You can't avoid having to dust – two of the biggest components are skin cells and fabric bits – but you can reduce the amount you have to do. Donna Smallin, author of "The One-Minute Cleaner Plain & Simple: 500 Tips for Cleaning Smarter, Not Harder" offers some suggestions:
• Dust cloth or duster? Instead of using your husband's old T-shirt or a mod feather duster, use a microfiber or electrostatic cloth to capture dust. Microfiber dusters, with loops or strips of microfiber to trap even more dust, also come in various shapes and lengths for reaching blinds and ceiling fans. If you don't use microfiber, dampen your cloth. Damp microfiber cloths are excellent cleaners – a mirror will come out streak- and dirt-free without any cleaning solution.
• Wet or dry mop? A damp mop will clean better than a dry one, but water is hard on some surfaces, such as wood. Microfiber mops come in both dry and wet varieties. And although it may sound like overkill, if you dry-mop your wood floors every day, you'll pretty much nip dust in the bud.
• Which comes first, vacuuming or dusting? Smallin prefers vacuuming first because vacuums can blow around small dust particles, which you can get rid of by dusting post-vacuuming. But the many dust-first aficionados point out that gravity is on their side; even lightweight dust will eventually end up on the floor, where you can vacuum it up after you dust.
• Vacuuming matters: Use a vacuum with a HEPA (high-efficiency particulate air) filter, which traps more of the tiny stuff, and run it once a week on trafficked areas.
• Stop it before it starts: Change the air filters in your heat and air-conditioning system once a month or even more often.
© Copyright The Sacramento Bee. All rights reserved.
What You Should Know About Comments on Sacbee.com
Sacbee.com is happy to provide a forum for reader interaction, discussion, feedback and reaction to our stories. However, we reserve the right to delete inappropriate comments or ban users who can't play nice. (See our full terms of service here.)
Here are some rules of the road:
• Keep your comments civil. Don't insult one another or the subjects of our articles. If you think a comment violates our guidelines click the "Report Abuse" link to notify the moderators. Responding to the comment will only encourage bad behavior.
• Don't use profanities, vulgarities or hate speech. This is a general interest news site. Sometimes, there are children present. Don't say anything in a way you wouldn't want your own child to hear.
• Do not attack other users; focus your comments on issues, not individuals.
• Stay on topic. Only post comments relevant to the article at hand.
• Do not copy and paste outside material into the comment box.
• Don't repeat the same comment over and over. We heard you the first time.
• Do not use the commenting system for advertising. That's spam and it isn't allowed.
• Don't use all capital letters. That's akin to yelling and not appreciated by the audience.
• Don't flag other users' comments just because you don't agree with their point of view. Please only flag comments that violate these guidelines.
You should also know that The Sacramento Bee does not screen comments before they are posted. You are more likely to see inappropriate comments before our staff does, so we ask that you click the "Report Abuse" link to submit those comments for moderator review. You also may notify us via email at feedback@sacbee.com. Note the headline on which the comment is made and tell us the profile name of the user who made the comment. Remember, comment moderation is subjective. You may find some material objectionable that we won't and vice versa.
If you submit a comment, the user name of your account will appear along with it. Users cannot remove their own comments once they have submitted them.
Order Reprint
About Comments
Reader comments on Sacbee.com are the opinions of the writer, not The Sacramento Bee. If you see an objectionable comment, click the "Report Abuse" link below it. We will delete comments containing inappropriate links, obscenities, hate speech, and personal attacks. Flagrant or repeat violators will be banned. See more about comments here.