Tips for a healthy home in lockdown

Here are some simple tips that will help you cope with forced lockdown, but which will also serve to improve your overall quality of life.

We live in times of uncertainty and forced changes in habits. In recent weeks, many people have stopped seeing their home as a place to have dinner (sometimes), sleep (sometimes) and little else. Now homes are also a place for work, games, leisure, sharing good times with the family and, why not, striving to have moments alone. That is why, today more than ever, it is important to have a healthy home.

General tidying and cleaning

We are telling you nothing new with this trick. The benefits of order in the home have been known since long before Marie Kondo was born. Tidiness makes cleaning easier and cleaning makes health easier. Especially for those with a dust mite allergy, approximately 1 in 20 people in our country. As well as regularly keeping things tidy and clean, we can make the most of spare moments to think about and carry out improvements around the home that make organisation easier. If you are planning to move house, do not miss the opportunity. What better excuse to reorganise the space and make good cleaning resolutions than putting everything in apple-pie order during the move?

Take a deep breath: benefits of good ventilation

Anyone who has had teenage children has surely thought—or said—more than once that their bedroom smells like a tiger. But this is not something exclusive to this stage of life: every home has the potential to end up smelling like a tiger if we do not take the proper precautions. Keeping the house well ventilated it is important: it will help us to have a greater flow of oxygen and avoid problems such as damp, mould or bad odours. Due to the sharp drop in air pollution, there will be few better opportunities than now to air out your house, especially if you live in a big city. So make the most of the arrival of the good weather, throw those windows wide open, and let the breeze flow freely through your home and your lungs.

Plants are your friends

We humans are animals, and as such, we need a fix of nature to live in harmony with our surroundings. If you are fortunate enough to have a garden or to live in the countryside, you will know what we are talking about. If not, you have surely experienced it on a getaway to the hills. Greenery in the home serves to please the eye, but also to clean the air and generate oxygen. There are those who have an innate ability to care for and maintain plants. If you are not this type of person, you should know that there are plants that require very little dedication to keep going. You simply have to check in the shop or on the internet before buying them, and not let yourself be guided solely by their appearance or how good they will look in photos. If you want to have a beautiful collection of plants but consider yourself a hazard to their health, you can always opt for smart solutions like Citysens indoor gardens by choosing plants suitable for beginners.

The importance of living space

Yes, it is very nice to spend more time with the family now that we can. But the head also needs its moments of solitude to function properly. And it's not just us saying it. According to the recommendations of aerospace engineer Diego Urbina in El País, “It is important to have a balance in the time we spend with other people, and to find some personal space for ourselves. And if an astronaut says so, it must be true. There are so many studies highlighting the benefits of chosen solitude that it is impossible to choose just one. This personal space can also be used for meditation or for exercising, activities that are more than advisable when our body continually asks for the sofa, box sets and comfort food.

Adapt your home to your personality

The minimalist style looks great in photos, but for some people it can end up feeling more like a hospital than a home. The same goes for any other interior design style: following decorating advice from magazines can help you have a photogenic house, but you may end up feeling like you live in the display section of IKEA. Home must be a reflection of who we are and who we want to be. “It is pure psychology, it is our way of expressing ourselves. The home helps you to be your best self and, obviously, as you never stop changing, your home never stops changing either.”, ensures Vanessa Matas, house coaching expert.

Choose a healthy home from the start

That business of having the home of your dreams sounds marvellous, but, as luck would have it, reality is very different from what you see in the reality shows of American decoration. For the vast majority of us mortals, the trick consists in making the most of what we have at our fingertips. That's why it is important to make the most of the flat-hunting process to keep your priorities in mind and be able to enjoy a healthy home from the start. Square metres and the number of rooms can easily be assessed, but one must also bear in mind those intangibles that are more complex to identify yet can in the long run significantly improve our quality of life at home. How much natural light does it have? How much noise is there on the street, or in the building? What are the pollution levels like around here? If you are thinking of selling a flat, you can learn more in this article about the power of intangibles when valuing a property.

Fancy more? In our Magazine you will find a wealth of articles and interviews about the world of the home that will help you to cope better with the lockdown.