Allergy Tips Tuesday- Spring Cleaning!!

Some of the most common indoor allergens -- the ones that can trigger childhood

allergy symptoms -- are often found in bedrooms. 


I was surprised to find many articles about how to keep a child with allergies
room in tip top shape. I have always been more worried about our living room
and what lurks in our carpet, which is important too. But then it occurred to 
me that our son does sleep in his room for 10 hours every night! Wow probably 
I should pay a little closer attention to his bed. 


There are so many articles that are EXTREME in my opinion about how
to keep a child's room with allergies clean. One gave detailed step by step 
instructions on how to clean the sheets, blankets, comforters, duvet covers, 
pillows, and on and on. It was quite amazing to me. I myself have been
caught in the trap of freaking out with the littlest exposure for our son.
If you have done anaphylaxis or have done an asthma exacerbation, you
want to steer clear of doing it again. But I have come to find there has to
be a happy medium where my son is safe  and I am not being crazy lady.


Our son is allergic to 35 things that we are aware of in the areas of food,
drugs and environmental allergens. It can be very overwhelming if I 
think about it too much. So I just do my best to steer clear of things
knowing that I can not always keep him away from all of them and 
trying to keep him away from the BIG ones. 


That being said I have found that his room can cause issues. So
there are a few things you can do to keep the room a little more
allergen free. First, put a mattress cover on the mattress. We had
already done this because he was a toddler and still having the 
occasional night accident. Mattresses harbor all kinds of horrible
things that no one really wants to think about!! Dust mites being
one of the big ones. Next get a allergy safe pillow cover. We bought
our son a special allergy safe pillow and cover. They are really not
that expensive and when you think about it, that is where their face
is going to be. Lastly, you need to be washing the bed linens once 
a week. I am not that great about this in the off seasons. Usually April
to June is our son's worst time of year and I work hard during
that time to keep all linens clean. Obviously dusting and vacuuming 
are two other important things. But I think the bed is the big
issue because they spend 8-10 hours a night there and it needs to
be a place of comfort and a place that does not cause them to have
a full blown allergy attack.


Lastly, one interesting tip I read that I had not really thought about,
because we don't have bunk beds, many suggest putting the allergy
kid on the top bunk. When the dust and allergens falls, it will not be 
on the allergic one as much.


Any other tips? Chime in and let me know what you think!

Weekly Allergy Topic: Carpet vs. Hardwood or Laminate

Have you ever vacuumed at that time of the day when the sun is going down and you

can see all the particulate in the air flying around? You would not normally see

this if it were say around noon. The perfect angle of the sun allows you to see 

the nightmare that is sitting in your carpet now floating in the air.

Almost one year ago our son was diagnosed with a multitude of environmental

allergies. The majority of which live in our yard. In addition to his food and drug 

allergies this brought his count of things, that he is allergic to, that we know about,
to 25.  I know that there is more. So naturally we started looking for ways to 
decrease the allergens in the home. Primarily his sleeping area. So I bought a 
special pillowcase and he has a mattress cover. We bought a rainbow
vacuum and carpet cleaner which is also a air purifier. I try to clean the carpets in his 
room 2 times a year. I have read recommendations that you should clean your carpets 
every 12-16 months!! WHAT??!!! Do these people have children or even live in their houses?

The building of our house started when I was 8 months pregnant with our son and we 
have had a daughter as well. We had the option to have the majority of the house 
tiled but we opted out because of course you worry about babies learning to walk on 
hard floors. If we only knew then what we know now. This has been the most difficult 
year we have had with our son as far as asthma goes. And so we are thinking about 
putting laminate in the majority of the house. The tile that we do have has been difficult
to keep up and so I don't really want more of it. 

So I have been on a research trek to find out what people are saying about carpet vs 
laminate. The nurse part of me has looked at actual research articles and the mom 
part has looked at blogs and forums. The two worlds have not been in agreement.
The research world says that carpet now days is made to hold more allergens. They
compared the USA which is a big carpet country to Europe which is not. They say they
found no difference in reports of difficulty of allergies. This was the same report that
said to only clean carpets every 12-18 months unless you had a stain, mud, etc. My
mom brought up an excellent point about this research and that is how often were
each types of flooring cleaned. This was not part of the study.


The mom, forum, blog world says that it can be a huge benefit to have the laminate or
hardwood because you can see the allergens sitting on your floor and you know that
you are getting them all up. Several post I read said that while the carpet does hold 
allergens more as soon as some one stomps or children run around, the allergens get
stirred up. I have definitely seen this to be true.The down side of the laminate is really 
you need to vacuum or wet mop pretty much every day. My friend who had laminate
said that yes it is a pain to clean everyday BUT she would absolutely have it over carpet
any day. Let's face it, carpet has it's moments of not being user friendly.


So what do you think? We are really leaning towards it. It is easy to install, 
it looks great, and I just think I would feel good about being able to see the clean.