Dealing With The Invisible Dirt In Your Home

If you’re like most property owners when you see an episode of the TV show “Hoarders”, or something similar, you probably feel physically ill when you see all the junk that people wind up storing in their home and the filth and grime that winds up becoming a part of their life too. What most people watching those shows wind up thinking is “How can you possibly let your home get that dirty?”, and this is because most people are pretty tidy when it comes down to it. Well okay we all have our off days where the laundry builds up and there’s a few pizza boxes or empty Chinese food cartons that need to be thrown out but beside that you like to keep your home neat and tidy right? Of course you do!

What most people don’t realize is that your home actually has a hidden dirt problem that you’ll probably need to deal with for a number of reasons – mainly to do with your health. You see unless you’re living in a clean room (a sterile environment in a lab) then the air around you and every piece of fabric furniture and bed clothing you have is covered in dust mites and these dust mites can cause havoc with your health; the problem is even worse though if you have any kind of respiratory illness like asthma.

But why do these dust mites swarm around your house or apartment like that? Well you see the vast majority of the dust your see around you is actually human skin that has shed and it just so happens that dust mites just love to chow down on this stuff. A lot of people then suffer allergic reactions from the waste that these dust mites excrete so you have a two-fold problem that you need to deal with.

So how exactly do you deal with the problem of all those dust mites infesting your home?

You’re going to need to launch a multi-pronged attacked on these little critters to completely eliminate them. First things first you need to change your bedclothes at least once per week and make sure you immediately wash the used bedclothes in a good detergent on a hot wash. This will help kill the existing dust mites and wash away any eggs that are waiting to hatch. Also try to keep any family pets from sleeping on your bed as they can carry even more dust mites around with them – ruining all the good work you’ve done cleaning your bed linen.

Next you should avoid making up your bed first thing in the morning even if this has been a habit you’ve had for years. The reason why you don’t want to make your bed is that you’re basically providing a dark, safe, warm and potentially moist breeding environment for the dust mites in your home – which is exactly what they love! So leave your covers turned down and open your drapes, shades or blinds to leave as much natural sunlight into your room as possible – this will help to kill off the dust mites that are exposed to it.

Lastly you should use an air purifier to filter the air in your home and the more modern HEPA (High-Efficiency Particulate Air) filters are capable of trapping particles which are as small as 0.2 microns, which is perfect for capturing dust mites. You can also buy vacuum cleaners which have HEPA filters built into them. This means that every time you clean your home you’re trapping more and more of the skin that attracts the dust mites and more of the dust mites themselves.

Having dust mites in your home doesn’t mean that you’re a dirty person or that you live in a dirty home because even the very cleanest of homes will have millions of these critters lurking in every corner and making their home in every sofa and every bed. In fact you’d never even notice that dust mites were in your home except that they cause allergic reactions in an awful lot of people as well as being a primary cause of respiratory illnesses like asthma.

The good news is that just following the simple steps we gave you above is usually enough to stop all but the worst dust mite problems.