Spring Cleaning Series - How to improve indoor air quality

Suck it up: Invest in a HEPA vacuum filter

Is your trusty vacuum cleaner, the most crucial of all spring cleaning tools, about ready to bite the dust instead of suck it up? Use this unfortunate occurrence as an opportunity to invest in a vacuum that harnesses HEPA (High Efficiency Particulate Air) technology.

Although they’re great at removing clumps of dust and dirt, traditional vacuums with standard filters also do a bang-up job of recirculating tiny-teeny fine particles (pollen, animal dander and dust mite feces for example) around your house. This, of course, is bad news for those suffering from asthma and allergies. Vacuums with HEPA filters, however, remove 99.97 percent of allergens of .3 microns. In other words, they suck up pretty much everything. Although more expensive, HEPA vacuums can help to dramatically improve indoor air quality – just be sure to look for true HEPA filter models and not “HEPA-like” models.

Spring Cleaning Series - How to improve indoor air quality

Homemade cleaners: Tried, true and grandmother-approved

Just as swapping out synthetically scented products with fragrance-free alternatives can help to improve indoor air quality, so does concocting your own cleaners. Added bonus? You’ll save a few bucks. There are numerous reliable recipes available for effective DIY household cleaners that employ items that you may already have around the house: baking soda, white vinegar, lemon juice, salt, hydrogen peroxide, and more. And if you’re still hung up on scent, adding certain essential oils not only boost the stain-removing and sanitizing abilities of the cleaners, but also make the proceedings a bit more olfactory-friendly.

Spring Cleaning Series - How to improve indoor air quality

Eau de nothing: Opt for fragrance-free cleaning products

Nothing says spring like inhaling an invigorating whiff of “alpine meadow” after going to town on the kitchen with a surface cleaner. However, those reassuring scents that signal a state of clean are rather dirty in composition: there are more than 3,000 petroleum-based chemicals used to manufacture fragrances found in household cleaners and other consumer products. Overwhelmingly, these chemicals, often responsible for triggering asthma, allergic reactions and a host of respiratory ailments, are not listed on the product packaging.

So how to avoid? When restocking your arsenal of cleaners and laundry products, opt for unscented/fragrance-free varieties. Or, go with an eco-friendly scented cleaner produced by a company that’s transparent about what exactly goes into each bottle. Generally, the scents found in these products are naturally derived and safer. The Environmental Working Group’s Guide to Healthy Cleaning is a good place to start your reconnaissance work to learn more about cleaning products free of artificial fragrances and other dubious chemicals.

5 Spring Cleaning Ideas to Improve Indoor Air Quality (Series)

Ah, springtime! Time to throw open the windows and sponge, sweep, swab, squeegee, scour, scrub and scrape your home into a speckless state of perfection. Or, at the very least, it’s probably a wise idea to stash away the snow boots and give the contents of your fridge the seasonal once-over.

Spring cleaning also provides us with the opportunity to zero in on and ideally improve the indoor air quality of our homes. For many, the aim of spring cleaning is to achieve a state of spic and span nirvana that’s capable of knocking the socks off even the most fastidious mother-in-law or anyone else who relishes nothing more than detecting – and gleefully pointing out – spots that, whoops, you “missed.” 

To reach this state, we often find ourselves employing products to help give our homes a spotless, mother-in-law-proof glow. Yet at the same time, these same products can compromise indoor air quality and, as a result, our health and overall wellbeing. In fact, air pollutants are two to 10 times higher indoors than they are outdoors. The household cleaners that we spritz and spray during zesty spring cleaning sessions – and throughout the year – are among the culprits.

Follow along as next week we provide five suggestions on how to breathe easy and improve the indoor air quality of your home this spring, while also leaving it dirt-free and in apple pie-order.