are big dust catchers, so give them extra attention. The point with all this dusting is you can’t rely solely on your air filters the same way you can’t solely rely on a seat belt to save you in a car crash. Do your due diligence to keep your home clean manually, so that your systems can handle their part of the job for longer.
Don’t wear shoes in the house.
Plenty of cultures know better than to wear shoes in their house. Traditional Japanese homes have a whole room (admittedly a small one) dedicated just for depositing your shoes before going into the main house. Use a mud room, or have a shoe rack by the front door or -whichever door you mainly use to keep your floors clean. This isn’t merely an aesthetic issue; that mud tracked in dries and turns into dust. In the city, Shoes pick up asphalt particles, car exhaust particles, everything you can imagine and more, so if you can keep them off your floors and your carpets, you’ll be doing your indoor air quality a solid.
Do Your Air Polluting Activities Outdoors
If cooking inside is a major source of indoor air pollution, fire up the grill and do as much cooking as you can outside. Almost everyone likes the smell of hamburgers and steak sizzling in the air, so your neighbors shouldn’t mind, and the grease and smoke that would accumulate all over your kitchen will instead disperse into the atmosphere which can much more readily handle it.
If you like to weld and solder in your spare time, it’s a good idea to do this outside too, especially as you could be releasing harmful chemicals into the air by melting metals. If you’re painting, stripping paint, or chemically cleaning, and you can bring the object you’re working on outside, do so. We’d recommend waiting for a day of good weather before doing any serious painting inside.
If you absolutely must do any of these pollutant-causing activities indoors, make sure to have several means of ventilation at your disposal to give your lungs a break and keep your indoor air quality relatively fresh.
Keep your basement’s humidity in check.
Once your basement reaches a certain threshold of humidity (60%), be prepared to battle some mold. Mold will very quickly destroy your indoor air quality. Mold not be your fault if you’ve bought a house with undisclosed problems, but it is your responsibility. Now, not all molds are created equal. Some you can take care of yourself and others you’ll need to call in a professional to get rid of. The best way to deal with mold is to keep it from growing in the first place, and to do that you must handle your basement’s humidity. The best way to keep your basement from getting too humid is to put a dehumidifier down there and remember to empty the water that collects in it every day.
Use Indoor Plants
Plants are the natural air purifies of our world. It’s thanks to plants that we have breathable air in the first place. Though, you’d need to more or less convert your home into a greenhouse to equal the efficiency of a good air filtration system, plants provide that extra umph of purification that will help you improve indoor air quality in your home. Some common plants that you should bring into your home are rubber plants, english ivy, chinese evergreen, bamboo palm, gerbera daisy, and the provocatively named mother-in-law’s-tongue.
8 Ways to Improve Indoor Air Quality: The Invisible Upgrade Many Homebuyers Care For
Anything you can do to improve the quality of your home’s air will thereby improve the quality of your home itself. Your house is more than just an investment, it’s the home port of your life. But when it does come time to get in touch with an agent and sell, your house will sell a lot faster if each potential buyer can step through your front door and take a breath of fresh air.
