When it’s pollen season, you know what’s causes the allergy flare, but what are the causes of allergy symptoms the rest of the year? Allergens may lurk in your home and cause you to experience irritating allergy symptoms year round. Check out these surprising places allergens lurk inside your home.
Living Room Hot Spots
Friends and extended family members who have pets usually carry pet dander with them on their clothes. When they visit and sit on your couch, they deposit the allergen which will cause you to have an allergy flare.
Couch and chair cushions and throw pillows which come into contact with skin may harbor dust mites. When dead skin cells slough off and become imbedded in fabric cushions, it’s an open invitation to dust mites, a well known allergy flare.
If you have carpeting in the living room, every person who enters the room from the outdoors brings in a variety of irritants and pollutants into the room on their shoes. Those allergens become imbedded into carpeting and cause allergy flares.
A good vacuum cleaner with a clean HEPA filter is the best weapon for removing these allergen on upholstered furniture and carpeting before they can cause allergy symptoms.
Allergen Hiding Places in the Bathroom
The moist, warm environment in the bathroom creates a prime breeding ground for mold and mildew. A plastic shower curtain, rubber bathtub mat, damp towels all harbor mold and mildew spores that trigger allergy flares. Carpeted bath mats catch dust and dead skin cells, providing a haven for dust mites.
If the laundry room is in or near the bathroom, the washing machine is also a damp, dark fortress where mold and mild spores like to breed and reproduce.
Bleach will kill the allergy causing mold and mildew on all hard bathroom surfaces. Run the washer (without clothes) and pour one cup of bleach into the wash cycle to kill mold and mildew inside the machine.
Kitchens Have Surprising Allergen Sources
Think your kitchen is spotlessly clean? Have a look at the refrigerator door seal. It likely has black mold spores growing in it. As food is moved in and out of the refrigerator, moisture, spills and crumbs build up in the crevices of the rubber door seal, providing an ideal location for mold to grow. A cotton swab dipped in bleach will clean the refrigerator door seal and kill all the mold.
Cooking steam cloaks the kitchen as we cook and not all those areas get cleaned after each meal. The hot steam settles on cabinet doors, shelves, walls and ceilings, creating a place for dust to be captured (and turn into a greasy mess) and mold to grow. Eliminate the hidden kitchen allergens by wiping the kitchen down in a bleach and water solution regularly.
Source: Areas of Your Home Where Black Mold May be Hiding article on Let’s Build website, accessed July 12, 2011
Helen Stewart - Ms. Stewart resides in Georgia where she is enjoying her career as a freelance writer. She writes for many online publications including ...
