Newcomer to Texas? Surviving Allergy Season in Collin County

Allergy season. It comes every year. Flowers and trees start blooming, and pollen is everywhere. Grass clippings fly about, and your nose starts dripping, your eyes start running, and you wonder why you didn’t appreciate your ability to breathe through both nostrils together when you had the chance.

I’ve dealt with allergies most of my life. In my 33 years on this earth, I’ve learned a few tricks about managing them. There is a time each year that I can’t wear contacts and I live in glasses: When my car is covered in a pale, yellow pollen sheen. When I wonder if I’ll ever go out without a box of tissues in my car and a pouch in my purse. It’s then that I know: it’s allergy season.

Having trouble surviving allergy season? Wondering when it’s going to end? Here are some tricks I’ve learned over the years that make it more bearable, even if it’s not any more fun (because really, when is a runny nose fun?).

1. Figure out how to get tissues in bulk. You’ll want lots of them for the runny nose, sneezing, sniffling, even coughing you may do as pollen counts rise. Put a box everywhere you can without making your home decor theme “tissue boxes.” Living room, play room, bedrooms, bathrooms, purse. Okay, maybe not your purse, but your car. We all know the pain of having a nose start running as soon as you’ve closed the garage door when heading out to run errands.
2. Set up pollen alerts through the weather app on your phone, or check Pollen.com before heading out for the day. It helps me to know if pollen counts are high or low for a day to plan for the severity of symptoms I may experience and what activities we may do when allergy season peaks.
3. Spending time outdoors? Change your (and your kids’) clothes when you come in. Pollen can cling to the outfit you chose this morning and can exacerbate symptoms. If you have a little one who loves changing their clothes multiple times a day, they’ll love this! Your laundry detergent supply may not, so like tissues, you may want to figure out how to get that in bulk, too.
4. You may also want to shower after being outdoors, taking care to rinse your hair and wash your face to remove any traces of pollen that could be clinging there. I’ve showered before bed since going back to work after my son was born, and it helps my allergy symptoms a lot.
5. Talk to your doctor (and eye doctor) about allergy medicines. Many are over-the-counter, but it helps to have a doctor’s input on what may work best for your symptoms. My first spring in the area, I was actually asked, “You’re not from here, are you?” by the eye doctor when I went in with what I thought was pinkeye. It wasn’t. It was allergies and I left with steroid drops to help my poor golf-ball-sized eyes. Allergy season can be full of surprises, and your doctors can help you manage them as best as you and they can!
6. Make your bedroom as allergen-free as you can. Dust your fan blades, wash your pillowcases a few times per week (because of pollen transfer). Use dust-mite-preventing mattress and pillow covers and try to find an air purifier you like to use in the bedroom. Allergies can seem worse at night, and doing things to make overnights better (and get better sleep) is always a good thing.

The biggest tip I have, though? Keep your sense of humor. I know it seems like allergy season lasts all year, but it doesn’t (though sometimes as a newcomer I wonder how many different waves of plants can bloom in a single year!) Pollen counts will drop as the year progresses. You and I won’t always have runny noses and itchy eyes. Doing what we can to manage our symptoms during allergy season and laughing when we just can’t stop our nose from running can make it bearable. Even if we are wondering why we can’t go out without finding more pollen on our cars every day.

What do you do to make allergy season in Collin County more bearable? Any tricks we don’t know about?