Dust affects each and every household. One of the problems with dust is that it’s so light that some dusting tools, like feather dusters, puff the dust away from where it was and float it somewhere else. Other cleaning tools are far more efficient, like a high-quality portable air purifier.
Portable air purifiers with high-efficiency particulate air (HEPA) air filters are excellent for people with severe allergies as they filter 68% of ultrafine particles, and you can make them even more efficient by managing dust levels in your home.
While housework is a chore, regular cleaning makes the chore easier. The more often and the more efficiently you dust your home, the less dust there is to trigger allergic reactions, like a dust mite allergy, and cause other serious health conditions.
Here are eight ways you can get every corner of your house dust-free:
As disturbing as the idea is, your mattress, pillows, and sheets are breeding grounds for dust mites. It gets worse when your pets sleep on your bed because you’re both shedding dead skin cells, hair, skin flakes, and the accumulated dirt of a typical day.
If you’re just starting your dust removal mission, you can start by using the upholstery attachment to thoroughly vacuum both sides of your mattress. It’s even better if you can clean the dust bunnies from your box spring base—then use an allergen-proof cover to cover the box spring and mattress.
With that big job done, you can get into a routine of washing your bed linen at least once a week.
Don’t forget about your pillows and duvet inners. Some pillows and duvet inners are safe to put in the washing machine, but others need to be hand-washed or dry-cleaned.
When faced with a king-size duvet, many people prefer popping down to the dry cleaners than trying to wrangle the duvet in a sink, basin, or tub.
You can’t really see it with the naked eye, but clothes shed fiber, and fiber creates dust. The more clothes you have, the more dust there’ll be.
Take a breath and go through all your clothes, donating anything that doesn’t fit and hasn’t fitted in years—or that you’ve only worn once or haven’t worn at all in the past year at least. Now you can take your trimmed-down wardrobe and put the clothes left in garment bags or keep them sorted in clear plastic organizers.
You can also store shoes in clear plastic containers to keep any sand and other debris you’ve gathered walking around all day from getting to the closet floor—where dust mites and insects will make themselves at home.
Just remember to clean out the containers regularly to remove dust particles.
This is a version of a place for everything and everything in its place. You can eliminate a ton of dust when toys go back into the box, books go back on the shelf, magazines go back on the rack, and clothes go back to your well-organized closet.
You may also dust or wash the items with a damp cloth before putting them back where they belong—just make sure they are dry before keeping them. Consider washing the storage place, too. For example, wash the toy box and thoroughly dust every shelf on your bookcase.
Carpets are worse than your mattress at holding onto allergen-causing dust, and the annoying thing is that ordinary vacuum cleaners can’t clean it all up.
To get your carpets truly clean of animal dander, dead skin particles, sand, and the corpses of little insects, you need a super vacuum, preferably one that has a high-efficiency particulate air filter. Another good option is to use a vacuum with a microfiltered double-layered bag.
As an added bonus, some of the super vacuums have attachments that can clean the walls and ceilings. You’d be surprised at how much dirt is virtually absorbed by them.
The invisible danger can worsen certain medical conditions, especially lung-related health issues, but a good vacuum cleaner can literally be a lifesaver.
Sweep hard floors, including vinyl, laminate, parquet, and wood finishes, daily or twice daily if you want, but you should vacuum hard floors on a regular basis for a really good clean.
Like feather dusters, brooms just disperse dust, but a vacuum cleaner, with its assorted attachments, will suck up all the dust from the floor, even in hard-to-reach areas. Follow the vacuum cleaner with a mop.
Remember, mopping gets rid of 90% of household dust, so you really want to go over the whole house to eliminate as much dust as possible.
Curtains, upholstered furniture, cushion covers, and even lampshades trap dust and pet dander. You can use your upholstery vacuum cleaner attachment to clean fabric furniture, such as sofas and curtains, but you might want to hold off using that suction power on your lampshades, which are significantly less robust.
Run a dry microfiber cloth over your lampshades to get them clean. If you haven’t thought about cleaning your lampshades before, you can use a damp microfiber cloth lightly sprayed with diluted fabric cleaner.
In between vacuuming, you can clean fabric furniture and lampshades with a lint roller.
It makes sense that if you start with the floors and work your way up to ceiling fans, all the dust from the furniture, counters, shelves, and blinds will float down to settle back on your floor.
Start with the ceiling fans, which are serious dust collectors; go on to the curtain rails, tackle the light fixtures, clean picture frames, dust the window sills, wipe down the kitchen counters, and polish the coffee tables.
Then you’re ready to vacuum and mop your floors.
Air purifiers are an aid to dust removal. They go that extra step to keep airborne dust and indoor allergens out of your home.
You have a couple of options. You can buy a portable air purifier, which you can move from room to room so it can filter out airborne particles wherever you happen to be.
If you want something more permanent for rooms that are used most often, you can try a wall-mounted air purifier.
Whichever type you choose, ensure you use high-quality HEPA filters to maximize efficiency.
Household dust poses serious health risks to people with pre-existing respiratory illnesses. However, excessive dust can also cause allergies.
While it’s essential to keep homes as clean as possible, it’s almost impossible for vacuum cleaners and other cleaning equipment to remove airborne allergens.
LakeAir portable and wall-mounted air purifiers use two filtration systems to purify your air. To find out how the activated carbon filters and HEPA filters ensure your air is as pure as it’s possible to get. Contact us at 800-558-9436 at LakeAir today!
