By: Bruce Bahlmann

We have become believers in creating a dye free and fragrance free environment for our children. The benefits of this include among many things is reduced exposure to allergens, cleaner cloths, and happier kids. I believe we also make fewer trips to the doctor but I may be hard pressed to prove that. The neat thing about eliminating sources of allergy is that it is so simple to do I can't believe we didn't do this sooner. Here are some keys to making this reality in your home:

• Substitute "dye and fragrance free" detergents
• Filter your water
• Buy a good air cleaner
• Breast feeding and solids

Detergents:

Detergents come in many forms and we use them for multiple purposes from cleaning our homes to cleaning ourselves and our cloths, etc. You would be amazed how many detergents are within a typical home. In our bathroom I've counted 15 different cleaning solutions, there are 5 more in the hall closet, 7 more under the kitchen sink, and 4 more in the laundry room. If you have a garage or a basement I'll bet you have 7 or more there. Note that when I say cleaning solutions I mean that everything from face wash to window cleaner. In our home body cleaning solutions out number those for floors, dishes, and cloths nearly 2 to 1. While women will justify each and every "beauty aid" they have in the cupboard, they will not hesitate to try something new in the wash room and in the baby/child washing department. So I recommend you start there but with no expectations that you will replace any beauty aid cleaning solution - call this helpful advice. The following cleaning solutions are pretty easy to replace without much of any debate:

• All brand laundry detergent (highly recommended)
  • We prefer the "Free Clear" version in the liquid, but if you have a large upright and can add to the water first before you put in your cloths or your washing machine has a powder dispenser the power is the absolute best buy and better for the environment (no plastic bottles). I've not tried the "concentrated", we just get the normal strength and like that very much.
• All brand fabric softner (highly recommended)
  • Fabric softener makes such a huge difference - especially in the winter months. But surely you can use it all year round.
• Aveeno Personal Cleaning Products (highly recommended)
  • We prefer Aveeno products to wash our children, they even meet my wife's high standards. These products are every bit as good as much more expensive brand products but are often all natural and fragrance free. Aveeno also has moisturizing versions of their soaps for those dry winter months.

Buying these products online rather than the grocery store or even at Kmart, Walmart, or some other warehouse will save you anywhere from 10% to 30%. Plus you don't have to lug these around - instead they are delivered to your door. In addition, if you select super saver shipping you don't even need to pay for shipping.

Filter Your Water

We water down everything we give to our children, from orange juice at breakfast to any other juice we give them. Our children also drink a lot of water which we keep in amble supply which is chilled in the refrigerator. There are two popular water systems out there and we know them intimately: Pur and Brita. While they both have their good and band points, we actually use a mix of them. We prefer the Brita pitcher and the Pur faucet mount water filter.

The Pur faucet mount water filter is the best we have used. It uses a 3 stage filter which removes nearly 100% of the additives in water. The Pur filter does not remove fluoride which is usually added by your water company, but neither does any other water filter that clings to your faucet. When it comes time to replace the filter the unit will no longer dispense filtered water, however we remove the filter and then reinsert it. One can easily get two uses out of each filter without a significant drop in what is being filter. Plus at about $20 a pop for the filters, it makes them last twice as long. Buying these filters as well as the unit online can save you $10 on the unit and up to $3-4 on each filter. Note that any of these faucet mount filters get used so much that you should plan to replace the entire unit every 2 or 3 years as none of them are made to last a lifetime.

The Brita filter is perhaps a bit excessive, but if you are going to store cold water in your refrigerator, its best to have that water filtered as well. We actually double filter our water. The water we place in the top of the Brita comes from the filtered side of our tap. While admittedly this is excessive, our chilled water is certainly free of additives and chemicals and is completely odorless and tasteless.

Air Cleaner and Humidifier

While every home is generally clean (some more than others) the air quality is not something people consider improving to make their living more comfortable. We needed a humidifier recently and since we could not add one to our furnace (which is the absolute best way) since we rent, we just purchased a portable unit. Choosing a humidifier is nothing short of a maze with so many units out there - each with different reviews. I then came across this little unit called Venta and while the price tag may scare some people away, the simplicity and the efficiency of this unit has wide acclaim.

We actually stumbled across the Venta units while searching for a humidifier. My wife insisted on a "mist" type humidifier, but our last two of those did nothing but create a slick of water around them and they were very cumbersome to refill. So I went searching for something new which would humidify the air and not my floors. After hours of searching online and reading reviews, I came upon this Venta line of humidifiers. While they are pricy, they really do work and do much more than just humidify - they actually purify the air too. It is a very simple design. There are two large pieces of plastic, a fan, and one or two rotating discs (depending on which size you get). The discs can easily be removed (just lift them out) which can be placed in a dishwasher for easy cleaning. Filling is easy, just lift the top piece of plastic, fill to an inch below the rim, and replace the top - simple!

We clean ours every two to three weeks which takes all of but 5 minutes and refill it daily. It is important to use the additive which is cheaper to buy directly from Venta's website - we stock up and buy a liter of the additive at a time.

Breast Feeding and Solids

If you breast feed your child for at least 6 months, you will significantly reduce your child's chance of allergies - this is well documented in the medical community. Delaying introduction of solids is the single most important thing you can do. After at least 6 months (or longer), start giving your child solid foods avoiding the most common allergic sensitive foods such as: peanuts, tree nuts (walnuts, pecan, and almonds, etc.), milk, eggs, fish, shellfish, wheat, and soy. When you do introduce solids, start with rice cereal and than gradually introduce new items per your doctor's recommendation each 3-5 days. If your child refuses a new item, don't give up, keep trying. Sometimes they just want to do it themselves. Your persistence will help them develop tastes for a wider range of foods.

Preventing allergies is not an exact science, and hereditary genes among the parents passed to your child can often trump many preventative measures. Eliminating as many allergy prone sources within your home is still a good idea even if you don't have kids or allergies yourself. For example, we have family that visit who are allergic to everything (cats, dogs, and numerous foods) but even though they forgot their Claritin (allergy medication), they were very comfortable within our home.

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