For What It’s Worth is a live podcast about the stuff we use, the trends we question and the products we can’t stop talking about. Stream new episodes bi-weekly on YouTube, hosted by NBC Select editorial director Lauren Swanson and NBC Select reporter Zoe Malin. Shop our product picks below and on Amazon.

Whether you formally “spring clean” or not, there’s probably a few ways you prepare your home for the new season, and prepare yourself for a few pollen-filled weeks of allergies ahead (if you can’t stop sneezing like us, bless you). In this episode of For What It’s Worth, NBC Select editorial director Lauren Swanson and I share the products we use to get our homes (and closets) ready for the warmer weather, the cleaning hacks that practically eliminate dust from every crevice and the expert advice that changed what order we wipe down, scrub and vacuum every room in.

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Products we recommend during this episode

Spring cleaning supplies

Swiffer Duster Kit

Hiware Window Blinds and Air Conditioner Cleaner

$6.99

Amazon

Cozy Essential Vacuum Storage Bags

Air purifiers

Levoit Core 330-P Air Purifier

Windmill Air Purifier Max

Blueair Blue Pure 311i Max Smart Air Purifier

Vacuums

Shark Clean & Empty Cordless Stick Vacuum

Levoit Aero Cordless Vacuum

Episode transcript

LAUREN: Welcome back.

ZOE: Welcome back. We’re here for a new season. We are going spring.

LAUREN: Literally.

ZOE: We are springing forward both in terms of time, depending on where you live, I guess, and season. Are you a spring person?

LAUREN: I like the new beginnings of spring.

ZOE: Me too.

LAUREN: I like the flowers. I hate the allergies.

ZOE: Me too. I already can’t breathe, so that’s that.

LAUREN: My eyes are itching are we’re talking about this.

ZOE: No, I can’t handle this. I feel like, especially in the past few years, every single time I open any news app, it’s like, “the pollen count has never been higher.” What? How? How does this keep happening?

LAUREN: I know.

ZOE: And then, you see it…

LAUREN: On cars. It’s a yellow dusting.

ZOE: Oh, man, that’s how I know I’m doomed. I am doomed when I see that. And I love running outside in the spring. I love it so much, but I know for a fact if I open my weather app, if it’s a certain wind speed, I just know that I’m going to have to accept my fate, and that if I go outside and I go on this run, I’m going to come back and have a full allergy attack. And it just sucks.

LAUREN: When you go home in the spring, how do you kind of decompress from the outside being so nasty? What’s your spring home care?

ZOE: My spring home care? I feel like, for me, spring home care has a lot to do with air quality.

LAUREN: You can’t control it outside, but you can inside your own home.

ZOE: Exactly. I have such bad allergies that I use an air purifier in every single room in my apartment.

LAUREN: Which one do you have?

ZOE: So I have a couple. The one that I really love is the Windmill air purifier.

LAUREN: Oh, I have their air conditioner.

ZOE: I love their air purifier because it’s pretty and it works. Obviously, it works. I wouldn’t have it if it didn’t work. But it is pretty and it genuinely doesn’t look like an air purifier. I kind of tuck it on the side of my dresser in my room, and you really don’t know it’s an air purifier. So I really like that part of it. I also have one of the Levoit ones, the classic one.

LAUREN: Oh, so you’re not brand loyal when it comes to air purifiers.

ZOE: No, I just will try any of them.

LAUREN: You’re like, quantity.

ZOE: Yes, quantity for me.

LAUREN: And quality.

ZOE: Quality and quantity, and also room size. The one in my living room is the biggest because it covers the whole front of my apartment.

LAUREN Is that the Levoit one?

ZOE: Yes, I have a big Levoit one that covers most of my entryway, my living room area and my kitchen. And I keep it between my living room and my kitchen because it’s so great at getting rid of the fumes in my kitchen, or the odors when you’re cooking. It always automatically goes off, and I’m just like, Oh, thank you for not making my apartment smoky and stuff. It really does help.

LAUREN: And you’ve got pets.

ZOE: Yes, and I have pets.

LAUREN: The whole zoo.

ZOE: The whole zoo, everyone sheds. So then I feel like my bedroom one is a little bit smaller, but still very impactful. And you know what the most important feature is for me on an air purifier? Child safety locks. Because my cats..

LAUREN: Do they turn it on and off?

ZOE: Oh, man. I had an old air purifier years ago when I first got my first cat, and I didn’t have child safety locks on that one, because A, it was just never something I paid attention to. And B, it was a very old model. And she jumped on that thing, and it started beeping, and it would turn on and off. And I was like, This is not working. So then every one I’ve gotten since, I check to make sure that it has child safety locks. I actually think I also have a Midea one. I have many air purifiers.

LAUREN: Wow, you are drowning in air purifiers.

ZOE: I must, or else I just can’t breathe.

LAUREN: You must have the cleanest hair. Hair? Air.

ZOE: I hope I have the cleanest hair and cleanest air. I also definitely am, well, I would say I’m more of a humidifier person in the winter than I am a dehumidifier person in the summer.

LAUREN: You need it in that New York City apartment.

ZOE: Dry air is really the issue for me, not moist air, which I kind of feel like is lucky? I don’t know.

LAUREN: I have a friend, she’s in New York, and she has to have a dehumidifier running all the time because she said there was moisture just bubbling up in her wallpaper at all times.

ZOE: That’s crazy.

LAUREN: So it truly depends on where you live.

ZOE: I have the opposite issue. I have my humidifier out all year long, whether or not I turn it on kind of depends, but I would say in the beginning of spring, I usually do still have it on.

LAUREN: My cousin had a damp couch that he thought — I’m probably mis-relaying this story — but in in my head, and for these purposes, it was a damp couch that he thought was moisture coming from inside his apartment, and he couldn’t figure out where this moisture was coming from. And then he realized it was coming from his cat.

ZOE: No.

LAUREN: So in those instances, a dehumidifier is not important. This was a topic of a holiday, like Thanksgiving or Christmas. We were all like, What do you mean you have a damp couch? He’s like, I can’t figure it out. I got a new couch, and that one’s damp too.

ZOE: That’s horrible.

LAUREN: He’s also the one that aspirated on a… was it a tortilla chip? No, it was on a boba. Another year, he was telling a story to all of us at Thanksgiving or Christmas about how he choked on a boba. But he’s so tall that his windpipe was so long and so he didn’t die, but he was like, I was still coughing up this boba for months, and then I finally wiggled it loose.

ZOE: This is the most chaotic cousin.

LAUREN: But sometimes the chaos makes you the best.

ZOE: Especially for family gatherings. I agree. I definitely also pay a lot of attention to putting my winter clothes away between winter and spring.

LAUREN: Hard shift. She’s like choking on a boba, I put away my clothes for the winter.

ZOE: I needed to get out of that visual. Let me tell you something, you said the word windpipe and I needed to move away from that. I was having visualizations.

LAUREN: You’re like, Done.

ZOE: Done with that. Done with the windpipe. But I put all of my coats in vacuum seal bags.

LAUREN: I, historically, have not had a lot of success or with vacuum seal bags. Tell me your secret. How do you do it? Because I find them lumpy and hard.

ZOE: I think so too, but honestly, I just sit on them and really get all that air out.

LAUREN: Okay, Zoe’s hack for vacuum-seal bags: You sit on them.

ZOE: You’ve got to sit on them. It says you can use the vacuum hose, but I don’t have a vacuum with a hose, so that’s not working for me. If you sit on them, try to get all the air out and then really quickly zip it up, I think it works. So I put all of my scarves, hats, gloves…

LAUREN: But they’re not flat because if you’re putting a coat in there that has a big sleeve, the sleeve is going to create a little mountain.

ZOE: Even if it’s not flat enough, it still works for me. I’m just trying to save some space here.

LAUREN: Where put them? Under your bed? In your closet?

ZOE: In a bin under my bed.

LAUREN: You do it for all winter coats?

ZOE: Yes, that’s the extent of storing my winter items. I know some people have a much more intensive switchover, but I’m not one of them. The vacuum seal is it for me.

LAUREN: Do you wash your coats before you put them away?

ZOE: Oh yes.

LAUREN: You have to, unless you really want to be surprised next summer and you find a $5 bill in your pocket, or a chapstick you’ve been looking for.

ZOE: I honestly still do. I wash them, and then the next winter I get them out, and I’m like, Wow, I’m rich.

LAUREN: I feel like that is winter’s greatest treasure: pulling out your winter coats from last year, and you’re like, The lipstick that I thought I lost, the tickets to this concert that I had a great time at.

ZOE: Aw, it’s like walking down memory lane.

LAUREN: Yes, winter coats are memory lane.

ZOE: I agree with that completely.

LAUREN: Don’t clean out your pockets.

ZOE: No, don’t. Just see what happens.

LAUREN: You’re like, I enjoyed a Snickers last year? This is great.

ZOE: And I put that Snickers in that wash, but it still looks great.

LAUREN: That’s not me that’s doing that — that’s Chad.

ZOE: I believe it fully. Do you do anything else between winter and spring?

LAUREN: So we used to put in our air conditioner after winter to spring. We just started leaving them in.

ZOE: I do the same.

LAUREN: It’s making our apartment a little drafty during the winter, but it’s just easier to leave them in.

ZOE: I think so too. And I know all the experts we’ve talked to said, Don’t do that.

LAUREN: Yes, because you have to clean it. I did watch a bug die and decompose on our air conditioning unit, and now it is just the ashes of the bug because it went through the whole season.

ZOE: Oh no. That’s horrible.

LAUREN: It’s been just on our air conditioning unit. It was a lantern fly, so it wasn’t that terrible.

ZOE: You’ve got to stomp those out. All the experts we’ve spoken to said that you should be taking your air conditioner out because A, you have to clean it, and B, it really isn’t great for this piece of machinery to be faced with snow and the cold and all this stuff. I just find it so challenging to take it out and put it back in — it’s too much. So I think that the covers are a great in between option. It does help with the draftiness.

LAUREN: I never even thought about that.

ZOE: You can get them online at really any big box retailer, and it just covers it so the vents aren’t letting as much air in. I don’t think they’re 100 percent effective, but they’re effective enough that you at least block some of the draftiness, which is good. It’s not preserving the air conditioner — the air conditioner is still getting exposed to the snow and stuff.

LAUREN: It’s booty is hanging out.

ZOE: Yes, it is. But at least you’re helping with the draftiness. So I think that’s helpful. I don’t take my air conditioner out, but before the winter, I put in more insulation under it and on the sides, and then I usually just keep it in for the spring because it’s not a big deal. My apartment is not getting super hot or cold. It’s pretty moderate. But you could take that out after if you wanted to. Yes, for sure.

LAUREN: What else do the experts say about spring cleaning? You did a story on how to dust the right way.

ZOE: I did. Who knew?

LAUREN: And I remember when you pitched the story, it was so obvious, but so mind-blowing at the same time where I’m like, How did I not know that there is a right way to clean your house and dust your house for spring?ZOE: The interesting thing is, what they were saying, is part of the reason why you are getting so much pollen and dust and all this stuff into your home, for us especially, is because we have air conditioners. So you’re taking outside air and bringing it inside your apartment. And even if, let’s say, you live in a home and you don’t have window units like we do in our apartment, you’re still opening the door probably more, because you’re probably going outside more since it’s nicer out. So you’re still letting more outside air into your home, wherever you live and however you live, in the spring. That’s why you have so much more pollen gathering in your home.

LAUREN: Wait, sidebar: Have you heard of the house burping trend?

ZOE: I have heard of that. I saw it on Tiktok, and I was like, This is wild. I’ve never done it.

LAUREN: I’ve never done it — intentionally, I guess, I’ve never done it. Like, I’m not sitting there going, I need to burp my house.

ZOE: Can you explain to our watchers what that is? House burping with Lauren Swanson.

LAUREN: Tell me if I’m wrong, but it is where you intentionally, no matter the season, but this was particularly in the winter when it’s cold outside, you’re opening up all the windows and all the doors of your house and letting fresh air come in and letting it circulate in your house. You do it for however long…

ZOE: You let the stale air out and the fresh air in.

LAUREN: Even if it’s cold, even if your dad yells at you for the electric bill — you do it.

ZOE: But see my problem with that, as someone who has severe allergies…

LAUREN: Can you house burp in the spring? I don’t think there’s safe house burping in the spring.

ZOE: I just don’t think you can. I understand winter. I simply do not think you could do it in the spring. I would go back into my home and see the pollen all over everything…

LAUREN: You air purifiers would be like, Bye.

ZOE: They would be screaming. They’d be like, This is your fault. You deal with the consequences. Since all that air is coming in and all of the pollen and debris and all that stuff, you probably have to dust more. But there is a right way to dust which, who knew? I mean, like you said, logically, it does make sense once they said it to us. So you have to dust from top to bottom. It’s very easy. If you’re in a room, you start with the bookshelves. You start with the molding in your room…

LAUREN: The tops of your ceiling fans. It’s so satisfying.

ZOE: You start with that and then you keep moving down, moving down, moving down. And then eventually you get to the floor, and then that’s when you vacuum, because all of the dirt and all of the dust and stuff is collected on the floor, so that’s when you go in with the vacuum. Genius. It makes so much sense. Was I doing that before the expert said this? No.

LAUREN: Pretty much I think my mentality is to start with the floors.

ZOE: Me too.

LAUREN: It’s just what I’m in contact with every day. It’s the dirtiest. But it’s not the most strategic way to get it done.

ZOE: No. And then once the experts had this conversation with me, and I wrote this article, I started paying attention to the dust falling when I was dusting. I was like, Wow, I have lived my whole life making my apartment dirtier. So fascinating. The other thing that I started doing was really paying attention to and scrubbing my windows, because it’s not only the fact that the pollen is coming in and getting on your floors, getting on your shelves, getting into the air. But I feel like it collects in the crevices of my windows too, especially since I do have the window air conditioner. So I scrub all of the little snooks and crannies now, too. And I do clean my air conditioner because one of our coworkers wrote a story about how to clean your air conditioner. When the air conditioner says, “it’s time to clean the filter,” I’ve done that, but I’ve really never gone beyond that. And in the spring, it’s even more important because the air conditioner is on and it’s going to be filtering more outside air that has more pollen in it, and it’s getting dirtier, so you need to clean more often. It’s exhausting.

LAUREN: One of my favorite things outside of vacuuming, because I genuinely love vacuuming…

ZOE: Me too. It’s my favorite part of the day…

LAUREN: It’s so satisfying. I could vacuum every single day…

ZOE: Agree.

LAUREN: One of my favorite things is when I change the air purifier filters and I take out the screen. I have Blueair air purifiers in our living room and our bedroom. Actually, I had to get a new one. I’ve had these for the past three years, and I got them because I’m allergic to cats, and we have a cat. I’ve never had a problem once we plug them in and they’re running, I’m totally fine. But I’ve had them for three years. One of them stopped working, so I went to buy a replacement, and they have a whole new model that I actually love more. So now I bought two of the new models, even though I don’t need it — anyways, that’s an aside. It’s my favorite thing to replace those filters, because I pull it out and I’m like, Look at this gross, disgusting thing.

ZOE: It’s so fun.

LAUREN: It’s so satisfying. And then you pop in a new one, and I swear, when I pop in a new, fresh air purifier filter, I’m like, I can breathe. It’s like having a week of a stuffed up nose, and then finally you get that relief of the cool air running through your nostrils.

ZOE: You’re like, Wow, I’m alive.

LAUREN: That’s the feeling. It’s like, I can finally breathe again. Even though I’m sure it’s in my head a little bit…

ZOE: I think you’re right though.

LAUREN: It’s like, I’m breathing clean air. It’s the best.

ZOE: It makes a big difference, in my opinion. But I also definitely vacuum more in the spring, because I know that there’s pollen in the fabric, in the carpet. Another cleaning trend I’ve been seeing on TikTok is slow vacuuming. Have you been seeing this?

LAUREN: No.

ZOE: I’m obsessed with this. So fast vacuuming is doing it really quickly, so you’re just going up and down and all over. And you’re not even really paying attention to what you’re picking up. It’s just getting it done. Slow vacuuming is when you really intentionally and slowly go down each line and then bring the vacuum back, and then you do it again, and apparently it picks up more dirt, which makes sense because the suction is having more contact with the ground. It’s pulling up more stuff. I watched so many videos of people slow vacuuming, and let me tell you something, the amount of stuff that they picked up in their slow vacuuming canister versus their fast vacuuming canister… I’m convinced now. I started slow vacuuming, and it’s wonderful, but I also have three pets that are shedders, so no matter what, I’m getting great results every time I vacuum. But that was revolutionary to me. Try it.

LAUREN: I probably will. I’ll probably go home and slow vacuum.

ZOE: You love vacuuming, so you’ll do it.

LAUREN: I love vacuuming. There’s nothing better than looking at all the gunk you picked up.

ZOE: What’s your vacuum of choice, currently?

LAUREN: We have a Shark one that docks on the canister. I forget what kind it is, but it’s a Shark cordless that docks on the canister.

ZOE: Shark makes great vacuums. They do.

LAUREN: We, at one point, had three vacuums in our one bedroom apartment, and it was excessive. We had a robot vacuum, we had a corded one and then we had this Shark one. And I was like, This is too many. We need one. But the one that we have, the amount of stuff it picked up versus the other ones, was insane. It was to the point where Chad did it, and he was like, I think it’s picking up our carpet fibers too. He was like, There’s no way. I just vacuumed. How is it picking up this much stuff?

ZOE: It’s insane. When you get a good vacuum like that…

LAUREN: It’s so good. I love dumping the canister in the trash, too. Oh my God, it’s my favorite. I’m like, We’re disgusting.

ZOE: I know, it’s amazing. It’s like, Wow, this is an amazing and also horrifying part of being a human being.

LAUREN: It’s like when you take the pore strip off and you’re like, I’m gross. Look at all these blackheads — I’m disgusting.

ZOE: I have a Levoit one that came out, I think in 2025, and it’s a stand-up one that has a dock that sucks out all the stuff. Never in my life have I been more excited than the first time I did that. I was like, This is truly magical, and my house will never be cleaner. I pick up so much stuff with that thing. I get excited to vacuum. I think the hardest thing to vacuum is cat litter, but this works like charm. No problems.

So those are our cleaning pieces of advice, tidbits of advice, for your spring transition.

LAUREN: It’s tough out there.

ZOE: Let me tell you something: You’ve got to start dusting now.

LAUREN: It’s tough out there. It’s tough in here.

ZOE: Get an air purifier.

LAUREN: Yes. All right, see you next time.

ZOE: Bye.

Why trust NBC Select?

I’m a reporter at NBC Select and I co-host our live podcast, For What It’s Worth, with editorial director Lauren Swanson. In this article, I summarize Episode 17: How to Survive Spring Allergies, Changing Weather, Cleaning and more. I included a summary of the episode, a transcript, products we recommend during the podcast and related articles.

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