Welcome to the Hello Cleaner blog today I want to help you dust off your dusting skills because dusting isn’t taught in school most people don’t know how to do it professionally or properly and in fact if you dust incorrectly you can waste time and make your cleaning efforts futile you’re going to have to repeat your work so I want to help you learn how to dust properly so that you don’t have to waste your time so that you can like dust it literally so let’s do it.
Always dry dust: When you dust a surface keep in mind that dust is like a tiny little slurry of all kinds of things from your fabric from your skin from your pet’s dirt and it’s just this fine little mist that exists and if it gets wet it becomes like a streaky sort of paste that can be hard to clean off especially if you’re cleaning a baseboard or a surface that has a thicker dust so what this tells us is that when we’re dusting we always want to do it with a dry cloth the mistake I see people making often is they will spray a cloth and they will use that to dust a surface and in fact that is making them work harder because now they’ve got this streaky slurry they have to get rid of so remember dust first then clean.
Use the right tools: what I like to teach here is understanding the ptt’s the products tools and techniques to get a job done right when it comes to dusting the tools are key so let’s talk about a few of the tools I sometimes hear people talk about dusting with an old rag or a disposable duster or a super fluffy duster or even just a flat cloth like something you would use to clean your glasses off the truth of the matter is this microfiber is what you want to use for dusting that is because it has tiny little fibers that pick up dust and it also holds a bit of an electrostatic charge which makes dust literally magnetic toward the cloth so it does a lot of the work for you if you use a general purpose microfiber cloth it will dust like nothing else if you use a cotton cloth or a rag or a cloth diaper or anything like that that is a linty cloth it’s actually going to leave lint behind and if you use a disposable product well it was designed to be thrown out so it’s not good for the environment but b it’s not designed with the same type of technology that would go into a reusable product like a microfiber cloth so when you’re picking your cleaning cloth make sure that it is an a general purpose sort of terry weave microfiber cloth anything else will make you work harder.
Vacuum Last: when I teach people how to clean I talk about the three wave system the order is simple tidy in the first wave do your cleaning in the second wave and deal with your floors in the third wave and that is because dust falls down to the floor and if you vacuum before you do your cleaning and your dusting you’re going to leave dust behind not only that cleaning the action of disturbing your surfaces actually kicks dust up so by the time you’re done you’re cleaning the dust that you have ostensibly kicked up should have fallen to the ground I like giving rooms a little bit of time to breathe after I clean so that way I know the dust has fallen to the ground and then I can vacuum it up and move on if you vacuum first you might find that dust resettles quicker and you might have to redo your work now the only time it’s appropriate to vacuum first is if you have a lot of pet hair in a home in that case I recommend the old vacuum sandwich where you vacuum first do your cleaning second and then finish off with a vacuum at the end but that’s the only time otherwise vacuum at the very end.
The feather duster: I don’t like using feather dusters I think they serve a very limited purpose I think they’re good for certain high dusting applications they can help get down cobwebs in certain situations but the problem with them is their plume their feathers kind of spread dust everywhere if you plan on using a feather duster the technique is to move from one side to the other in quick strokes and when you’re done using it bring your feather duster down as low to the ground as possible generally to your ankle and tap it off so that the dust falls right there to the floor then you can pick it up and use it again if you’re doing this you are literally shooting dust all over the room which will then resettle on other surfaces and make you work harder.
Remove dust & replace: I know it can be tempting to see a little area of dust and just walk over to it and give it a quick wipe but you are wasting your time because if you have a horizontal surface and there are other things on it you might as well just remove everything from that surface dust the surface entirely dust each item that was on that surface over the floor and then replace each item if you just casually do a wipe it’s going to stick out like a sore thumb and then you’re going to say gosh I should have just cleaned the whole shelf and then you’re gonna have to redouble your work so do it properly remove everything from the shelf dust clean the shelf stuff put it all back you’re saving time you’re doing it right.
Top to bottom: Whenever you’re dusting you want to work with gravity you want to start at the top and work your way to the bottom if you dust something at waist height and then you realize oh there’s something over there on a shelf that I need to dust well now you’re going to dust that item dust is going to fall right back onto that waist tight surface and then you’re going to have to clean that again there’s no use in wasting your time always dust from the top to the bottom.
8-Sided folding trick: If you observe a professional cleaner you’ll notice that they can often clean a lot of surfaces with one cloth and they’re not really being that gross i’ll tell you why professional cleaners have a trick whereby they divide their cloth in two quarters or I should say they fold their cloth into quarters and that gives them eight cleaning surfaces whereas if you’re just a regular average guy or gal you’re taking a cloth like this kind of bundling it up and doing a cleaning and you’re getting a lot of surface area dirty or covered in dust when you divide it into quarters like this you’re giving yourself eight surfaces so when this gets dirty you flip it over here then you can flip your cloth this way and work with that side and then that side and then you can flip your cloth in the absolute other direction and start all over again a microfiber cloth can hold eight times its weight in water and even more in dust so that means one cloth like this is going to get you a lot of mileage as long as you use the folding trick.
High dusting: When we clean we often focus on the areas that we can see the most which tends to be whatever is at our eye level and slightly downward the area that we clean the least tends to be the stuff that’s high up so ledges over your doors crown moldings light fixtures corners tops of cabinets and furniture etc now the issue with that is dust can build up over time and if a gust of wind blows or there’s a fan going you’re gonna get dust falling and raining down in clumps not only that it does lead to indoor air quality issues and an overall sense of stuffiness indoors so i’m not saying you have to do it all the time but just pay a little bit more attention to the stuff upstairs.
Vacuum issues: I’ve run a professional cleaning business since 2010 and we use our clients vacuum cleaners which means if they have a malfunctioning or poorly maintained vacuum it actually means we have to work harder on the dusting side of things and that’s because vacuuming and dusting are very much related you can’t remove all of the dust from a home if the vacuum is not working well so what does that mean it means that your vacuum has to be properly maintained your bin has to be emptied or your filter bag has to be replaced your filters have to be cleaned and maintained if your vacuum has cleanable filters and you want to make sure that it is sealed properly and that means that when your vacuum is on it’s actually trapping all of the dirt that it’s vacuuming up and then the air that’s coming out the back of the vacuum isn’t then blowing dirt back out behind you i’ve been in situations before where i’ve flicked on a vacuum and it’s actually made the room dirtier because of what’s spat out the second thing is we would sometimes have clients who would say well I don’t need a vacuum I have hard floor surfaces and I usually sweep or I just use a flathead microfiber mop that I bought in a store, now here’s the issue with that cosmetically speaking your floors might look okay but a vacuum’s job is to actually remove dust from the atmosphere when you’re sweeping or just doing a quick microfiber pad floor clean you’re not necessarily getting rid of all of the dust in your home that is a vacuum’s job and that is why I often talk about the importance of having a vacuum with good quality filtration because that actually removes dust and if you’re doing that on a regular basis you’re not going to have dust quickly resettling in a home if you sweep the floor you’ll notice within a little bit of time dust will resettle on your surfaces because that’s exactly what you’re doing with the broom you’re kicking up a bunch of dust and the small microscopic stuff that you can’t sweep up will resettle on your surfaces meaning more dusting work for you.
Thanks so much for reading and we’ll see you next time.
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