Maintaining excellent indoor air quality is crucial to your health, comfort, and peace of mind. Your indoor air quality changes over time, and pollutants can accumulate in the air. Having a home with clean air circulating and uncompromised health is essential, which is a good reason to remedy your poor indoor air quality. What can you do to improve your indoor air quality and restore comfort to your space and make it inviting? Here’s a look at some of the ways that you can boost your indoor air quality.
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Change Air Filters
Ventilating with clean outdoor air is an effective way to improve your indoor air, but if your filters are blocked or clogged, clean air will never make it indoors. Blocked air filters are the source of pollutants (dander, dust, mold) and if you want them to continue performing their job.
You may need to upgrade the air filter in your furnace or HVAC system to improve your indoor air quality effectively. While air filters cannot eliminate all pollutants from your indoor air, they can limit indoor air pollution and keep your HVAC system running smoothly. Your air filters should be changed regularly or replaced every couple of months to maintain good air quality in your home.
General Cleanliness
It’s crucial that you endeavor to keep your home’s indoor environment clean and, therefore, healthy. This takes work and requires you to be proactive in your approach. You shouldn’t wait until your indoor space is dirty before you take action, but try to prevent it from reaching a point where cleanliness is an issue that impacts your indoor air quality.
You can improve the cleanliness of your home, and in turn, your indoor air quality in several ways:
- Use ceiling fans to recirculate the air frequently by reversing its flow and setting it on low. This will pull the polluted air up and push it out of your home and help to prevent the air from becoming stagnant.
- Regularly and consistently vacuum the carpets in your home and thoroughly sweep your floors. It’s recommended that you vacuum roughly once per week, but depending on the size of your household, you may need to vacuum more frequently to keep your space clean. Consider getting your carpets professionally cleaned every six months to rid them of pollutants and particles that are trapped deep in their fibers. Sweeping and mopping your floors twice a week should suffice.
- Empty indoor trash cans before they start overflowing.
Plants/Dry Air
Having indoor plants is an easy and effective way to freshen the air because they are natural air filters. Indoor plants can improve the indoor air quality in your home through photosynthesis by removing carbon dioxide from the air then converting it to oxygen. Plants also limit contaminants like volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and are most effective if placed in direct sunlight. Another way plants boost the air quality in your home is by neutralizing toxins through metabolization. Plants that can pull contaminants from your indoor air include ferns, lilies, English Ivy, Barberton Daisy, pothos, snake plant, lady palm, and bamboo.
Your indoor air quality says a lot about the cleanliness of your home, and it impacts how the comfort of your indoor environment. To enhance your indoor air quality, remember to change or replace your air filters, be proactive about general cleanliness in your home, and add plants to your space. Make your indoor air quality a priority for your health and overall comfort.
