How To Create A Healthy Living Space

This is a collaborative post.

Our homes are a place where we spend a huge amount of time. This space provides the base for your life. So, it needs to be somewhere that supports your well-being and nurtures your health. A healthy living space can make such a massive difference to your comfort and ensure that you always feel at your best when you’re at home.

When your space is so familiar to you it can be tricky to know which changes you should make and where to even begin. Upgrading your home so it supports your health doesn’t need to be expensive or even a lot of work. There are many simple changes you can make to your living space that can create big improvements. If you’re keen to enhance your home to ensure it provides the healthiest possible place to live, you’ll find lots of ideas right here. Keep reading for some healthy living space inspiration to help you get started.

How To Create A Healthy Living Space

Clear Your Clutter

While we don’t consciously set out to create it, clutter is something that most homes have. In fact, you may be so used to seeing it, you may have stopped noticing cluttered areas that are crowding corners or littering surfaces in your rooms. Looking at your home with fresh eyes from an outsider’s perspective will soon help you to spot any areas that could use a little bit (or a lot!) of decluttering. 

Removing clutter from your home is about more than just keeping your living space tidy. Yes, removing clutter does improve the appearance of your home. However, it can also improve your health. You see, clutter attracts dust and dirt and provides it with a place to accumulate. This is bad news if you have allergies, and also means that you will need to clean your home more regularly and spend longer doing it.

Secondly, clutter is a potential trip hazard and a fire risk. What may seem like harmless piles of stuff in your home could easily cause a physical injury or prevent your escape from your home in an emergency.

Lastly, being surrounded by clutter can impact your mental health. A cluttered home can leave you feeling overwhelmed and stressed out. An untidy environment can cause an untidy mind. Too much stuff in your home is also a constant reminder of the things you need to do, but haven’t gotten around to tackling. This can cause you to feel a nagging sense of guilt that makes it hard to relax at home and leaves you feeling generally demotivated. So, if you feel that your home is getting dustier than usual, and is making you feel stressed out, a decluttering session could help to improve things.

Cut Down on Pollutants

When you think of air pollution you probably picture factory chimneys filling the skies with smoke, or exhaust fumes clogging the air on busy city streets. The inside of your home may be the last place you expect to find polluted air. However, the quality of indoor air can actually be worse than outdoor air. 

Taking steps to improve your home’s air quality can help to reduce the chances of you or your family members suffering from certain health conditions. Asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and lung cancer have been associated with low indoor air quality. It is also believed that there’s a link between an increased risk of strokes and heart attacks and indoor air pollution. 

The causes of air pollution in the home can often be surprising. So, making sure you’re aware of them is wise to help you take a proactive approach to improving your home’s indoor air quality. Wood burning stoves and open fires can release particulate matter (PM), such as soot, into the air. These tiny particles are small enough to be breathed into the lungs. You may notice that you sneeze or cough more when your stove or fire is lit. 

Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) are also a source of air pollution that’s commonly found in homes. These chemicals are often found in household items, such as cleaning products and air fresheners. Incense and some scented candles can also contain VOCs and cause air pollution in your home. If possible, you may want to switch to VOC-free products. If you are using products that contain these chemicals, it’s helpful to ensure the room is well-ventilated to reduce their impact on your home’s air quality.

Add Houseplants

Introducing more houseplants to your living space is a quick and easy way to make your home look more attractive. But apart from adding a pop of colour and plenty of interest to your space, houseplants can also boost the health of your home.

A study by NASA found that plants do more than just taking in carbon dioxide and providing us with oxygen. The NASA research found that indoor plants can also remove harmful substances, such as pathogenic viruses, chemicals, and other toxins by absorbing them. So, the addition of some houseplants to your home can be a great way to create a healthy living space.

It’s important to recognise that some houseplants are more effective at removing these potentially harmful toxins from the air than others. Plants known for their air purifying properties include dracaena, aloe vera, peace lily, and spider plant varieties.

Thankfully, cleaner air doesn’t come with a huge price tag. You can buy air-purifying plants starting at £10 to help clean up your home’s indoor air quality, and add some attractive greenery to your rooms.

Prevent Mould

Finding mould in your home is always an unpleasant discovery, and may need professional intervention from somewhere that provides services such as mold remediation in Augusta, GA, for example. Whether it is black dots of mildew or furry, damp patches on your surfaces, no one wants to find mould in their home.

The best way to deal with mould is to prevent it from forming in the first place. When left to thrive, mould can quickly spread on surfaces throughout your home and release potentially harmful spores into your living environment. Inhaling these spores can cause headaches, a runny nose, sore throat, and respiratory issues in people who are sensitive to mould. 

You can prevent mould from forming by cleaning up any spills quickly, dealing with leaks before they spread and become a bigger issue, and by keeping your home well-ventilated. It’s especially important to open windows or use an extractor fan in rooms that are prone to lots of moisture and condensation, such as the kitchen or bathroom. 

Final Thoughts on Creating a Healthy Living Space

Your home is more than just bricks-and-mortar. Therefore, it’s essential to ensure that it’s a space that supports your health and well-being. The good news is that there are many ways you can improve your home to achieve this.

Being mindful of the indoor air quality and taking steps to reduce the use of chemicals and release of particulate matter in your home is an excellent place to start. It’s also helpful to introduce house plants into your home to further improve the air quality and actively preventing the formation of mould.

Clearing out any clutter in your home and introducing house plants will help make your home look more attractive, while also making it a healthier place to live. You should then be able to enjoy the benefits of a healthy living space that nurtures your health.