Do you have family or friends coming for the holidays who are allergic to your pets?
This post is for you!
Meet my geriatric and bothersome (but beloved!) cats, Ninja and Techy:
The whole family loves our goofy cats, but my three kids, once they moved out of the house, found that (to varying degrees) they were all suddenly allergic to the cats once they returned to visit. This surprised me but is surprisingly common, and it bummed me out that my own kids had to take allergy meds just to come home (not to mention simply be various shades of miserable while here).
So a couple years ago, I embarked on discovering ways to de-dander the house for the holidays, which for us is the time stretching from Thanksgiving to the New Year. The first round of efforts (which I’ll share in a moment) were surprisingly successful—allergy symptoms were tamped down significantly such that my kids no longer had to take meds (sensitivities will of course vary). The second round of efforts was even more successful: now my kids are nearly symptom-free despite spending days in the house and even petting the cats a bit (washing hands after!). (And I have another update for 2026: I keep finding new, more effective ways to de-dander!). It’s meant a more lovely holiday for all of us, so I wanted to share my tips about how to de-dander your house for a more comfortable holiday.
NOTE: these things are not free or easy, but they are effective
- Keep cats out of bedrooms: where the kids sleep, we just keep those doors closed during the year, basically a cat-free zone.
- Clean the carpets: once a year, I call in the professionals to clean the carpets. I time this just before Thanksgiving. It’s possible to rent carpet cleaning machines as well, but I’ve never done that. Even cleaning the one room where people spend the most time would help. I also ramp up efforts to vacuum frequently in the weeks leading up to a visit to keep ambient accumulation of dander in the carpets to a minimum.
- Get a MERV-13 or higher filter for your furnace: this is just a good practice for your year-round health, filtering smoke particles, dander, viruses, pollution, etc from the air you breathe all the time. Depending on how much usage you get (if you’ve got wildfires, you need to change a lot more frequently), you should be changing your filters at least annually, even better every six months. I change them right before the holidays.
- Room air filters: I got a big one for the family room, and I’ve got individual ones for each bedroom (these do double duty during wildfire smoke, bad air pollution days, and when you need to keep viruses from spreading when someone in the house is sick). Generally, I run these (in the bedrooms) before the kids arrive and once a day (in the family room) for an hour to just take down the overall particle count in the air. (See my Filter Guide here)
- Get a HEPA filter for your vacuum: I have roombas, which have HEPA filters, and I send those out daily in the morning (during visits) to vacuum up the main family room area where people spend the most time. I also have a HEPA filter vacuum that I use daily (during visits) to vacuum the couches, where Techy likes to sit (she has her own blanket spot, which keeps much of the dander contained into one area, but I vacuum the whole couch and wash her blanket daily). I made the mistake during the first round of having a non-HEPA vacuum, thinking I would just run the air purifier after vacuuming, and while that did help, it was vastly better simply to have the HEPA vacuum eliminate the dander in the first place. 2026 UPDATE: the magic of covering the couches with sheets! Turns out that daily vacuuming of the couches wasn’t sufficient for my most-sensitive allergy sufferers, and I realized the dander was deep inside the couches. So every time someone sat down poof up went all the dander out of the cushions! Remarkably, there was a very simple fix for this: cover the couches with sheets. At first, I didn’t think it would work and I’d have to deep clean the couches or something… but the sheets worked remarkably well! Every couple days, I washed the sheets and set them back out again, and it worked great to keep the dander safely contained within the couch cushions and not lofting up into the air where it could make people sick. WIN!
- Vacuum and dust the bedrooms: This was another mistake I made in the first round and fixed in the second: instead of just normal dusting (which just puts stuff back into the air), I vaccuumed the shelves and desks of the bedrooms with the HEPA vacuum first, then used a spray cleaner/paper towel to mop up residual particles. This really cleaned up the bedrooms much more thoroughly. (Even though cats aren’t allowed in the bedrooms and even though we have a MERV-13 filter on the furnace, dust/dander gets in and settles over time.)
- THE BIG DE-DANDER DIPPING: this was my biggest discovery in the second round and I think it made most of the difference: taking the cats to the groomer and getting them bathed/groomed and also dipped in de-dander solution that strips away the dander and treats their skin/fur (sort of like human dander shampoo). The cats were not excited about this particular innovation, but they were very fluffy afterward and I think this made a huge difference. Treatment lasts for 4-6 weeks, so I’ll time it better next time to have it last through the holiday season (this time, we got them dipped twice—they were not pleased). UPDATE 2026: one well-timed dip lasted the whole season!
Is it a hassle to do all this? Yes. Especially having to daily vacuum the family room/couches during visits, but covering the couches with sheets was easier and more effective! YAY for continued experiments to find better de-dandering techniques!
Is all the effort worth it to have my kids enjoy an allergy-free holiday? 100%
One thing I did that I think didn’t make much difference was getting the vents cleaned, but that’s another option to try, if you’re going all out. I also had to get rid of (move out of the bedrooms) some fabric-covered chairs that the cats loved to sit on but that were impossible to clean/de-dander. We now have faux-leather chairs for the desks in the kids’ rooms because those are easy to clean (plus we don’t let the cats in there anyway).
I think all of the above make a difference: the de-dandering was a huge effect, but the daily vacuuming of the family room and covering the couches with sheets were probably the next biggest. Having the right HEPA/MERV filters/vacuums is a one-time investment in a cleaner environment for everyone. If you were short on money, I’d give up washing the carpets: it’s the most expensive part and probably the least impactful (a thorough vacuuming should be effective too).
I hope you find these tips helpful and have a lovely holiday with your loved ones!
Sue
ps. gratuitous video of Techy asking for pets…