@Home: Top Tips to Reduce Dust In Your Home
By SUZZANNE COUSINS
We’re sure you can relate to this feeling as if you’re constantly in a house dusting loop. In other words, as yuh dus ya suh, deh suh dus up bak. So, what can you do to reduce the amount of dust in your home? Here are our top tips from cleaning experts:
Leave dust at the door
Did you know that some 80% of dust enters your home off the bottom of shoes coming in from outside? That’s right. Just a few pairs of shoes can cause a whole lot of mess. We suggest removing shoes at the entrance and replacing them with slippers, sandals or socks, used explicitly for wearing indoors. If you have friends or family coming over, have a few pairs of slippers available for them as well.
Also, place floor mats, preferably ones with bristle tops, on both sides of your door to help trap dust coming off shoes. Ensure you vacuum and wash the mats regularly.
Another key to leaving dust at the entrance is to weather-strip around your doors. If your home came with weather-stripping, always get it replaced if it starts to wear or lets in the air. While you’re at it, also check that your windows are properly sealed around the edges, and if not, have those caulked as well. Window meshing can also help reduce dust while still allowing some air to flow into your home.
Damp it down
Let’s start from the outside. An easy and efficient way to reduce dust in your home is to keep your yard, lawn and even driveway relatively damp. If you simply run the hose over your front and back yard at least once a day, you’d be surprised how much the water keeps the dust down and out of your house.
Now let’s go inside. It’s not enough to simply sweep and dry dust your home. Taking a few extra minutes to use a damp microfiber cloth to go over hard furnaces and to mop the floor will significantly reduce the amount of dust in your home each day.
Also, manage the humidity in your home. Even though Jamaica is pretty humid, each person’s home may have its humidity ratio, depending on how they keep their house cool. Have you ever wondered why drier homes have more dust? It’s because static electricity, which builds up in dry spaces, attracts dust like a magnet. We suggest installing a humidifier, either a whole-house model or a room-size version, to keep the air quality in your home moist. Plus, more dry air means more dry skin and possibly drying out of furnishings, paint, shoes, clothes and other materials that can produce even more dust.
Dust your bed
We don’t mean taking your California King-sized mattress outside and beating it with a broom. We mean taking steps to reduce dust in your bedding. The fibres in bed linen, pillows and mattresses trap dust and harbour dust mites, but what is more is the number of dead skin particles and hair you shed while you sleep that gets trapped as well. To reduce the dust, be sure to wash your bedsheets and pillowcases once a week, mattress covers, duvet covers, and uncovered comforters, monthly and wash or vacuum mattresses, duvet inserts, bed skirts, and pillows every three months or so.
Grooming, managing skin and hair
Reducing dust involves keeping hair and skin particles under control for yourself and your pets if you have any. It’s a good practice to keep grooming, like hair brushing, combing and shaving in the bathroom to keep the dust and hairs in one space. You can then quickly sweep, wipe and dust the surfaces and floor for a quick clean up.
Pets, on the other hand, produce a lot of dander and shed fur pretty often. We suggest brushing indoor pets outside regularly, grooming them as needed and cleaning off their paws when they re-enter the home.
Clear clutter
Trust us, nothing attracts dust or makes dusting more difficult than having many surfaces to clean. When you have lots of pillows/cushions on your couch, boxes stacked in the corner, books you’ll never read or even useless items scattered across on your countertop, this increases the amount of dust in your home. We suggest getting rid of items you don’t need and taking a more minimalist approach to decorating your space. Avoid too many open shelves and, if possible storing things under your bed as it makes it harder to clean one of the main dust zones in your home.
Service your air conditioners
While this may not apply to all of us, for the people who have air conditioning units, be sure to have them cleaned and maintained regularly. While they cool the air, they also suck up and release a lot of dust into the air.
Also, be sure to have any air filters or ducts in your home cleaned and regularly maintained for cleaner and more even airflow.
Clean regularly
If this tip isn’t already obvious, we also suggest having a routine of sweeping, dusting, vacuuming and mopping the surfaces in your home, and ensuring that fans, windows, walls, and on top of appliances receive their routine dusting as well.
No one likes dust all over their homes and it can seem like a vicious cycle to keep cleaning every hour on the hour, so employing these tips should help you keep your home clean and dust-free for longer periods. What else do you do to manage dust in your home?
