You might be one sneeze away from breaking out the little French maid costume to try and compel the dust bunnies in your home to take up residence elsewhere. Before you do anything drastic, consider that you might not be attacking the dust correctly yet. So, refresh yourself on how to get rid of dust and the top ways to prevent it in the first place.
6 Steps to Get Rid of Dust for Good
Who needs white-glove service when you can get that spotless surface look with this anti-dust cleaning routine?
1. Wash Your Bedding in Hot Water
Dust mites are one of the biggest culprits for dust-related allergy symptoms, and they love an unwashed blanket or sheet. Keep them from breeding and causing more problems by washing your blankets, sheets, pillowcases, and duvet covers in hot water once a week.
2. Remove Dust in Hard-to-Reach Places
If you have a regular cleaning routine and still have a dust problem, you might be forgetting to clean up a few key areas. Use a microfiber duster that has a pole to get the dust and cobwebs off of ceilings, the corners of rooms, the tops of cabinets, fiddly window blinds, and so on.
3. Break Out the Dry Mops if You Have Hardwood
Avoid the sneezing fits that come with sweeping up pet hair by using a dry mop instead. While dry mops won’t cling to dust and dander as well as wet mops, they work great on flooring that isn’t made to get wet. Clear everything out of the way and dry mop across the floor daily. It may seem excessive, but the more you do it, the less dust will build up over time.
4. Clean Your Ceiling Fan Blades
When dust circulates through the air, sedentary things like fan blades are the perfect objects to trap it in place. Make sure you’re not recirculating dust through the air and onto your furniture every time you turn the fan on by wiping it down.
How you clean your ceiling fan is up to personal preference. Some people love the extension dry mops that you can swipe down the blade, and others like vacuuming them directly. Us? We like to use a pillowcase to clean our ceiling fan blades so the dust has somewhere to go other than showering down on us. But if you really want to get rid of that dust, wash your fan blades after knocking the dust down with an all-purpose cleaner.
Always clean your ceiling fans before you vacuum. That way, you don’t have to vacuum again to clear up the little dust bunnies that escape.
5. Dust & Vacuum Everything You Can
When you think about getting rid of dust, dusting is the first thing that comes to mind. And dusting is a great way to remove dust from common household surfaces. But vacuums come in handy because they suck up all that dust before it can dissipate in the air.
High-efficiency particulate air (HEPA) vacuums are the best for cutting down dust in your home. They’ve got the highest-level filters, so even tiny particles will get trapped.
6. Change Your Air Filters
If you’re seeing more dust than usual, check your air filters. They’re your first line of defense against dust circulating around your house, so they need to be in tip-top shape. Are they covered in dust? It’s time to swap them out. (Typically, every 90 days is the recommended time for changing air filters. We like to set a calendar alert to remind us.)
While you’re looking for filters, consider getting a HEPA air filter, as they’re the best in the business for getting rid of dust. If not, at least pick out accordioned ones because those folds help trap the dust better than completely flat ones do.
5 Tips for Keeping Dust Levels Down at Home
When battling dust, cleaning the house is only part of your attack plan. Don’t forget about these other important methods for preventing dust in the first place.
Put a Doormat at Every Entrance
Your feet can kick up a lot of dust when you’re walking inside. Trap that dust in place with a doormat. And if you really don’t want dust in your house, have a ‘no shoes indoors’ policy.
Avoid Carpet at All Costs
Carpet is a black hole where dust is involved. You can vacuum to your heart’s content, but there’ll still be dust trapped in those plush fibers. So, if you’re thinking about remodeling or looking into a new place, avoid carpet at all costs.
Get an Air Purifier
Air purifiers do the dirty work of removing dust before it has a chance to settle on anything. You can trap everything that’s moved past your air filters with a small air purifier.
Set Up a Humidifier
Humidifiers might seem like a weird option for getting rid of dust, but they come in handy in dry homes. Static — which is more likely to happen when you’ve got a dry climate — will help dust cling to surfaces. Humidifiers step in to keep your house from getting dry enough to have static.
Keep Your Windows Closed
Now, we know this isn’t always practical. Some homes don’t have air conditioning, and in hot months, you’ll do anything to cool the house down. But try to keep the windows closed whenever you can. The less open your house is, the fewer particulates from outside can come inside.
Live Life Dust Bunny Free
Dusting doesn’t start and end with breaking out the dusters. Instead, there are many other ways you can intervene to keep the dust at bay. From deep cleaning your bedding once a week to putting out doormats, you have a lot of new tools in your anti-dust tool belt.
