Keep The Air Clean At Home, step by step

We already shared how house plants can keep your indoor air quality up to snuff. And we lately went on a clean-air mission, first snagging a few English Ivy plants of our own (to add to our Boston Fern and Burro Tail riddled home). Needless to say it felt fairly good introducing an army of air purifiers, and we did not stop there.

We also replaced the air filters for our heating and cooling system. This is something you should try to do every three months. We used to be lucky if we remembered to change them once in the winter and once in the summer, but thanks to our new programmable thermostat, we got a reminder this time (it in fact allows us to record the date that we change our filters so it can gently prod us to do it again three months later). Smart little machine we got there.

We also seized the day and picked up a second carbon monoxide detector/fire alarm (it is strong that they make them multitask these days) to install near our gas fireplace in the den- one of the major carbon monoxide danger zones in any house (other scary sources: gas stoves, wood burning stoves, and gas heaters).

Carbon monoxide is no laughing matter (in fact we lately heard a bone chilling tale about a mother and her son slipping off to sleep and narrowly cheating death when the mother awoke disoriented and scared but had sufficient sense to run out of the house with her baby). Yup, another carbon monoxide detector (now we have one in the bedroom and one on the other end of the house in the den) is certainly worth a little peace of mind. And we are even more confident that the air we breathe is so fresh and so clean.

What about you folks? Do you have other means to keep the air clean? Or other ways to remember when it is time to replace those filters? Dish the air cleaning dirt. And for more general cleaning pointers check out these streamlined strategies from Real Plain (who knew 4pm was the best time to clean?).

Images courtesy of amazon.com