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Easy Ways You Can Improve Indoor Air Quality at Home

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High-quality air is crucial to residential and commercial buildings. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has standard air quality indexes measuring the atmospheric particulate matter (PM) in your indoor space. The legislation on indoor air quality under the Clean Air Act pegs an index range of 0 to 50 as the recommended threshold. Anything between 50 and 100 is pretty sufficient; however, anything above 100 is unhealthy and can expose you to several risks. Several factors can affect your indoor air. So, it’s essential to adopt best practices in ensuring optimum quality and peace of mind. Here are four easy ways you can improve your indoor air quality at home.

Maintain your HVAC system often.

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As the seasons change, heating and cooling solutions can help manage your needs. The home appliance industry has evolved a great deal. It offers efficient innovations with smart technologies to improve office and home comfort. However, regular maintenance ensures all your appliances perform at peak efficiency all year round.

Improving your HVAC maintenance can be a great way to solve several indoor air issues. It also helps to get the right maintenance care required for the appliance brand. For instance, the Carrier home appliance brand comes with its specialized features and you might need a specialized Carrier air conditioning service for diagnostics or repair.

Generally, it pays to put your HVAC repair and maintenance into your needs. Outsourcing your current system faults to local expert technicians can also be an excellent option, as they’re familiar with your regional climatic conditions. They’ll ensure better energy efficiency and peak performance to rid your home air of pollutants.

Add plants to your home.

Houseplants are gradually becoming a mainstay in many homes. Today, many retailers can get your live plants delivered with no hassle. Plants come in various organic varieties and can impact your indoor air quality in numerous ways. They provide filtration and remove harmful airborne substances and volatile organic compounds like formaldehyde, benzene, etc.

Furthermore, inviting plants into your home can help manage moisture and humidity levels. Research has also linked houseplants to be mood enhancers, reducing homeowners’ susceptibility to anxiety, depression, and other mental health challenges. However, note that you may need more plants to ensure a better quality of air. The general rule is the bigger and leafier the plant as it blooms, the better for your air.

Invest in an air purifier.

Purifiers can be a significant investment in maintaining quality airflow. Air purifiers are vital, especially for homeowners who open their windows for long periods. Dust and air particles can be microscopic. You will need an efficient purifier to draw in dirt, filter it, and release it as clean and fresh air into the room. Purifiers use a mechanized process to trap these tiny particles in your home, flashing a green indicator light when your air is clean.

They come in various types with numerous advanced features depending on your budget. You can get an air purifier that neutralizes airborne viruses and bacteria by releasing negative ions into the air. Generally, the higher the purifier’s clean air delivery rate, the faster it can filter your indoor air. Usually, those options are more expensive. But homeowners can opt for smaller and less expensive options, especially if they have smaller rooms.

Check the paint you use.

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Paint buyers need not only consider the color of their room paint jobs. The paint’s effects on your home’s air also matter.

Paints containing plastic create a barrier on walls, trapping air and leading to mold development. Avoid toxic paint ingredients, including acrylic petrochemicals, synthetic dyes, etc. Choosing non-toxic paints for your rooms can be an effective way of alleviating allergy symptoms.

All in all, your air quality is non-negotiable, regardless of your home size, type, or style. These tips can significantly improve your home’s air quality.

FIVE REASONS WHY YOU NEED TO CHECK YOUR CHILD’S APPS’ ACTIVITY EVERY FEW DAYS

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When your child reaches the age when you allow them access to the internet and all the social media apps, the responsibility on your shoulders is doubled. To share that burden, FamilyTime allows you to monitor your kids digitally.

But is there something you are ignoring? Checking their activities over apps every few days, for example?

Here is why, using an FamilyTime android parental control app, you should examine their apps’ usage activity after every interval of time.

  1. To Keep A Check on What Kind of Activities They are Involved In

It is important to tell your kids that you trust them but that does not mean never check what they are involved in. Kids particularly teens and their activities are influenced by a lot of factors and parenting is just one of those. Their peers, latest trends, and other activities will decide what are they doing over social media, how much they are using gaming apps, and which new apps will they use for chatting.

FamilyTime allows you to check their activities over different apps for the past 30 days. So, checking the time they have been spending over different apps, you can guess if there is something wrong with a particular one.

  1. To Keep a Limit to Their Screen Time

Over usage of the screen is not because there is something very attractive about the screen itself. But, it is how different activities keep a child bound, and then they are unable to get out of them. Apps play a significant role in making a child overuse the screen. For example, gaming apps make a child addicted to them. The same is the case with social media apps as teens waste a lot of time over them.

So, to make sure that they are not exceeding the normal screen time for the day, you have to check their time spent on apps every now and then.

  1. To Let them Not Be Addicted to Any Games or Social Media

Gaming addiction is a real thing as it has been researched a lot by the psychologist community. Likewise, social media addiction and internet addiction are brought to light by the researchers.

The alarming part of the reality is that it has the same symptoms and same effects as drugs addiction does. So, before your child falls a victim to any serious issue, you have to prevent the causal factors. Because at the end of the day, it can be beyond your control.

With the FamilyTime parental app, you can not only watch the time they have been spending over different apps for the past few days but also control the time by setting a daily limit. This is a wonderful way to control their screen time and prevent its future effects.

  1. To Train them for a Responsible Use of Social Media and Other Apps

By responsible usage, I mean using social media or other apps only for good reasons and for a limited time that does not affect the health of a person in any negative way. Of course, these networks are healthy and productive only when used within limits as an activity. But the pattern is, it overcomes every other activity and then the kids start living their life in the social media world.

It is important to train them to use social media only when they are free, or only during the time when there is more important work pending. You should check their activities to know they are not using social over the expense of something else.

  1. To Modify Your Controls and Checks

When you use the FamilyTime parental monitoring app to put restrictions on your kids’ app usage, it becomes your responsibility to keep a check over their activities to modify your controls.

Let’s suppose, if your child has started becoming responsible with time, what do you think you should do? Definitely, make your restrictions flexible so that they know you were doing it for a reason. Also, if you think they are not following a healthy routine, you can be stricter putting digital controls. That’s why it is very important that you keep on checking their activities over different social apps.

FamilyTime is an amazing iPhone and Android parental control app not only empowers you to put extensive controls over social media but monitors all the digital activities. Check out the rest of their features over the official website. Also, you can download it for free from App Store or Play Store.

 

5 Parenting Tips Every Mom Should Know

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Being a mother is a wonderful experience, and it’s one where we are learning on the fly and taking every single day as they come. While we tend to shy away from unsolicited advice and anecdotes, sometimes we hear words of advice that stick with us and actually help us out. We have put together a list of our five favorite parenting tips to help make your motherhood journey just a little easier.

 

1. There is No Such Thing as “The Worst Age”

 

You’ve probably heard that the newborn stage is the worst, or that the terrible twos, the preteen years, or those rough teenage years ar the worst years of parenting. But this simply isn’t true—at least not in the way that people mean it to be. Every stage of development brings new challenges, but they also bring new joys and new milestones!

 

However, if you hit a particularly rough patch and feel like you are in over your head, there is no shame in asking for outside help. Whether you feel like your family would benefit from a family therapist, or you’re looking for something more specialized like DBT for teens, sometimes seeking professional help can be the best way to get your family through a hard time—and doing so will give you the tools to make it through the tough stuff when your time with your professional comes to an end.

 

2. Clothing Stores are Optional

 

Yes, your kids need clothes. And it’s pretty likely that your younger kiddos will outgrow clothes after just a few uses. But that doesn’t mean that you need to drag them to Target or the mall and spend the day in dressing rooms to find clothes that fit them and suit their styles. Subscribing to a monthly clothes box means that you can skip the fitting room and still get stylish clothes that they’ll love.

 

KidPik is a children’s clothing subscription box dedicated to bringing high-quality clothes right to your front door. After choosing which styles your child likes and setting your subscription frequency, your KidPik box will arrive with seven pieces of clothing, a pair of shoes, and a coordinating accessory. You have seven days to try on the clothes and pick what you want to keep and what you want to return—and you only pay for the items that you decide to keep! If your child likes to change their style often, or if you just like to change out their wardrobe frequently, definitely consider a subscription box!

 

3. You Can Make Exercise a Family Activity

 

If you’re like me, you miss going to the gym but you can’t seem to find time to exercise at home between housework and virtual school. One way to find the time to exercise and make sure your children are occupied is to ask them to join you! If you’re into workout videos, throw on your workout clothes and encourage your child to try to do modified versions of the exercises with you. If you’d rather get your exercise done outdoors, encourage your older children to power walk or run with you, and put the younger children in a stroller to keep them happy and add a little resistance to your workout.

 

If you prefer outdoor workouts and live in an area with wet weather, invest in a sturdy stroller and a stroller cover to keep your little ones safe and dry during the rain or snow. The Stroller Buzz Universal Rain Cover & Weather Shield ticks so many boxes on the must-have list: universal size so it can be used on more than one stroller, full coverage so no rain or snow sneaks in through the cracks, and high visibility. You’ll get in a great walk, and your child will stay safe and dry!

 

4. Ask Someone To Take Pictures For You

 

Your camera roll is probably full of pictures of your kids, but how many of these pictures include you? And not just selfies—how many of these pictures include you involved with your children instead of just observing? The answer is probably not very many, if any at all.

 

When you’re out with your kids, don’t hesitate to ask someone to take a picture of you. Most of the time, even if the person is a complete stranger, they’d be glad to snap a quick picture for you. If you’re not comfortable with handing your phone to random strangers, or if you have a day-long outing that you’d like captured, consider hiring a lifestyle photographer for the day to snap candid pictures—leaving you to enjoy your day without having to keep taking your phone out to snap pictures to look back on.

 

5. You Don’t Have to Wait Until the Next Morning to Start Over

 

As fun as being a mom is, it can also be challenging. If you lose your cool during the day, don’t see that as a sign to throw in the towel and call your day a failure. Step out of the room, take a deep breath to collect yourself, and start over. Apologize to your child, and talk about your feelings. This will help them to name their emotions and give you an opportunity to show them that it’s okay to make mistakes and try again.

 

Momming isn’t always easy, but with a little help, we can make the best of even the hardest days.

What Makes Flower an Effective Gift?

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Little pieces of heaven, i.e. fresh blooms, are sure to cheer up anyone’s mood. A bouquet of fresh flowers, no matter what the colour or the size or the shape, is a gift that will brighten up anyone’s day. Not only do flowers have the ability to improve moods, but they’re also pleasing to look at. The experience of giving and receiving flowers is such a memorable one! It’s the thought that matter behind the gift and flowers can uplift anyone’s mood. No matter what’s the occasion, flowers are always a big hit. So what is it so special about flowers that make them so perfect? According to research, flowers are linked “to creativity, compassion, tranquillity, and happiness.” A study even concluded that people who receive flowers as a gift reflect immediate happiness.

 

Flowers are an inexpensive way of bestowing your love and emotions. Be it any occasion like an anniversary, a birthday, Appreciation, Cheer Up, Congratulations, Get Well Soon, I Am Sorry, Love & Affection, Thank You, New Born, Funeral, etc. flowers boost morale and lift the moods. They stand out among many expensive gifts. Unlike most other gifts, flowers can be customised according to your choice. There is a flower for every relation, every occasion, and most of all they fall in the budget.

Flowers are a thoughtful reminder for your concern and admiration towards the recipient. Flowers stand out among the many gifts and wishes. The flowers are perfect because they do not require much maintenance, nor do they require batteries to run. Many flowers need a little sunshine as well as water every day. Since they are very easy to care for, even your loved ones will enjoy receiving them.

So, the next time you wish to surprise your special man or women or wants to congratulate them, be it your father, your brother, friend or lover, send them a bunch of flowers. Gifting flowers comes with convenience and accessibility. While they can be personalised in terms of colour, type, and arrangement there are a plethora of flowers online which you can order for your loved ones such as Roses, Carnations, Gerberas, Lilies, Orchids, Tulips, Sunflowers, etc.

You can choose a flower or combo and get it delivered to your loved one’s doorstep. And, make the special day even more special. Go ahead with your choice of flowers without giving a second thought. The person receiving it, in the end, is gonna love it! Whether it is just a stem or a bouquet it’s the thought that matters behind the gift.

Mom Budgeting Tips

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Budgeting is a whole lot more complex when you become a mom, compared to when you were single and carefree. If you’d like to discover a few tips that will help you navigate budgeting as a mom, you’ve come to the right place. Simply continue reading to discover a handy guide to budgeting which has been designed specifically for busy moms.

Mom Budgeting Tips:

Consider using cash in order to keep your spending under control:

If you currently rely on cards to pay for all of your weekly shopping and have a hard time sticking to your budget, it may be worth going on an all cash diet. Where you’ll take out all of the money which you need for the week out from an ATM machine, so that you’ll be able to keep track of exactly how much money you have left in your weekly budget.

Better yet, you may want to seperate your weekly budget into different envelopes, for different types of expenses. As example, you may want to place your food budget in one envelope and your gas money in another envelope. Which you’ll be able to keep in a folder or a large wallet.

Once you’ve spent all the money in one of your envelopes, try to wait till the next week in order to replace the money which you’ve spent. Instead of being tempted to get out your credit card and to spend money that’s not in your budget.

Purchase your family’s gifts during major sales:

Instead of waiting till the week before your husband or child’s birthday to purchase their gifts, you can save a lot of money if you think ahead and purchase your family’s gifts during major sales such as Black Friday. It’s also well worth planning to purchase all of your Christmas gifts during Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Which should save you several hundred dollars, which you’l be able to put aside for a rainy day.

Make sure that you have a rainy day fund:

Instead of living from pay check to pay check which can be an extremely dangerous move, it’s a wise move to put any surplus money in your budget towards an emergency fund or a rainy day fund. That way if you find yourself stuck paying for unexpected car related bills, vet bills or medical bills, you’ll have plenty of money in your emergency fund in order to pay your unexpected bills. Without having to dig into your primary savings account.

Swap your unwanted kids clothes and toys with family friends:

If your kids have outgrown their clothes and need new clothes you may be able to swap some of your unwanted kids clothes with your friends or family members. Which is a win win situation which can help you and your friends and family members save money. As an added benefit, you’ll also be able to free up much needed room in your home as your home won’t be cluttered with items that your family no longer uses.

So if the thought of budgeting as a mom makes you feel stressed out, hopefully you’ll be able to use all the smart family budgeting tips which are listed above to your advantage.