Give Your Home an Allergy & Asthma Makeover

Room-by-room tips to keep you breathing easy inside your home.

Most of us spend 80 to 90 percent of our time indoors, so indoor air quality is important for everyone.

For people with asthma or allergies, it can be the difference between staying healthy or having an asthma or allergy flare-up.

“A little elbow grease goes a long way for families with asthma and allergies,” says Mike Tringale, director of external affairs, for the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America, “in fact, the official guidelines for asthma care recommend things beyond just medication, like vacuuming and air filtration, to improve the home environment.”

Whole House

• Thank you for not smoking. Don’t allow smoking anywhere in your house.
• Keep temperature around 70°F and relative humidity between 30-50 percent. Hot, humid houses are perfect breeding grounds for dust mites and mold. You can measure your humidity with a hygrometer, which you can buy at most local hardware stores. For humidity control, use room dehumidifiers or a whole-house humidity control system.
• Remove carpets. Carpets are home sweet home for dust mites. If you don’t have hard surface floors like wood, linoleum or tile, consider at least removing the carpet from the bedrooms of anyone with asthma or dust mite allergies.

Basement

• Keep it dry. A dark, damp basement is great for growing mold. Use a dehumidifier to remove mold-friendly moisture. If your dehumidifier has a tray that collects water, empty and clean it weekly so mold doesn’t grow there.
• Fumes away. Don’t keep solvents, chemicals, paints or fuel in the basement (or anywhere in the house). Store them in a shed or building not connected to the house.

Kitchen

• Not a crumb left. Wipe up crumbs and food spills right away. Don’t pile dirty dishes in the sink. Store it right.
• Store food and trash in containers with tight lids. Why? Cockroach droppings are a main trigger of asthma symptoms. So make your home uninviting to bugs.

Bathroom

• Exhaust! Exhaust! Run the exhaust fan while taking baths or showers. If your bathroom doesn’t have one, put one in. A fan will help keep your bathroom mold-free.
• Quick action zone. Clean or replace shower curtains when they get mildewed. Scrub away mold as soon as you see it. Quickly repair leaks so you don’t encourage mold to grow.

Bedrooms

• Cut the clutter. Give away or box up knickknacks, and limit yourself to a very few special mementos on display. Don’t store books in your bedroom. When it comes to preventing allergy and asthma symptoms, it pays to be neat.
• Wrap it up. Mattresses that are not protected can actually double their weight with dirt, dust mites (and dust mite waste) in 10 years, even when you keep sheets on them. Put mattresses, box springs and pillows in allergy-proof zipper cases. You can buy these at department stores or online.

• Wash regularly. Wash your bedding weekly in 130°F hot water. Replace pillows every two years.
• No pets allowed. Even if you aren’t allergic to pets, the dander and skin they shed provides food for dust mites. So, best case: Make bedrooms a no-pet zone. At minimum: Don’t let your pet sleep in your bed.

Should I clean my air ducts?

You might want to save your money. According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), there’s no evidence from studies that air duct cleaning prevents health problems.

There’s also no evidence that dirty air ducts increase the amount of dust in a home. This is because much of the dirt in the air ducts sticks to the surface of the ducts and doesn’t get blown into the rooms.