How often do you clean your home? Are there any techniques you use to reduce dust accumulation?
Or ways to remove that accumulation fast?
Non-vacuum cleaner tips would be more actionable for me currently, but please do share your ways.
As someone with ADHD I actually keep a broom leaning against my standing desk and sweep to busy my hands whenever I'm thinking or on a call. Dusting/washing walls simply doesn't happen in our household due to how many steps are involved - but for most other cleaning we build it into tasks - so as I cook I clean cookware as I go - when I finish showering I squeegee the glass, and there's cleaning fluid within reach if I notice build up.
These are all really exploits designed to help ADHD people do shit but maybe they'll help you!
When I was with my ex: every saturday morning. It sucked, but the reward of both chilling on the sofa in the afterglow of a clean apartment was awesome. God I miss that.
Now: rarely. If it begins to affect my mental health, I might pick up clothing off the floor. I don't clean for myself, I clean for the happiness of others
Depends on the home. Different places I've lived in have different needs.
For dust in particular, you should consider sources of dust and airflow.
I grew up in a house with central air conditioning, so that system had a filter that needed to be replaced periodically. You can buy a variety of different filters- coarser filters last longer but let small particles through, while finer filters need to be changed more often but get the air cleaner.
I now live in a much older house that does not have central air (radiator heat, window units for AC). My wife also likes fan noise to sleep, so we bought an air purifier that we generally leave running in the bedroom and I change that filter periodically. Our basement gets bad dust because it's unfinished with a concrete floor and rafter ceiling, and the litter boxes are down there, so we got another filter that stays on there.
Porous and soft surfaces hang on to dust. Carpets, rugs, tapestries, upholstered furniture, piles of clothes or bedding. Putting your clothes away in a closet or dresser helps. Storing extra bedding in a cabinet or closet helps. Vacuum the carpets and rugs. Don't let dirty laundry pile up. Wash bedding regularly (every week or two). A lot of couches have removable, washable covers that are nice to wash like once a year.
Hard surfaces are easier to clean. If you put those clothes in a dresser, wipe the top of it off with a damp cloth every now and then. A broom can help with floors a bit, but wet dusting with something like a Swiffer is better. If you have rugs you can take them outside and beat them., although vacuuming is often easier. If you have carpets... You're really screwed unless you get a vacuum.
The hardest part is decorations. Frames hanging on walls are just a pain because you simply have to wipe them down. Knick knacks on open shelves are terrible because you've got to pick up the thing, wipe it off, and wipe off the spot under it. Glass display cabinets are much easier to keep clean because dust will almost never get inside. As long as you keep the horizontal surface clear it's just an easy flat thing to wipe off. Vertical glass panes will need the occasional wipe, but not as frequently and it's still way easier than all the books and crannies of a figure or crystal or trophy or whatever else you've got on display.
As for prevention, I brush my hair in one particular spot in my bedroom and clean the brush out after each time. Shower regularly. Stay on top of laundry. The idea is to get skin and hair disposed of, and doing so with water tends to prevent it from getting into the air and settling as dust. Trim your nails somewhere so they will be disposed of properly. Brush your pets.
If you have HVAC, make sure the filter is replaced regularly and try running a higher MERV filter.
As @xmunk said, cleaning needs to be embedded in other tasks. If you cannot figure out how to embed a given task then you can set it for a fixed schedule. For example, you say that you clean your desk or office on Saturday morning and you have a given set of steps you accomplish.
Another trick I learned from corporate world is to delegate the tasks. It is more manageable to follow up on someone doing it for you than you actually doing it. This can be someone else living with you, or someone you can hire to do. For example, you can hire someone to clean the house every Sunday. This later option could be expensive.
If you want to embed tasks and do it yourself, then you need to make them easy for you, for example, you can overstock cleaning products. Let's say you have a kitchen microfiber towel that hangs nearby and a dedicated cleaning product at reach. You consider that a meal (launch or dinner) equals, fetching the ingredients, cooking, eating and cleaning dishes, putting away dishes, and finally cleaning them. If you don't clean dishes then you consider you did not finish your dinner.
Same thing for the bathroom, you need cleaning tools at reach when you are in the bathroom, don't reuse kitchen stuff to clean the bathroom. Then when you shower, you clean the bathtub, the mirror, the sink, your underwear, wipe the floor, etc.
Robot vacuum cleaners aren't great a cleaning, but they are very effective at keeping the dust down. You will still want to clean occasionally but with a robot vacuum running regularly you can do it much less often and the house feels cleaner in the meantime.
I'm also lucky enough to be able to afford house cleaners now. It is such a nice gift to our family to not have to worry about doing these things. We can spend that time doing stuff together rather than cleaning and we don't think about how dirty the house is and dread cleaning it nearly as often. If you can afford it I would highly recommend it. It definitely isn't cheap but many people have more expensive habits that bring less joy IMHO.
I'll second the robot vacuum. Doesn't even have to be an expensive one or a "top reviewed" blah blah(don't get a lemon though). It's not a replacement for a vacuum or having to clean, it's just a nice little companion that helps out a little and reminds you that you have to clean. Don't have one myself but a relative does and it's fun to see (over there a lot to help out because they're older).
If you're into sci-fi or electronics or little animal/robot companions in games, it kinda feels exactly the same but in person. Such a strange sensation to feel joy when the little robot guy runs between your feet or you have to shoo them out of the bathroom so you can use it lol. Even my older relative kinda treats it like a pet but all you have to do is empty it's belly.
Making sure there's no gaps around your HVAC air filter is a good start. Air should only flow through the filter. I like to put duct tape around the sides of of it, forming a seal around the grill so that no air leaks around the sides. Buy one with a MERV rating of 9-12 to minimize dust and pollution. Don't go any higher than that (and avoid HEPA) unless you don't mind a higher power bill and slightly more stress on your system.
During the times of the year when you're not running A/C or heat, change the fan setting from "Auto" to "Circulate" so that it clicks on for a few minutes every hour or so. This will help keep the air clean.
If your air quality is really bad, you can always suppliment your HVAC system with a dedicated air purifier. You don't need anything fancy or expensive; a box fan with 4 HEPA filters taped to it is among the cheapest and most effective ways to clean the air.
I'm constantly cleaning. I live alone in a 100+ year old building. It's no exaggeration to say that there's a coating of dust moments after I get done dusting.
I use a microfiber duster for daily cleaning and a heavily diluted mixture of water, vinegar, and soap for deeper cleaning.
The only thing I can think of, but haven't tried, to minimize dust accumulation is to run a humidifier. That should theoretically give the dust particles something to cling onto and be less prone to becoming airborne as you move about. Perhaps a daily water misting from a spray bottle could work - I should give that a try.
I have an air purifier in my bedroom. It doesn't do very much. I don't really understand how they're supposed to work anyway. There's no way it's going to suck in dust from the other side of the room. I wonder sometimes if it actually makes things worse. I use it mostly for the white noise to sleep with.
You need a bigger air purifier. :) I have one that will definitely suck in dust from the other side of the room.
I have one that claims "Circulates the air 1x per hour in 743 square foot rooms and 4.8x per hour in 153 sq. ft rooms". My room is 180 square feet (12x15).
The concept itself doesn't make sense to me. You've got a single box that both sucks in air and blows it out. It would seem to me that this just creates vortex around the box itself with some minimal air movement in the rest of the area.
A proper air purification system would need to be part of your home's central HVAC system where it's been engineered to suck in the air from one side of a room, filter it through the system, then blow it back out on the other side of the room. And / or several smaller air purifiers strategically placed within a room.
I've done a bit of searching and surprisingly have not been able to find a rally good study. This would seem easy enough to qualify with some knowledge of fluid mechanics. I found this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NinsW8f2ABk The room is about a third the size of my room and the purifier is about 50% larger. The in/out design of this device is dramatically different from mine. I have a hunch that the consumer (Amazon) air purifier market is mostly garbage.
I also suck at this. There is a lazy way though you'll have to accept a certain look. My great grandmother had doilies everywhere. Every surface was covered. Most nearly completely, a few of the bigger tables just had a small one. Once a week she would collect them all and wash them. I didn't realize till much later in life that the purpose they served was to collect dust to keep it off your surfaces.
I wonder if something more aesthetically passing to the modern eye would be as effective or if the intricate lace is important to the function.
About once a week, though I live in a one bedroom apartment. Deep cleaning is about once a month.
Don't have dogs. Don't have woodburners. Don't have horses. In fact, don't live any kind of outdoorsy life if you want a dust-free home.
My home is dusty. I decided that the above was more important to me.
I used to have a very large air filter standing in the corner of my room. It wouldn't eliminate the need to vacuum, but it would reduce the dust in the air and make it less noticeable. I got rid of it because the filter cartridges were sorta discontinued/really expensive
I should clean more often.
But my humidifier is also an air purifier and it pulls a LOT of dirt from the air. I change the water every week and it's filthy. Surprising how much dirt is in the air to "purify."
Could you explain how this humidifier/air purifier works? I've wondered about the possibility of an air purifier that uses water rather than a "screen" but haven't seen anything. My wife and I both have allergies, and our house gets really dry in the winter so one small appliance to deal with both issues sounds like a nice solution.
Oh it makes a huge difference. Without humidifiers I get awful dry skin and nosebleeds from the dry heat of the heaters in winter.
This humidifier is different from the vaporizers I used before. Those ones would get mouldy and would only last a year.
It's a Venta Air washer. It has a turbine inside the water reservoir that slowly turns the water like a mill, so the water evaporates more slowly than with a vaporizer. And on top there's a fan sucking air down into the wet churning turbine, so the air is being pushed through all the wet pieces of the turbine. Somehow that takes impurities out of the air, they stick to the water. And the impurities don't evaporate, so as the water slowly evaporates you can see it getting dirtier over a few days.
EDIT: I have a two-bedroom apartment and the one humidifier makes the whole place comfortable. It's a really good purchase. You have to buy a liquid to add to the water though.
I found this video that sort of explains it:
Air purifiers are your friend. They drastically reduce dust and make every room feel better.
I don't agree on the HEPA level sterility. Dust is not a nuclear waste.
Dust tends to accumulate in quiet areas, like corners and under furniture where air currents from movement don't disturb it.
Just keep those areas clean with a dustpan and the whole remains tolerable. Although rugs need to be taken outside and beaten from time to time.
Oh shit, dust exists.
For the 'remove the accumulation' part - get a pack of microfibre clothes. One wipe over a surface will be enough to get most dust, plus they do a great job of windows & mirrors, windex/glass cleaner is much more effective followed up with microfibre rather than another cloth or paper towels.
Once the cloth gets a bit of dust built up put aside and use the next clean cloth and keep cleaning, throw them all in a normal wash whenever you're done (just do NOT use fabric softener).
Usually after a while of being able to see the routes I walk in my apartment visibly, it manages to stress me to the point where I can do something about it and I'll spend a solid 10 hours cleaning and tidying
I wipe my floor with a damp cloth/mop every two weeks or so. That removes a lot of the dust with relatively little effort.
I only vacuum every other week to a month.
I offset this by having air purifiers running in every room.
Kipple is unavoidable, but an air filter helps a lot more than you think.
Also if you have pets, might be worth it to get a robot vacuum. Even the 3+ year old models are still great.
If we're strictly talking dust accumulation, there's a few things you can do to reduce this.
Aside from that, you'll still need to dust every so often and how often will depend on how fast it gets dirty again and how deep you want to clean. I use a vacuum and damp rag to dust shelves and such every month and I dust other things like blinds and fan blades and pull out furniture and appliances once a year. Every few years we'll need to remove something that usually never moves and we'll clean up the dust from that. I will say it's much easier to clean stuff regularly when you don't have lots of things laying around or taking up space. Keeping literal objects tidy makes it less of a chore. It's a lot easier to just wipe a table than to wipe a table and all the knick knacks.
So many things factor into this...
Our house became significantly (like 97%) less dusty when our dog passed.
The age of your house
The type of furnace filter
Routine
We have 3 small kids, so we try to tidy up physical stuff (toys, clothes, bags, etc) every day. Dishes too.
Once a week is wiping down nin-kitchen surfaces
Once a month is wiping down baseboards and door trim
What are the best and maybe lesser known ways to slow it down?
we've got a super tiny apartment.i clean constantly, and dust isn't much of an issue cause just about every surface sees constant use.
Quentin Crisp: "There is no need to do any housework at all. After the first four years the dirt doesn't get any worse."
My only deviation from this philosophy is when visitors are coming. The bath and toilet get a good deep clean, I run the vacuum cleaner around the place, and also dust the guest room if they're staying overnight.
My worst fail was when I had people over for dinner, and as we all sat down I saw half a dozen dead flies on the (dusty) windowsill. Invisible when you were standing due to the curtain, but right in your eyeline when seated.
I clean 2ce a month. I know what kind of cleaning I value and I just do that. I don’t dust often… but I use an air filter.
twoce
The way I do it is to start by dusting all the countertops, cleaning the tables, and throwing every food or dirt down on the floor, then I vacuum all the floors (tiles), moving tables, chairs, and other things around. I mop and I clean the bathroom (toilet, sink, shower) while the floor dries. Finally, I mop once more and I make a coffee to relax.
edit:I also clean the kitchen countertop, stove, coffee machine and everything else on the kitchen.
If you’ve got central HVAC: replace your air filters. Consider going for the high-grade HEPA ones, too.
I would like to say I use a heavy-duty dry swiffer on the floor (wood) every other day, but honestly maybe twice a week. It gets tons of dust and cat hair and it's quiet and fast. I have an old fashioned feather duster that does a decent job on shelves of books and knickknacks without moving them, and fascinates the cat. I have a wet mop but don't use it often. I put MERV13 filters in my HVAC, but I realized the suction was lifting the nearby ceiling tiles instead, so I taped them down.
Consider what contributes to dust in your home: I don't go out much, and can't track in mud, but I live over the garage in my apartment building, over a very busy street, and have sliding-glass balcony doors for windows, so a lot of my dust is tires and exhaust. Also pollen year-round because SoCal, and of course cat and myself shedding. Litterbox dust too, at least she's not a big digger. I don't have laundry machines in my unit but I imagine they'd make lint dust. You might not be able to change things that add grime, but it helps you feel less like it's your fault.
When I worked in a china shop, we wiped down every item on every shelf with Windex (spray your paper towels, not what you're cleaning) every day. But I was getting paid for that. It makes a huge difference, along with knowing someone else will notice.
But I was getting paid for that. It makes a huge difference, along with knowing someone else will notice.
This is where we struggle. We are both tidy as can be at work. I go to new places all the time and leave them in much better shape than I found them. Anyone who has been in a lot of data/comm closets and server rooms can tell you that they are often neglected to the point of ridiculousness. My wife does pretty much all the cleaning at the physical therapy clinic where she works, even though that is not in her job description.
But our house is a mess. We have four cats, two with long hair. I'm usually gone all week so that leaves most of the work to my wife. I try to clean the bathroom when I'm home (toilet and sink at least). I've turned the "dining room" table into my resupply stockpile between trips. Most of the stuff there is used but it looks terrible.
Being paid makes such a difference in our attitudes towards cleaning.
Its always an ongoing thing. We clean as we go.
Shoes stay on our front door mat and don't come inside.
Fake feather dusters (or swiffer) to clean tricky stuff and under things.
Swifter the hard surfaces every other day.
Damp cloth to wipe down a surface that is showing dust.
Frying stuff means using hood extractor even if it is not visbly needed, because without it we would later find soot/dust all over certain areas that are colder like window sills ...the aerosolized oil/soot would travel and drop by convection near windows and baseboards.
Carpets are bad for trapping dust but also they are good at creating dust from broken carpet fibers. These get weekly vacuuming and twice yearly steam cleaning--the water coming out is always murky brown even though the carpet looks relatively clean.
buildings are designed to be closed. its a horrible design thats irreversibly invested upon.
What use are buildings if they aren't closed spaces? If they're open, then you're open to the elements and/or wild animals, and at that point it's not a shelter.
I live near beach, it's pleasant year round. Much of my living space is permanently open to the elements, the rest of it has sliding/french doors and large windows that are open most of the time the dwelling is occupied.
It's definitely a shelter.
That said, stuff from outside sometimes gets inside. I clean, no biggie.
What would be an alternative design thst provides shelter?
I pay for a cleaning service to come through quarterly. My partner does most of the home maintenance stuff. I'll do dishes when I cook, but she likes to handle it when she cooks and I'm ok with that because she got mad at me enough times for asking her not to do them before she moved in and they were my dishes. Otherwise, if you see a mess, clean it up. This applies to stuff that got forgotten the night before, vomit from the kitty who sometimes pukes, etc.
The quarterly deep cleaning take care of mopping the hard floors, dusting everything, whatever else.
I'm thinking about hiring a cleaning service. I'm lazy and some things haven't been cleaned properly in years.
Daily sweep with a duster on the areas that get dusty. It helps me relax so it doesn't feel like a chore. I have a few microfiber hand towels I attach to a Swiffer. The floors get wiped once a day. In my mind I'm playing hockey so it's also fun to do.
I don't know if this is true or not but supposedly having a humidifier helps with the dust accumulation. It lingers longer in the air if the air is very dry. Moisture brings it down. I could be wrong and that could be a thing I made up entirely to keep a humidifier running all day,
It depends on the level of humidity. In really humid areas, the dust basically fuses to surfaces rather than sitting on top of it. It's a lot more annoying to clean.
I run my robot vacuum every day, just because it's possible and it always manages catch some amount of dust every day.
A large part of why robot vacuums are great is because they decouple basically all effort from the task, making it easy to do it frequently and hence keep up with it. The same applies for dishwashers.
the problem I have worth my robo vacuum is hair, I live with a long haired human and a long haired cat, so the vacuum needs constant maintenance. I normally resort to a broom...
I have to occasionally remove hair from my robot vacuum as well due to my partners long hair, but this is far less time consuming than either sweeping the floors or vacuuming manually.
Maybe the cat complicates things? I only have to remove them like at most once a month, probably less.
I have dogs, I wish it could detect when it's full more easily. I think it does it by weight or suction resistance. May even be nice to have a built in trash compactor - or I should just get the one with the bin/wash base station.
I have dust mite allergies. 2 most important changes I did were:
(1) no carpets, no curtains, only tile floors.
(2) and I love my robot vaccuum. They do 80% of the work, daily, whilst I'm away.
Do you have dust mite resistant sheet covers, that was the biggest improvement for me