Allergy Friendly Cleaning For a Healthier Home
When we think about allergies, we often think about the world outside our homes: pollen, pollution, grass, pets and other environmental triggers. But what about the air and surfaces inside our own homes? That’s why allergy friendly cleaning is important.
For people living with allergies, eczema, or respiratory symptoms, the home environment can play an important role in how they feel day to day.
And while it isn’t possible, or necessary, to create a completely sterile home, there are practical ways to reduce the everyday dust, allergens, fragrances and other irritants that can build up around us.
For our Brisbane Naturopath and Positive Association Technique (PAT) practitioner Belinda, this realisation led to a new business venture: creating her own North Brisbane based allergy-friendly cleaning company, Beyond Clean Living.
In this article we explore the various components of an allergy friendly cleaning approach, and how you can implement this in your own home.
From Naturopathy to Allergy-Friendly Cleaning
Belinda continues to work as a practising Naturopath & PAT practitioner, but the idea for Beyond Clean Living came from a very personal frustration.
She had used cleaners in the past but struggled to find a service that aligned with what she understood about health and the home environment.
The products being used weren’t necessarily what she wanted in her own home, and the cleaning wasn’t always addressing the areas that mattered most from an allergy perspective.
For Belinda, cleaning wasn’t simply about having a house that looked tidy.
She was thinking about the dust accumulating under beds, allergens settling behind furniture, the impact of humidity, the products being sprayed into the air and the potential difference these things could make for families already dealing with sensitivities.
These are common issues she hears in her Positive Association Technique (PAT) sessions as well. Her clients often present with symptoms associated with indoor triggers like dust mites, mould and fragrances. Learn more about PAT in our Free PAT Information E-Pack.
Eventually, she realised that the service she was looking for simply didn’t exist in the form she wanted.
So she decided to create it herself!
Beyond Clean Living was born from the idea that a home should support your family’s health rather than quietly work against it. The business is based in Gaythorne and services Brisbane’s north and surrounding suburbs.
What does Allergy Friendly Cleaning involve?
Traditional cleaning services often focus on the surfaces we can see: floors, benches, bathrooms and kitchens.
Allergy Friendly Cleaning requires a different approach.
This service deliberately focuses on the places where dust and allergens can quietly accumulate but are easily overlooked; under beds, behind and beneath furniture, along skirting boards, window tracks and other high- and low-dust areas.
This is particularly relevant for allergy-sensitive households, because simply making a house look clean doesn’t necessarily mean you’ve reduced the overall dust load.
And then there is the other side of cleaning: what are you actually putting into the home while you’re cleaning it? Which we will address a little further on.
Dust Mites in the Home
Dust and dust mites are among the most common indoor allergy triggers, and they can be particularly relevant for people experiencing congestion, itchy eyes, snoring, poor sleep or eczema flare-ups.
The goal isn’t to eliminate every dust mite from your home. That’s neither realistic nor necessarily desirable.
Instead, it’s about reducing excessive exposure.
There are plenty of simple things households can do themselves:
- Take shoes off at the door to reduce what gets tracked inside.
- Wash bedding regularly (weekly).
- Use a hot wash >60 degrees for bedding where possible.
- Vacuum mattresses when changing sheets.
- Clean underneath and behind beds and furniture.
- Reduce unnecessary clutter where dust can accumulate.
- Manage humidity, particularly in naturally humid climates.
- Use effective filtration when vacuuming.
For families who struggle to keep up with all of this, however, the challenge is often time.
Between work, children, pets and everything else that comes with running a household, doing a detailed clean every week isn’t realistic for everyone.
That’s where Belinda sees the value of the professional cleaning and using Positive Association Technique (PAT) to help reduce the impacts of dust mite sensitivity.
Mould in the Home
Mould is another major consideration when thinking about a healthier home, particularly in humid Australian climates, and is another common reaction we work with in our PAT sessions.
But Belinda’s approach is not about creating fear around every tiny spot of mould.
Instead, she encourages people to think about moisture, dust and the conditions that allow mould to grow.
Mould requires moisture and a food source. Everyday activities such as showering, cooking, breathing and drying clothes indoors can all contribute moisture to the home.
That means you don’t necessarily need a dramatic flood or leaking roof for moisture to become an issue.
Small amounts of surface mold on suitable non-porous surfaces can often be cleaned, but more significant or hidden mould problems may require more extensive remediation.
Fragrance-Free Cleaning
One of Belinda’s biggest priorities was removing unnecessary fragrance from the cleaning process.
Many conventional cleaning products are heavily scented, and “clean” is often associated with the smell of lemon, eucalyptus, flowers or other fragrances.
But for people who are sensitive to fragrances, that strong smell isn’t necessarily a sign of a healthier home.
Beyond Clean Living uses fragrance-free, low-tox cleaning products and avoids harsh chemicals and synthetic fragrance as part of its standard approach.
The philosophy is simple: if you’re cleaning a home to reduce the things that may be irritating the people living there, you don’t want the cleaning process itself to introduce another potential irritant.
This was one of the reasons Belinda felt so strongly about creating the business herself. She wanted a service where she wouldn’t have to repeatedly tell the cleaner, “Please don’t use that product” or explain why certain ingredients weren’t appropriate for her household.
An Allergy Friendly Clean to Reset your Home
One of Beyond Clean Living‘s services is a detailed initial reset clean.
Rather than simply starting with a standard weekly clean, the first visit is designed to bring the home up to a new baseline, addressing the accumulated dust and grime in the places that are commonly missed. From there, families can move into fortnightly or monthly maintenance.
This idea came directly from Belinda’s own experience.
Life gets busy, the dust builds up and eventually the task becomes so overwhelming that you don’t know where to start. A thorough reset can make maintenance much more manageable.
It can also be particularly useful for people who find that cleaning itself aggravates their symptoms, because vacuuming, dusting and moving furniture can stir up dust and mould particles.
Why a Healthy Home Matters
The reason Belinda is so passionate about this isn’t really about cleaning.
It’s about what happens when people feel better in their own homes.
If you’re constantly congested, waking up with itchy eyes, sleeping poorly, snoring, dealing with dust sensitivities or feeling uncomfortable around certain fragrances, it can start to feel normal.
But living with symptoms for years doesn’t necessarily mean they’re something you simply have to accept.
The home is where we spend a huge amount of our time. It’s where we sleep, eat, relax and raise our families.
That doesn’t mean a deep clean will solve every health problem. It won’t. But reducing unnecessary environmental exposures can be one practical piece of a holistic approach towards your health.
But an important message from Belinda’s approach is that creating a healthier home doesn’t require becoming obsessed with eliminating every microorganism, dust particle or chemical.
We can think of our home as another microbiome, that contains a variety of microbes, but can sometimes get out of balance.
It’s just about making sensible changes where you can.
Take your shoes off. Keep dust under control. Wash your bedding. Manage humidity. Address moisture problems. Reduce unnecessary fragrances. Use appropriate cleaning products. And, if keeping on top of the detailed cleaning feels impossible, get some help.
That’s ultimately why Belinda created Beyond Clean Living.
She couldn’t find the kind of cleaning service she wanted for her own home. One that understood the connection between cleaning, dust, allergens, fragrances and the overall home environment.
So rather than compromising, she built it herself.
And that may be the most interesting part of the story: Beyond Clean Living isn’t simply a cleaning company. It’s the practical extension of a naturopath’s belief that the environments we live in can be an important part of the bigger picture of health.
