I’ve been lucky. I’m not someone who has suffered from allergies. Ok, there was that one time when I was about seven and I ate my weight in scallops and proceed to vomit the night away, but that may have been gluttony rather than a shellfish allergy. It did scar me enough to never eat them again though, so I’ll never know. The guys in my life though? They aren’t quite so lucky. This is why I was so excited to get the Philips 2000i Air Purifier for our house.
Bo is allergic to pet dander, so obviously we have two cats with longish hair. He’s a trooper, and is single handily keeping allergy tablet companies in business. Oliver though? My oldest, my awesome boy – he’s got something else going on, and it’s been impossible for us to pin point.
Environmental allergies are a whole different beast when they affect your kids
It started at Disney World. Oliver was only three, and out of nowhere starting getting hives around his eyes. We assumed it was a one time thing, maybe a bug bite, and after booting it to first aid for some kids allergy medication, all was good again. Until it happened a second time six months later. This time it was at my Grandparents house in the summer, after a couple hours of playing around inside and out. We were on our way home when he started complaining his eyes were itchy. Within ten minutes they were breaking out with hives and swelling horribly.
It was time to get to the bottom of this. It wasn’t happening often, but we couldn’t find a common trigger and never knew how bad it may get. Once it happened in our house for the first time, we were off to the doctor for allergy testing… and every test came back negative.
How do you treat something they can’t name?
We’ve been told it’s something environmental. We’ve also been told that we will probably never be able to pinpoint exactly what it is he’s allergic to, because it wasn’t any of the “common” triggers. That’s not what any parent wants to hear. We can’t control what he may come into contact with outside, but at the very least we want his home to be a safe space for him. It needs to be a place he doesn’t worry about having eyes swell so much it takes days for them to go back to normal.
On top of all that, Oliver takes after me in the illness department. It takes a day for a cold to move into the chest for the two of us, and then it’s weeks of puffers while we try to fight it off. I’m desperate to find solutions for him, and an air purifier seemed like the perfect next step.
My introduction to the Philips 2000i Air Purifier
Honestly, I didn’t know much about air purifiers, outside of “Well, they must purify the air, and that’s got to be a good thing”. I didn’t realize at first that for our situation, I needed something that wouldn’t just get some of the allergens floating around. I needed it to help keep the air cleaner of viruses and bacteria as well (I also have psoriatic arthritis, an autoimmune disease that makes fighting even common bugs a bit of a struggle).
The more time I spent looking into the Philips 2000i Air Purifier, the more I started realizing it was checking off all of my boxes. First off – I can connect to it from a simple app on my phone. I know, you might be thinking that this is excessive, but it has been SO USEFUL! I’ve got the air purifier in Oliver’s room, and I can check on it from anywhere without bothering him. I can adjust the settings, turn the lights off so they don’t wake him up, turn the fan down to silent, or change the mode from allergen, to bacteria and virus (like when I think he’s starting to come down with something). All this without having to open his door and wake him up – genius! Because seriously who wants a cranky kid in the morning before school? Not this Mom!
How does the Philips 2000i Air Purifier do its thing?
There are three giant filters inside of this air purifier. Seriously, just putting this together to get it up and running had me yelling to Bo “Holy crap, this thing is serious inside!”. Here, check it out and let me show you how easy it is to put together, and how impressive these filters look:
There’s the giant fan inside of the air purifier. This is what’s doing all the hard work.
The first thing that you put back in is this super thick HEPA series 3 filter (The entire setup is just taking the filters out of protective plastic wrap, then putting them back inside. It’s super easy.). It captures 99.97% of particles as small as 0.3 microns (that’s allergen, bacteria, and virus small), AND it lasts for up to 12 months before you need to replace it!
The next layer is this honeycomb active carbon filter. It reduces TVOC (total volatile organic compounds) and odors. I’m probably going to appreciate this more and more as Oliver gets older, hehe. It has a 6 month life span before you need to replace it.
After that you just clip back in the pre-filter, which never needs replacing.
Then just place the front cover back on. The whole thing takes about 30 seconds to do, piece of cake!
Clear settings, features, and easy to read displays = a happy Mom
The Philips 2000i Air Purifier lets you adjust everything manually if you want to, but it also has three auto modes: General, Allergen, and Bacteria & Virus. I love the auto modes so I don’t always have to remember to adjusting things on the fly. The allergen mode sounds great for the spring and summer when our environment is constantly changing and wreaking havoc on Oliver. The Bacteria & Virus setting will be perfect for fall and winter. Back to school, and all the cold, wet, then snowy weather always makes keeping the kids runny nose-free a struggle. I’ve got enough to keep track of in the house with three kids, I NEED those automatic modes!
The other thing I really love is the display and ring light. Like I said before, I didn’t really know much about air purifiers before. I also didn’t know how you could trust one. Like seriously, how would I REALLY KNOW if it was making any kind of a difference. The Philips 2000i Air Purifier actually shows you! There’s a numerical display on the top that ranges from 1 – 12 (1 is awesome, 12 is oh crap something’s really wrong in this room). You can’t read that from across the room though (cough, where are my glasses), which is why I LOVE the light-up ring. When it’s blue, I know everything is good, when it’s changing to purplish or red, I know there’s a problem.
So, how was our house at first?
When I first plugged it in downstairs in our open concept kitchen / dining / family room it registered at a 2 and went down to a 1 really quickly. I thought, “Hey, this is awesome, our house is in pretty good shape”. Seeing as the house is only 9 years old, I assumed it would be great all the time after this.
Then I brought it up to Oliver’s room, plugged it in, and that cool little light lit up purplish and there was a giant 6 glowing back at me from the top. Crap. That’s not what I wanted to see, and it reinforced how important it was to get Oliver’s spaces more sanitary for him. When I checked on my phone an hour later while I was cooking dinner, it was down to a 2. Phew. Sweet relief.
The next day, I went back up to Oliver’s room to get it clean and organized before school. This is when my mind was blown – I was literally seeing the purifier work while I was cleaning. When I was reorganizing his bookcase and desk, I heard the fan automatically kick up. When I turned to see why, I saw the air quality in his room had climbed all the way to a 7. Yikes. The more I disturbed while I cleaned (bookcases, drawers and closets full of clothes, bed sheets), the more it worked to get the room back to a healthy reading. It was incredible.
By the time I was vacuuming, the Philips 2000i Air Purifier had already gotten the air quality back down to a 4. Thirty minutes later I checked on my phone from downstairs and it was down to 2 while Oliver was in there building Lego with his sisters. The peace of mind it’s already given me is priceless, I only wish I had realized sooner just how poor the air quality could get in our house, and his room. That’s probably the most shocking part – just how bad the air can get in the house.
What’s next?
It’s still early days; we’ve only had the Philips 2000i Air Purifier for about two weeks now. So far, I’m loving how easy it is to use, and how I can already “see” that it’s working. Over the next three months I’m going to be keeping a diary and updating you though. I’m going to move it around the house a bit a week or two at a time. Downstairs where we spend the most time, our bedroom to see if Bo sleeps any better, and Oliver’s room. So far though, I’m really excited and hopeful about the potential this has to make our lives healthier!
Let me know below!