Create a healthy home

Clean enough to be healthy--a common refrain about comfortable homes. But what does it actually mean? What are the areas we need to pay special attention to insure that our homes actually are healthy places for us to live? We need to pay attention to the air and the water -- those parts of residences that we ingest -- as well as making sure that our pets and plants contribute to our well being and don't make us sick.

Air quality determines the amount of oxygen available to our bodies from our breathing. Not only our lungs and hearts, but also our muscles and digestive track depend on oxygen to do their work and keep us at optimal health. The importance of the air inside our homes and offices, where most of us spend most of our time, is a key factor in the overall health of environment. Modern construction techniques, in an effort to conserve energy, seal up our living spaces with air tight windows, heavily insulated walls and ceilings, and interlocking gaskets around doors and sliding windows. While these advances work beautifully to keep in heat and keep out winter's cold, they also keep contaminated, stale air inside. Even with excellent filtration on our temperature systems (furnaces and air conditioners), we need fresh, clean air to provide us with sufficient oxygen.

Use top quality filters on the heating and cooling systems in your home; clean or change them frequently as recommended by the manufacturer. If you have an older system, do that monthly. Remind yourself to replace the filter when you pay your monthly utility bill.

In the kitchen, use the fan over your range, and clean it frequently by soaking it in hot soapy water or running it through the dishwasher.

Use caution with scented cleaning products or artificial fragrances. The same chemicals that create the artificial scent can be harmful when inhaled, and they stay in the air long after the fragrance is gone. Find some cleaning recipes that use safer substances like baking soda or white vinegar, which work just as well, are less expensive and much healthier than the fancy, store-bought solutions.

Avoid covering up odors with fake "natural" fragrances; if you want your home to smell like flowers or spices, use the real thing. A spray of eucalyptus freshens a bathroom as a wall arrangement or in a vase, and you can get extra "oomph" by crushing one of the leaves. Also, striking a match will remove bathroom odor. Health food stores now sell matches impregnated with essential oils that leave a light, fresh fragrance momentarily after removing the odor.

Allow as much circulation throughout your home as you can by leaving doors open between the rooms, and open your windows as often as possible unless the air outside is truly awful. (Use common safety sense by having locked screens.) Fresh, outdoor air circulating through your house removes the stale air and helps to dry out moisture left in the furniture and bedding from humans just living and sleeping there.

Vacuum frequently -- daily in high traffic areas, especially if you have pets, active children, or a large number of people in your home. Even walking through a room stirs up clouds of germ-laden toxins that have fallen to the floor. Use HEPA filters or bags in the vacuum cleaner to contain the micro-organisms once they've been picked up.

Prevent the outside dirt from coming in by using good door mats outside all entrances, and encouraging family members to go stocking footed while they're inside the house.

Have your water tested, and then purchase a water filter that removes what needs to come out. Once you know what's in your water that needs to come out, read the information about the filters--none of them remove everything, and you need to purchase the one most applicable to your own home. Whether this is a full-house filter or one that screws on to the kitchen tap depends on your needs and your financial situation. Then be sure to change the filter at least as often as is recommended by the manufacturer.

Let your water run for five minutes every morning to keep the pipes from collecting sediment. You may want to have your plumbing replaced if it is old (especially if it contains lead) and to have your hot water heater checked. Do not use hot tap water for drinking of cooking; heat hold water on the stove.

In the kitchen, use your dishwasher for everything you can, especially glassware and silverware that actually go into peoples mouths, and use the heat dry for sanitation. If you do hand wash your dishes, do not dry them with a towel. Let them air dry, covered loosely with a fresh dish towel. Even though this may go against the efficient fiber of "finishing the dishes" passed down from past generations, hand towel drying increases the risk of germ contamination.

Do NOT use the sponge or dishcloth dipped in used dishwater to wipe down the counters! This spreads all the microorganisms from the dirty dishes all over the kitchen! Instead, use a clean sponge and a fresh cleaning solution to clean the counters, the table, the refrigerator door. Replace your sponges every couple of weeks, and let them soak in a bleach solution after each use. Tests done with ultra violet lights show that the sponges and cloths used for dish washing and not sanitized afterward are a teeming mass of germs after two hours.

Pets add life and love and companionship to millions of homes everywhere in the world, but they do create special cleaning situations if they are indoor animals. Contain their pet hair by providing them their own beds, and train them to stay off the furniture. Wash their bedding frequently, and vacuum the pet beds whenever you vacuum the rest of the furniture.

More serious than pet hair and dander, pet feces can carry diseases that are communicable to humans. Reptiles, especially turtles, commonly transfer salmonella, even if they themselves are healthy animals. They should not be kept in a home with infants or small children.

Wear rubber or vinyl gloves when cleaning the cat's litter box or picking up pet feces outdoors.

Houseplants can bring a fresh, wonderful outdoor feeling to the indoors, but recent studies show that they don't act as natural air filters as efficiently as once was thought. They can, however, provide an excellent medium for mold growth if the potting soil is allowed to sour from over watering or improper use of plant food. Take care to water them only as needed, watch for signs of mold growth, and add bits of charcoal to the soil to cut down on the risk of mold -- not healthy for either the plant or the humans!

We all want our homes to be safe havens, nurturing to everyone who lives there. Housekeeping is an important part of keeping that atmosphere, and common sense health habits contribute to healthy people.