Bachelor Pad: Dusting

Continuing on the theme of cleaning as the best investment in improvement, this week we are focusing on dust. Few things degrade the appearance of your place like a film of gray on all the things you own. Before cleaning it and preventing it, first we’ll discuss what it is and why it’s not good.

Dust mainly comes from us. Our skin cells fall off, die, fly around, and land in various places in around the home. While airborne, the dust becomes a pollutant irritating lungs, nasal passages, eyes, and settling in the lungs. While on the ground, it creates offensive piles that act as breeding grounds for dust mites.

Cleaning

Dusting is pretty easy, however there are a few traps. A traditional feather duster is one of them. Instead of picking up the dust, it instead sweeps it into the air to resettle elsewhere. Unless your duster is of the static charged variety, it’s better to just use a damp soft cloth. Following a few tips from the DIY network, I now have a jar of green tea and a cut up cotton t-shirt to handle my work.

If you have a perpetually dusty floor, a dust mop may be in order. This tools is somewhere in between a broom and a mop, designed to sweep gently across non-carpeted floors attracting smaller particles. However, before investing in this, a few preventive steps should be taken to see if it’s still necessary.

Prevention

A few things can help reduce dust and simultaneously make your indoor environment a lot better. A natural and easy way is ventilation. While it may seem counter intuitive to clean a home by opening windows, pay note to the fact that air inside our homes is typically 2-3 times more polluted than the air outside. The simplest way to improve this is to open a window and let the air exchange.

The next step is to invest in a quality air cleaner. Instead of constantly wiping down surfaces and mopping floors, filter the dust out of the air before it has a chance to land. One of the top rated air filters will run around $700, but a small single room filter can be had for $200-$300. Investing in an air purifier will not only reduce cleaning time, but it will likely improve your health as well.

Links

Wikipedia - Dust
Dust: Q & A and Making Dust Cloths
Dust: Dusting Tips
The Inside Story: A Guide to Indoor Air Quality
Consumer Search: Air Purifiers Reviews