How to Make Your Home Healthier in 2020 (and beyond)

Home….sweet home! It takes a lot of love and effort to make a house/apartment a home. Especially the recent pandemic situation is a huge wakeup call of us to make our home healthier to protect our loved ones from the outside nasties, e.g.: pollen, disease-carrying bugs, pesticides, noxious solvents, etc. You can take some simple everyday steps to prevent mold, bacteria, viruses, allergy-provoking animal dander, and dust mites from causing illness. Here’re how to make your home healthier in 2020 and beyond.

How to make your home healthier:

Food Habits:

I am a big believer in “what you will get, is what you put in your body”. To keep the members of your home healthy, you should start by eating healthy food and taking necessary supplements. Foods high in Vitamin A, C, E, D, Zinc and Protein boost our immunity and give us a fighting chance to ward off common seasonal illnesses. Here is How to Be Proactive About Your Immune System.
It’s also better to cook your own foods than following a quick and easy fast-food-take-out solution. Keep 1-2 days of the week for cooking (aka Meal Planning). Involve your family members, distribute the work-load and teach the children to help out. You can read about the Beginners Guide to Meal Prepping here.

How to Make Your Home Healthier- food habit

Sleep Habits:

My husband has been asking to put a TV in our bedroom for a long time, but I always say no. Because I feel like the bedroom should be a place of relaxation. Specially as I work from home, it’s imperative for my mental & physical health to keep the work-place and rest-place separate.
How you are lighting your bedroom or blocking out the lights also plays a role in your sleeping habits. Use machine-washable sunlight blocking curtain (or blackout curtain) so that you can get uninterrupted sleep till the time your alarm clock wakes you up. I have previously talked about 5 Ways Your Home Can Impact Your Health. Have a look at the article to learn more.

How to Make Your Home Healthier- sleep habit

Air Quality:

Maintaining a healthy air quality in and around your house is not impossible. You will need an air purifier, and considering the condition we are passing through nowadays, investing in an air purifier is a necessity.

I have started using Okaysou air purifier for my home from this month. My husband is allergic to pollen and dust and even if we vacuum the house 4-5 times a week it’s almost impossible to keep it pristine and pollutant-free (mostly because we have wall-to-wall carpet). After we started using the air purifier, his sneezes stopped dramatically. Regular cleaning along with the air-purifier is a great way to keep a healthier environment around the house.

Okaysou has 2 different sizes of air-purifiers. Okaysou AirMax8L is designed for large rooms up to 800sq ft. It adopts the ultra-duo medical-grade filtration system which is effective to remove the widest pollutants such as dust, mold, pet dander and hair, bacteria, VOCs, etc. up to 0.25micons.

Okaysou AirMic4s is specially designed for small to medium rooms and is ideal for your bedroom, study room, dorms, etc. Also using its ultra-duo medical filtration system, it can help to remove 99.97% airborne particles up to 0.3 microns. I have been using this model as I can move it around my house according to my requirement.

This air purifier also has sleep mode with the noise level of only 24dB, it turns off all lights to create a better sleep environment to ensure an undisturbed sleep. Moreover, it has a unique Duo-filter purification system. Duo-filter has a Cold catalyst, which can truly degrade toxic gases that other 3-stage filters can’t do. You can find them on Amazon and on Okaysou.com.

Water Quality:

If you can afford it, you can switch to bottled filtered water. If you are drinking tap water, consider investing in a Faucet mount water filtration system. According to NYTimes, it will “help further reduce pollutants like lead from old water pipes, pesticide runoff in rural areas and byproducts of chemicals like chlorine that are used to treat drinking water.” Specially if you are renting your house and regular maintenance is not done, a tap water filter is excellent for your family’s health.

Disinfection:

Regular cleaning, air purifying and also disinfection plays a crucial role in a healthy home environment. As I mentioned in my previous article, “Fumes from the chemicals of the cleaning products can irritate your lungs and cause you headaches. If the chemical accidentally comes in touch with your skin, it can aggravate it or cause an allergic reaction.”

Add Greeneries, colors, lights:

Use plants around your home, add colors and lights to make a space more lively and less gloomy. Colors, lights can impact your mood. For example: Blue, orange, green, yellow makes me happy. Choose a color that YOU love and make your space a happy space. You don’t have to buy anything super pricey, there are tons of affordable options on Amazon. I have added a few below:

Daily Sunlight:

When your skin is exposed to sunlight, it makes vitamin D from cholesterol. The sun’s ultraviolet B (UVB) rays hit cholesterol in the skin cells, providing the energy for vitamin D synthesis to occur. (Source: Healthline). In healthy doses, sunlight can improve our mood, health and immune system. This is why I love to go for a walk with my family in the day time. In this way, we are getting sunlight and also doing some exercise.

Sun protection:

Speaking of daily sunlight, do not forget your sun protection i.e. sunscreens. I have placed a decorative tray near the entryway of my house with sunscreens, in this way we don’t forget to put on sunscreen when we are going out. Here are a couple of products we use regularly.