One of the biggest concerns when it comes to maintaining health and home is the quality of indoor air. However, this becomes a more pressing issue if you live in a particularly smoggy urban area, or if you have asthmatic children. While all these concerns are valid, the quality of air is even more critical for anyone with a newborn or infant child.

The Mistake Most Parents Make

There are a number of airborne contaminants lurking in your home, most of which go undetected because the average home owner simply isn’t aware that these dangers exist. These radicals linger in detergents, plastics, and cleaners. Additionally, there are some materials in the home that are natural allergen magnets, such as upholstered furniture, chairs, sofas, carpeting, and mattresses. These places harbor allergens like pollen, dust mites, and mold. Considering that most new babies are resting most of the day on such materials, it becomes crucial for parents to become as aware as possible on hidden dangers in their home – and more importantly, solid solutions to ensuring the best air quality for their child’s nursery.

Many new parents can be found placing a humidifier in their baby’s nursery. While a humidifier is a good go to gadget, it may not be ideal for certain (humid) regions or homes that already suffer from humidity related problems. The alternative may be an air conditioner, but for a baby’s delicate system, an air conditioner is far too powerful and will likely provide too much cooling.

The key issue here is air quality and to get the best air quality, parents may want to consider an air purifier. An air purifier can have the greatest single impact in your child’s environment. Once it’s agreed upon that getting an air purifier is possibly the best option for your baby, the next step is finding a high quality (but reasonably priced) device. One that parents may wish to consider is the Austin Air Baby’s Breath Air Purifier which provides the highest level of protection from a variety of airborne contaminants.

Steps You Can Take to Ensure Your Child is Safe

There are some things to keep in mind when putting your baby’s nursery together. While it may seem daunting at first, it’s very quite simple when broken down and understood. While in the old days, simply cracking open a window was enough to get fresh pure air, these days with the rise of smog statistics and pollution, traditional routes may not be the best depending on where you live.

Bedding – Whenever possible, use organic covers on mattresses and pillows. When washing these, try to use free and clear detergents that don’t include dyes or perfumes. Make sure you’re also washing linens in extremely hot water. Hot water will ensure that dust mites are killed off. Also, if you’re in the market for a baby mattress, opt for a latex foam mattress rather than a fibrous mattress (which are dust mite magnets).

Keep Shoes Out – You’re trekking through town all day and then end of the day come home and trek through your house, ensuring that everything you picked up throughout the day is now all over your carpets. One quick way to clean up your indoor air quality is to just simply leave your shoes at the door. At the very least, your baby’s nursery should be a shoe-free environment.

Cleaning – If you’ve ever whiffed an open bottle of your household wood polisher or glass cleaner, you’ll have noticed the strong chemical smells. Not only are these cleaners toxic to your healthy, they’re considerably damaging to your baby’s delicate system. Try using natural cleaners that are both eco-friendly and effective.

Walls – When setting up your baby’s nursery, one of the most common decor ideas is to repaint the room. However, before coating your nursery walls make, sure the paint you have is VOC free. VOC’s stand for “Volatile Organic Compounds”, which get released into the air as paint dries. While long term effects are still unclear, the EPA has concluded that some VOC’s are suspected carcinogens.

Furniture – What you put in your nursery is yet another cause of concern. When picking our nursery furniture, make sure you aren’t choosing products with formaldehyde. According to the EPA, formaldehyde is a “colorless, pungent-smelling gas (that) can cause watery eyes, burning sensations in the eyes, and throat, nose, nausea, and difficulty in breathing.” The reports go on to show that it has been shown to cause cancer in animals and high concentrations of it may trigger attacks in people with asthma.

The common assumption most people have is that if air quality was poor, then you could visibly see it. But the fact is, what you can’t see is even more dangerous since the problem goes undetected. The dozens of radical elements floating unseen through your air and right into your lungs will lead to significant health concerns down the road. And one of the best things you could do for your baby is to ensure the air the baby breathe is clean and chemical free.

Shireen Qudosi is a consumer awareness writer with http://www.air-purifier-home.com. Follow her on Twitter @AirPurifierHome

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Summary

Creating the perfect nursery for your baby can be both fun and frustrating. If you’re a creative person, it may be that you have too many ideas swimming around in your brain. If you’re not very good on the creative side of things, you may not know where to begin.

Below I’ll go over 5 ideas for creating a fun and safe environment for your baby to sleep and relax in:

1. It’s never too early to start shopping.

If you think shopping for your nursery is going to be easy, you need may need to re-think that idea. There are several variables you need to consider when shopping for your baby’s nursery: Safety, practicality, comfort and fun.

It’s important to make sure that the room is following the current safety guidelines. All the outlets which aren’t being used need to have plastic outlet covers. Nothing should be kept in the crib except for a blanket and any crib toys, which are secured to the side of the crib.

2. The crib you choose should both look good and be safe and sturdy.

If you can avoid it, don’t buy a used crib. Make a crib purchase from a store and it’s best if the store has the cribs assembled so you can check for sturdiness and wear.

Which crib you choose may depend on the look you’re going for in the room. A sleigh or a white crib might allow for a more whimsical look, where as an oak crib might create a more warm and inviting feeling.

3. Choose your crib bedding before you pick anything else out for the room.

If you’ve got a certain theme in mind, pick out and purchase the bedding first. It’s easier to create a room around the bedding set. You can shop on Ebay, in stores or online through other stores. Often times, many department stores offer great options online that you can’t get in the stores themselves. Wal-Mart, for example, has an online store and they will ship the items you order to your local Wal-Mart for you to pick up at no extra charge.

4. Make practical storage fun.

Often times, it’s necessary to keep things in the nursery which are necessary, but they’re not always the funnest things to look at. You can combat this by using brightly colored storage bins. If you can’t find the colors you want, buy cheap white storage containers of varying sizes and use plastic spray paint to change the color.

5. Room color is very important.

Some people prefer wallpaper and some prefer paint or textures. Personally, one idea is to paint the room a neutral color and use pictures, brightly colored shelving and other things of that nature to decorate the room. That way, the room can grow with the child without too much effort to change it.

One fun idea is to take a cheap white shelf (we bought one for about $10 at the local hardware store and we used 2 black rod iron decorative brackets, which we left black, but you can paint them any color you want). Make a visit to your local craft store (like Michael’s or Joann Fabrics) and buy two packages of decorative beading ribbon. Using a hot glue gun, attach the ribbon with the beads hanging down over the side along three sides of the shelf. This makes for a really fun shelf for a little girl’s room!

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