Month: June 2024

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New Moms Series #8: Trust Your Senses, Use Your Sense: Monitoring Essentials for Your Home

It’s a safe bet you know your home or apartment like the back of your hand. When something is off — a musty smell, a damp corner, a speck on the wall — it’s not likely to go unnoticed.

These instances are your senses telling you that action is needed. But though your senses may work well as a first line of defense, they’re often not enough, especially with a newborn entering the picture.

In this eighth and final installment of GOT MOLD?’s New Moms Healthy Home Series, we’re focusing on using technology to help monitor your home environment. Because once your baby is born, the safest bet is that your attention — and senses — will be focused elsewhere. 

Stay Informed with Digital Humidity Gauges

We’ve talked about the “Goldilocks zone” for humidity—neither too dry nor too damp. To keep tabs on this, consider a digital humidity gauge that links to an app for remote monitoring through Bluetooth. This allows you to keep tabs on your home’s humidity levels from anywhere, ensuring that every room, especially where baby sleeps, has just the right amount of moisture. Govee makes a great one, which you can check out here.

For those preferring to go app-free (old school, if you will) this humidity gauge from VOCOO does the job beautifully. It offers a nice balance of simplicity and effectiveness, and gives you one less reason to look at your phone while changing diapers. 

Leak Sensors: Your Early Warning System

Water leaks are sneaky little culprits that can cause big problems if left unchecked. Placing leak sensors in vulnerable areas — like that spot in the basement or beside your trusty but temperamental hot water heater — can help keep a small problem from turning into a disaster. Govee leak sensors pair seamlessly with their aforementioned humidity gauges, forming a smart defense network against moisture. Get yours here. (We swear we don’t work for Govee, we just like their products!)

A Breath of Fresh Air

Though owners of Turkish baths would say otherwise, not everything is about moisture. One of the more important aspects of healthy indoor air is low carbon dioxide (CO2) levels, which we exhale every time we breathe. CO2 is also produced when we cook with a gas stove, which is another reason kitchen exhaust vents are so crucial.

With modern construction being so tight, CO2 can quickly build up to unhealthy levels, leading to fatigue and cognitive impairment. Ever wonder why you get so tired after a few minutes of boarding a plane? Well, this is why. So, for this reason, we love the Aranet4, which monitors CO2, as well as temperature and humidity. Check out our recent Instagram post about it.

Why Sensors Matter

You’ve got a lot on your plate, and it’s impossible to be everywhere at once. Your senses are important, but well-designed technology acts far quicker than our natural detection capabilities. After all, keeping your home’s air safe for your family isn’t just an ideal, it’s essential. The effects of moisture buildup, mold growth, and CO2 exposure are too great to ignore, and they require prevention, not just reaction. 

So do yourself a favor and stay one step ahead with the right monitoring tools. We promise they’ll provided invaluable peace of mind…even when your baby is scrambling it.  

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New Moms Series #7: Clean, But Not Too Clean!

You’ve probably learned, at some time or another, that too much of a good thing can be a bad thing. Over-exercise and you might get injured. Overeat and you might have stomach trouble. Over-drink and you might find yourself wandering the streets in your birthday suit. There are endless examples that prove the premise.

And the same holds true for cleaning your home, particularly when you have a newborn whose immune system is still developing. While it’s essential to keep things sanitary, aiming for a sterile environment devoid of microbes (organisms too small to see with the naked eye, also known as microorganisms) can do more harm than good.

Instead, the goal should be to maintain the cleanliness of your home while promoting a healthy microbial ecology. Here’s how:

  1. Embrace the Good Microbes 🦠 

Mountains of research indicate that a diverse microbial environment plays a crucial role in developing a healthy immune system. Exposing your child to a variety of microbes has been shown to help decrease the likelihood of asthma, allergies, and other autoimmune diseases.

The fact is, not all bacteria is bad. Most are harmless and many are beneficial, with only about 100 species known to cause serious human disease. Likewise, some degree of mold spores is a normal part of a healthy environment.

Does this mean you should let harmful germs or molds run roughshod over your home? Of course not. But you should, through proper ventilation, moisture control, and the right cleaning products, allow your home to maintain a natural, healthy balance.

  1. Clean, Not Sterile 🧼 

Aim for a home that’s clean — free from excessive dirt and debris — without striving for sterility. Effective cleaning removes dirt and reduces germs without eliminating the beneficial microbes that contribute to our health. In other words, don’t remove the good in your quest to get rid of the bad.

A visually clean space is the goal, not an environment devoid of all life. The more we learn about antimicrobial products, the more we understand how harmful they can be to the planet and to us as individuals.

  1. Clean Doesn’t Have a Smell 👃 

Ever walk into a place and think, “Wow, it smells so clean in here!”? It’s understandable — we’ve been trained to associate certain odors and aromas with cleanliness — but it’s an illusion. Clean doesn’t have a smell. Clean is the absence of dirt, not the presence of fragrances. This applies to laundry detergents, hand soaps, etc.

Opt for products like Force of Nature, which introduces an electrical current to salt, water and vinegar to form a solution that cleans surfaces without leaving harmful residues and odors. It’s the perfect example of a cleanser that promotes a balanced microbial environment, not a scorched earth.

  1. Use Your HEPA Tools

HEPA-filtered vacuums and air purifiers are invaluable for maintaining indoor air quality. They remove fine particles and pollutants without disturbing the natural balance of your home’s microbiome. Regular use and timely maintenance (e.g., replacing filters as needed) helps keep the air clean and contributes to a healthier living environment.

  1. Connect with Nature 🌲 🌺 🌞 

These days, Florence Nightingale, the 19th-century nurse, is commonly known for the syndrome that carries her name. But what a lot of people don’t know is the impact she had on reshaping hospital design and patient treatment. Nightingale believed that ventilation and sunlight played a vital role in patient health, and thusly pushed for hospitals to have large windows that allowed for abundant natural light and maximum cross-ventilation. 

In the centuries since, research has shown that Nightingale knew what she was talking about. Opening windows and allowing fresh air to circulate is vital. Connecting with the natural world outside not only improves air quality but also introduces a healthy diversity of outdoor microbes into your home environment.

The root word of human is humus, which means soil. That’s not a coincidence. Nature is essential, even indoors, for developing a robust immune system in children.

Creating a clean yet balanced home environment is key to supporting your child’s health and development. By choosing the right cleaning products, utilizing HEPA filtration, and embracing the beneficial aspects of nature, you’re laying the foundation for a robust immune system. 

Up Next… Be Sensible: Monitoring Essentials for Your Home

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New Moms Series #6: Buy a Filter, or Be a Filter!

Aside from a loss of independence, unbridled joy you didn’t know was possible, and lots and lots of pee, welcoming a new family member into your home means creating a sanctuary where the air is as pure and clean as possible.

While proper ventilation and air filtration are key elements in achieving this, it’s equally important to understand what technologies and practices work best and which ones might do more harm than good.

Let’s look at how air filters, certain vacuums, and other smart choices can enhance the air quality in your home while avoiding potential pitfalls.

  1. What the heck is HEPA?

If you’ve spent any amount of time thinking about air filtration, you’ve probably come across the term HEPA. (If you haven’t spent any amount of time thinking about air filtration, the time is now.)

HEPA (High Efficiency Particulate Arrestance) filters trap 99.97% of particles 0.3 microns in diameter or larger, including allergens like pollen, dust mites, and pet dander. These filters, when used in both air purifiers and vacuums, play a critical role in maintaining a cleaner indoor environment, ensuring the air your family breathes is free from harmful particulates. Some brands offer an even finer filtration, known as ULPA (Ultra Low Particle Air) which filters out 99.999% of particles 0.1 microns and larger, all the way down to atmospheric dust. They cost about 35% more, and are probably overkill for most folks, but cleaner is cleaner!

The point is, a product that doesn’t use a HEPA or ULPA filter isn’t worth your time or money.

  1. The Secret Ingredient: Activated Carbon 

Combining HEPA filtration with activated carbon tackles both particulate matter and gaseous pollutants, including volatile organic compounds (VOCs), a common and serious problem in modern buildings, especially new and newly renovated homes. 

This dual approach ensures a comprehensive reduction in indoor air contaminants, from odors to chemicals released by furniture, finishes, building materials, cleaners and personal care products. The problem is that most air purifiers only have a tiny amount. With carbon filters, size does matter. So get as much as you can. 

  1. A Deeper Clean

When most people think of a vacuum, they think of a machine that sucks things off the floor and puts them in a bag. Like a lawn mower for your home. But vacuums have filters, too, and when it comes to most efficiently capturing fine particles without recirculating them into your living space, that filter should be HEPA. 

But be careful to choose models that are clearly labeled “True HEPA.” This designation ensures the vacuum is a sealed unit, preventing air from bypassing the filter.

  1. Beware of Certain Technologies

While exploring air purification options, steer clear of filterless devices that rely on ionization, ozone generation or photocatalytic oxidation (PCO). These technologies sound fancy but they can alter the chemistry of the air, potentially introducing harmful levels of ozone or other byproducts. Such changes can aggravate respiratory issues rather than alleviate them, making these options less suitable for homes with newborns.

These products are often slickly marketed and many manufacturers have gone to great lengths to make them as aesthetically pleasing as possible. But the roadside is littered (sometimes literally) with brands that looked good but failed to deliver on the promise of healthy clean air. Remember the Ionic Breeze?

Filter the air to clean it. Avoid any brands that advertise how well they kill microbes or destroy VOCs, as this very function is what makes them harmful to human health.

  1. Maintain Your HVAC System

Regularly changing your HVAC system’s filter is crucial, not just for air quality, but also to keep the system clean and functioning efficiently. A clean filter prevents the buildup of dust and debris, and can extend the life of your HVAC system while reducing the risk of mold growth within. This simple maintenance task can save you from larger issues down the line, in terms of both health and expense.

Ensuring your home has the best possible air quality involves more than just introducing fresh air and filtering out pollutants. It also means making informed decisions about the technologies and practices you adopt. By focusing on effective solutions like HEPA filtration and avoiding potentially harmful air purification methods, you’re taking a significant step towards creating a safe, healthy environment for that little pee factory of yours. 

Up Next… Clean, But Not Too Clean!

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New Moms Series #5: The Vital Role of Ventilation in Your Home

As a parent, you would never knowingly force your child to eat rotten food, just as you would never knowingly force them to breathe dirty air. But the latter could be what’s effectively happening without proper ventilation in your home.

A poorly ventilated building keeps the bad air in, getting rebreathed over and over again and becoming progressively dirtier. And as the ickiness of the air increases, so too do the chances for irritation and respiratory illness, particularly in newborns, whose developing immune systems, prodigious air in-take (relative to older kids and adults) and pristine air canals make them very susceptible. Fun, right?

Well, here’s the good news: Improving ventilation is well within any parent’s reach.

  1. We Need Fresh Air More Than Ever

According to the EPA, indoor air can be up to five times more polluted than outdoor air. This figure might have you wondering:

How can the indoors be worse when all the cars and factories and wildfire smoke are outside?

The fact is, from cooking fumes and dust to mold and volatile organic compounds (VOCs) released from certain paints, furniture, and household products, our homes and apartments (and schools, offices) are awash in potential pollutants.

Making matters worse — and the primary factor for the difference between inside and outside air quality — is that ever since the energy crisis of the 70s, American homes, in the interest of energy efficiency, have become tighter than ever.

Modern building materials are designed to be less drafty and hold in more heat, which doesn’t allow them to breathe effectively. And dry wall, in particular, is all but a factory for mold, which will eventually become airborne.

But you can help mitigate this situation in your own home through proper ventilation. A well-ventilated home is regularly diluting and removing contaminants by replacing bad air with good, or, in the case of cooking fumes, forcing the bad outside. The question then becomes:

How does one improve ventilation?

  1. Open Windows Regularly

The simplest way to improve ventilation is by opening windows, which allows for a natural exchange of indoor and outdoor air. Of course, no one (except perhaps your pet polar bear, who craves the cold and doesn’t pay the bills) wants to open a window when it’s freezing outside. That’s when air filters should take centerstage.

But when the weather is right, or at least tolerable, creating a cross-breeze by opening windows on opposite sides of your home will do wonders, effectively flushing out pollutants and bringing in fresh air. If creating a cross-breeze is not possible, just opening a single window is far better than nothing.  

This holds true even in urban settings, though in that case it’s advisable to open your windows more often at night, when traffic, construction, and industrial exhaust are generally at their lowest.

  1. Make the Most of Exhaust Fans

As mentioned in our prior post, Keep Things Dry(ish): Balancing Moisture in the Home, exhaust fans in kitchens and bathrooms serve a critical role in removing excess moisture and odors, but they also help expel pollutants directly outdoors. Use these fans regularly during and after cooking and bathing.

But beware: some homes are fitted with vents that are essentially just air shifters, rather than air removers. An air-shifting vent doesn’t move air outside—it simply moves it to a different room, which, obviously, is not the objective. Any and all vents should terminate outside, or else it’s like cleaning your room by simply throwing everything in your closet: the problem still exists, it’s just somewhere else.   

  1. Consider Adding Additional Ventilation Options

In areas where opening a window isn’t enough or isn’t possible, consider other ventilation solutions. Energy Recovery Ventilators (ERVs) and Heat Recovery Ventilators (HRVs) are systems that exchange indoor and outdoor air without losing heat or coolness from your home, making them efficient alternatives for maintaining a healthy flow.

Of course, they don’t just give these systems away for free and installing them can be quite costly. They also work better in some situations over others, so be sure to do your research before signing on any dotted lines.

  1. Keep Air Ducts Clean

If your home has a central heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) system, maintaining clean air ducts is as essential as changing diapers.

Dust and debris can accumulate in ductwork over time, seriously reducing air quality by spreading pollution throughout your home. Regular cleaning, however, will make sure your ventilation system distributes clean air. We recommend checking the ducts at least twice a year. (We recommend a far more frequent schedule for changing diapers.)

The Bottom Line

Proper ventilation is essential for ensuring your home is a safe, healthy environment for your growing family. Simply opening a window can significantly improve the air quality in your home, making it a fresher, cleaner space for your new arrival. Embrace the simplicity of fresh air—it’s one of the best gifts you can give your home and your family. 

Up Next…Clear the Air: Buy a Filter, or Be a Filter!