Purifying the Air to Prevent the Flu
This is a sponsored post written by me on behalf of Fellowes. All opinions are 100% mine.
Want to bring the fresh air inside? Now you can. Credit: natalielucier, Flickr
With two young kiddos and a terrible experience with a household full of sick people last year at this time, I have taken my cough, cold and flu prevention to new levels this year. Having a child puke down the front of your shirt and/or being bedridden for a couple of days with the worst kind of fever and full-body aches (when taking care of those sick kiddos is your number one priority no matter how much you just want to sleep) has a way of making a mom terrified of a repeat occurrence.
Kids are going to get sick, but if I can do anything to prevent it or lessen the likelihood, I will do it. For me, that means being borderline obsessive about hand-washing and keeping kids’ fingers out of mouths and noses (mission: impossible). I wash my hands so frequently that they are as dry as a desert and have required gloved overnight treatments with thick moisturizers. I preach so much about using tissues and coughing into elbows that my 3-year-old actually lectures my 2-year old on the practice.
But really, there’s not one single thing you can do to prevent the flu. It’s more of a four-step process:
1. Ask about a flu shot
2. Wash and sanitize hands regularly
3. Wipe down surfaces with powerful disinfectants
4. Purify the air indoors
We’ve taken care of our flu shots, and we’re great at the hand-washing and keeping things clean but that last one is a prevention technique that I haven’t been taking advantage of: the air purifier. But that ends today! I just had a Fellowes AeraMax Air Purifier DX55 arrive on my doorstep today, and I cannot wait to see what it can do. Because even though you can’t see those pesky cold and flu germs floating around, they’re there, and the air purifier is there to clean the air and save you from sniffles and sneezes, super helpful this time of the year.
This filter is said to be ultra-quiet — a must because it’s going to be at our bedside. Of course, if it’s quieter than a crying kid, I’ll consider it perfect. Plus, the Fellowes AeraMax(TM) DX-55 makes operating it a no-brainer: it’ll indicate when the filter needs changing and the automatic sensor monitors the air quality and automatically adjusts the fan speed to keep the air purified. And as awesome as all of that is, it betters better, like the fact that it has a True HEPA filter, which safely removes 99.97% of airborne particles, including viruses, germs, dust, mold, pollen, ragweed, pet dander and cigarette smoke. Considering that I dust with an embarrassing irregularity and my husband and I both suffer from seasonal allergies, and we both wake up with stuffy noses all too frequently from what we attribute to stale air, I cannot wait to trap all of these bothersome particles where they can’t bother us.
If you’re interested in such a strategy on top of your regular flu-prevention tactics, you can buy an AeraMax DX55 at BestBuy.com starting at $189.99 at BestBuy.com. I don’t know about you, but I’d pay that several times over to prevent a sick household! I’ll keep you posted on how the purifier works for us — here’s hoping for more healthy days ahead to finish up the winter season!
What do you do to prevent illness in your house? —Erin