In your bed and on your pillow and on most furniture and carpeting in your house, live millions of microscopic creatures that are sustained by the dead skin that cells that flake off of you and your household pets. Grossed out yet? Good, because the really nasty part is that over one hundred thousand of these dust mites can live in one square meter of carpet and each one of these cuties can leave up to 20 droppings a day. Still not grossed out? Well good, because every day you breathe in thousands of little microscopic mite turds and you may be suffering from an allergic reaction to the icky combination of dead skin and mite feces that float around your house.

Fun Fact: An average mattress can harbor as many as 10 million dust mites. Sweet dreams!

Allergens produced by dust mite detritus are on of the common triggers of asthma and are also to blame for a variety of other respiratory ailments. Symptoms of dust mite allergies can include itchiness, sneezing, inflamed or infected eczema, watering eyes, runny nose, hay fever, headaches, and clogging in the lungs.

Fun Fact: 80% of that dust you see in a sun beam is … yeah, mite feces and dead skin

So how do you eliminate this dread infestation from your home? Well, you don’t really. You can, however, minimize their impact by making a few changes around the house.

Getting Rid of Dust Mites

1. May sound obvious, but get rid of the dust. Give your entire house a thorough cleaning, especially the bed room.
2. Throw away all of you pillows and buy hypo allergenic pillows with mite resistant pillow cases and mattress cover. Mites love the mattresses and pillow ’cause it’s all nice an warm up in there.
3. Splurge for the HEPA filter. They can be pricey, but they do make a difference.
4. Keep the pets confined to certain portions of the house. Pets greatly increase the amount of dust mites in a home so if Fido has to stay inside, best to keep him confined to one or two rooms. Preferably not the bedrooms.
5. Get rid of your collection of stuffed animals from the state fair. These things are mite hotels. Well, actually more like birthing centers.
6. Vacuum all the time. Every spare minute. The mites are your enemy!  And since you will be vacuuming so much go ahead and get a nice hypoallergenic vacuum cleaner.

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