5 Reasons to Make Your Entire Home Smoke Free |
Posted: October 19, 2020 |
A staggering number of smokers actually smoke in their homes on a daily basis. If you’re a heavy smoker, this can make for a pretty toxic environment, but even if you only smoke a few cigarettes per day, you’re still setting yourself and your home up for disaster.
Cigarettes contain over 7,000 chemicals, many of which are poisonous to humans. Among those 7,000 are things like formaldehyde and arsenic (that’s right, rat poison and embalming fluid). Is that really something you want coating your walls, furniture, air ducts, and lungs?
There are plenty of reasons to remove smoking altogether from your home, and we’re going to take a look at five of the most important. Smoking in your home can amplify the effects of the cigarette smoke, and cause damage much quicker to your body. Here are the reasons to quit. 1. Smoking Indoors Increases The Danger
Smoking indoors leaves nowhere for the toxic smoke to escape to. It remains in the air, lingering like a silent killer too quiet and stealthy to be noticed, except by its signature smell. Ok, so perhaps that’s a bit dramatic, but smoking indoors most definitely increases the dangers of smoking. It’s bad enough that you’re directly inhaling the smoke via your cigarette, but now you’re also blowing that smoke back into your home’s air. Once it’s there, even if you open the windows, it’s very difficult to get rid of it.
Now, instead of just getting smoke from the butt of the cigarette, even when you aren’t smoking, you’re being exposed to those chemicals. You’re not getting the right amount of fresh air, and the close quarters are only amplifying the harmful effects. You’re more sluggish, tired, and sickly because of it.
Quitting smoking can help save your home and your health. When you smoke, you’re essentially shaving years off of your life, but when you smoke indoors, you’re speeding up the process. 2. You’re Affecting Your Home’s Value
You didn’t think your wallet was safe, did you? Smoking eventually affects every aspect of your life, including your financial health. Cigarettes are expensive, as are the medical costs that you will inevitably incur once you adopt the habit, but combined with the loss of nearly 29% of your home’s value, smoking can wind up being the most expensive and destructive habit you ever take on.
Let’s say you’re getting ready to sell your $175,000 home. You’ve smoked in the home for at least the last decade or so, and the signs are everywhere. You’ve cleaned, scrubbed, disinfected, and yet, the smell remains, and the horrible stains on the walls and hard surfaces just won’t go away. Not to mention, every time the furnace kicks on, it smells like an ashtray.
You’ve effectively just sacrificed about $50,000 on your home’s value to your smoking habit. 3. The Smell
Let’s be honest here; no one likes the smell of an old cigarette, but that’s what you’ll get if you smoke indoors. You can buy the best air fresheners on the market, the most effective cleaners, and the smelliest candles, but you’ll never completely rid yourself of the stale cigarette smell without a remodel.
The smell can linger for months or even years after you quit smoking, as well, and can get caught in ventilation ducts, on upholstery, and even in your furnace filter. The smell is unpleasant, and you can be certain that guests will notice. If the smell is bad enough, you’ll likely find that you don’t have many visitors, and such concentrated smells can be nauseating for non-smokers. 4. It’s Toxic To Everyone Else As Well
Aside from the fact that cigarettes smell bad, they’re also toxic; and not just to you, the smoker. That smell that lingers in your home also carries with it a deadly reminder of second-hand smoke. And yes, second-hand smoke is dangerous and often deadly, despite popular opinion that it doesn’t hurt anyone.
Second-hand smoke has been linked to cancer, disease, and other ailments, much like first-hand smoke. It lingers in your home, poisoning the air and exposing anyone that comes into your home to its dangers. Your pets and children can be affected as well, and second-hand smoke is linked to several respiratory malfunctions in children.
5. It’s Nearly Impossible To Clean
Even if you clean and scrub and wash and disinfect, it can be nearly impossible to completely remove the signs of smoking from a home. The smoke has a habit of sticking to everything, and once you’ve got years of build-up, it’s nearly impossible to scrub off. Scrubbing it can also release some of those harmful toxins, so many new homeowners use a special sealing paint on a smokers’ walls to contain the smell and the toxicity. The Bottom Line
Smoking inside your home affects its value, the health and safety of you and your guests, and your personal hygiene. These five reasons should be enough to make anyone want to give up the habit for good!
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