Life of Les

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It’s an understatement to say that living with allergies and asthma can be challenging. My husband has struggled for years with his breathing in our home due to asthma and cat allergies. He has taken allergy shots for 3.5 years, but he still had lingering breathing difficulty that immunotherapy was not able to eliminate. However, with the right mitigation strategies, we’ve discovered that his asthma and allergies don’t have to be completely crippling. We apply a multi-pronged approach at reducing allergens in our home that I hope can inspire some ideas in someone else facing the same challenge.

Cleaning The Air: Arguably the biggest tool at our disposal is the use of AIR FILTERS! These devices (we have several) are simply a game changer, removing airborne particles and allergens from the air and providing relief. We have one larger and more powerful air filter that can be found here for our bedroom, but have other smaller and very affordable ones spread throughout the house that can be found here. 

Improved Indoor Air QualityFrom Air Filters: Indoor air quality is often more polluted than outdoor air, containing pollutants like volatile organic compounds (VOCs), trapped pet dander, and other airborne particles. Ever wonder why people say “I need some fresh air”? Air filters can efficiently capture and remove pollutants, creating a cleaner and healthier indoor environment for those with allergies and asthma. The best part to air filters is that they can be run 24/7 for constant improved air quality.

Cleaning The Carpet: Our home is mostly carpet, so we ended up splurging on a dyson animal-specific allergen vacuum to help keep the dander down and it has turned out to be a great buy. It is by far the strongest vacuum that we’ve ever owned, and is multi-functional with attachments that can be used to vacuum our cloth furniture (the cats LOVE to leave their mark on our couch!). For an extra “kick”, we put some Arm & Hammer Allergen-Reduction Powder into the carpet and couch before we vacuum them that can be found here. We like this powder specifically because it’s safe for kids, and our baby is currently on the carpet a lot doing tummy time, and she’ll be even more active on the carpet as she gets older. We also have felt it’s improved my husband’s allergies ever since we added the allergen powder to our vacuuming regiment.

Cleaning The Couches & Cloth Furniture: As previously mentioned, we use the dyson animal-specific allergen vacuum and Arm & Hammer Allergen-Reduction Powder for our carpet. We also use both the vacuum (it has very convenient attachments that make this easy) and the powder on our couches and commonly used cloth furniture (kitchen chairs, rocking chair). Because we spend more time on furniture than on the carpet, we go one step further at allergy reduction – after vacuuming, we spray the couch down with an a mineral spray that is designed to eliminate particles that trigger allergies and asthma. This spray can be found here. A convenient part of this spray is that you can buy concentrate refills for very cheap and mixing the concentrate to refill the spray bottle is seamless process.

Cleaning the Sheets and Curtains: We wash our bed sheets with a specific laundry detergent that can be found here and is designed to eliminate allergens in the washing cycle. My husband raves over that first night of sleep after we wash the bed sheets, so I can say this has definitely worked. Unfortunately, we can’t be washing the sheets every day! In addition, we also wash our curtains a few times a year with this detergent as our cats have a tendency of sitting on the ledges, filling the curtains with concentrations of their hair and dander. To be honest, I’m not sure how effective this is, but it makes my husband at least feel mentally better when we do it.. maybe it’s placebo, but it certainly can’t hurt!

In summary, if you or a loved one experience breathing problems in your home from allergies, asthma, or other environmental factors, it doesn’t have to be the end of the world. My husband’s sleep has been disrupted for years due to poor air quality and high concentrations of dander in our carpet. Adding a baby into the equation didn’t help him in his efforts to sleep better, either. Adding the Air filters, consistently putting anti-allergen powder into the carpet, vacuuming with a HEPA vacuum (dyson animal-specific allergen vacuum), and washing our bed sheets in a specific laundry detergent aimed at eliminating allergens on a regular basis has done wonders for him. I’m very grateful that we’ve discovered the 95% solution towards combatting his breathing difficulties. It was definitely a trial-and-error process to get to our point of what worked and what didn’t work (we ended up having to replace our vacuum as it just wasn’t cutting it), so I hope our lessons learned can help someone out that has faced the same battle that we have!