4th week of January, Dusting Technique

This is the 4th week of January and I'm going to teach you my dusting technique.  

Last weeks blog covered the "why" of vacuuming and dusting, especially in the bedrooms.  As with vacuuming, dusting is all about knowing how to best use your tools.  When dusting, your own hands and a cloth or swiffer duster are your tools. If you look at how your hands are made, you'll notice the finger joints are little "ball and sockets" and they bend forward and back up and not side to side.  The wrist moves well all around.  

If you were to dust a window sill for instance, with fingers placed on the window sill as on a keyboard, you'll be asking your fingers to slide sideways against their design.  If you are just getting up a layer of fluffy dust you won't have to apply much pressure and the dust will wipe right up.  If you are looking at a layer of dust that has been there awhile, exposed to wide swings of temperature and humidity such as you find around doors and windows (even closed), the dust will have become grimy and will require more pressure and/or repeated wiping.  Your fingers can take a fair amount of side to side but if you keep it up over time you are doing these joints a terrible disservice.  Better to use two hands, lay your right fingers flat to get the most coverage per swipe of the cloth and to get the best use of finger strength, then use the left hand to do the pulling. Your right hand only puts pressure down which is what fingers are designed to do and the left hand uses arm/shoulder strength to pull the cloth along.  Keep in mind that your fingers are not all the same length and the longest finger often takes the brunt of the action unless you stay focused on what you are doing.  Try to use your fingers as a unit instead of as individuals where you can and those finger joints will stay healthy much longer.  For table tops etc, use a flat hand and dust from back to front using a downward motion when you get to the edge so you encourage the dust that is being pushed along to settle where it can be vacuumed and not to fly around.  Dusting slowly keeps the air from kicking up the dust you are trying to capture.  

I use a standard wash cloth and fold it into quarters which is about the size of your flat hand because that is all you can control.  Using your thumb, raise up the lead edge of the cloth just a bit and slightly cup your hand.  As you move your hand along lower each finger, one by one so you are always wiping with a clean surface.  After a wipe or two, look at the cloth and you'll see the stripes of dust made by each finger coming down to hold the cloth against the table.  When this square of the cloth is dirty, turn the folded cloth over (so the dirty side is against your hand) and repeat.  When that side is dirty, unfold the cloth and refold with those two dirty squares together and  put a clean section down.  That way the dirty sides of the cloth will not share the dust with a clean side.  You will generally get 8 clean sides to work with.  That's a lot of dust per cloth with a minimum of streaking because you've always had a clean cloth face down to clean with.  I use this technique on windows and mirrors, too.

If you use a swiffer duster make sure you fluff it up according to the directions.  If it's not fluffed all the way you won't be getting your time and money's worth.  I prefer to use a cloth since I dust many houses a week and it's less expense, but the swiffer dusters do a great job IF * you fluff them up completely, * put a new fluffy on the handle when they get dirty and * dust often.  It doesn't take long for dust to lose it's fluffy nature, changes in temperature and humidity (around doors and windows and in the kitchen especially) along with gravity compact the dust and make it sticky so it has to be damp wiped.  Dust on headboards and bedside tables also experience a wide swing in humidity levels because we breathe out a lot of moisture and toxins during a nights' sleep which all settle nearby.  Using a swiffer is mostly a light wrist action, no need to apply much pressure because the swiffer is designed to get the fluffy stuff.  They are great on mini blinds but really, you have to dust at least once a week and more if you are in a more humid place or have great swings of temperature.  Once that dust gets grimy on the mini blinds, you'll be wiping them and that is tedious work.  Be sure to dust slowly.  You don't want to move the air around any more than is necessary because it kicks up dust and you'll be breathing it or causing it to resettle after you've moved on.  Also, as you dust along a tabletop for instance, finish with a downward movement as you come off the edge of the table.  Then the dust that is airborne will be headed immediately down and not up in your face.  Start up high, dust the top of the dresser mirror, then the sides and front of the mirror using a downward stroke, then on to the dresser top, then sides and front of the dresser.  Keep your mind on what you are doing and go slowly.  If your mind is running on what's for dinner, why this takes so long, look at all those dirty clothes, blah blah, you'll be racing through this task and looking at it like a chore instead of watching the dust piling up on your dusting tool, noticing how beautiful the furniture is when clean, you'll be less likely to miss a spot and more likely to smile at the progress you are making.  The down side to the swiffer is the tendency to quick swiff and go.  Even with a swiffer, you should pick up everything on each surface and dust under and then dust each thing.  Hey, it's your stuff.  You have it because you want it, right?  Dust it all every week and see how fond of it you are.  Also, swiffer is useless on rough surfaces and there are a surprising number and variety of furnishings and curios made of raw wood or unpolished stone and they collect dust like a champ.  Use the brush tool on your vac for these things.  

Back to cloth dusting...I use a standard wash cloth, barely damp with plain water.  I wash my cleaning rags often so the terry cloth wash cloths hold up and with the finished edges they don't shred and tangle in the wash like torn pieces of old toweling do.  I've used old t-shirts but the knits tend to hang up on the table and mantle piece edges and I can't control them as well.  Microfiber cloths are awesome for dusting and I have a couple of them but there is a trade off to be made.  Here is the upside....* they don't leave any lint, * can be very absorbent even absorbing oil, fat and grease and * they clean best without any cleaning solution.  * They generate a static charge as you wipe along so they attract dust.  * The fibers are so fine that they actually clean on a microscopic level getting bacteria better than terry cloth.  * They're very soft and don't scratch unless they have picked up something gritty and the grit can scratch.  The downside is... * at first they resist water and if you want a damp cloth or to absorb something watery the microfiber has to be "worked over" to become damp.  * They don't do well if dried in the drier so separate them from the other cloths and hang them.  * The fine fibers can get clogged with soaps and oils so they need to be completely clean to work properly.  * They are made from petrochemicals so they are more flammable than cotton cloth, emit toxic chemicals when they do burn and along with all the other synthetic fabrics that go into our washing machines, they shed microplastic fibers which pass through sewage treatment plants and end up collecting along shorelines and in the marine food chain.  

So then, besides the obvious furniture and window sills there is a lot to dust.  Baseboards, doors, picture frames, walls...actually pretty much everything collects dust.  We can't dust everything all the time so we have to prioritize.  I use the floor tool on the vacuum to "dust" the walls twice a year, usually after the worst of the pollen season is over and again in midwinter.  Hallways and entryways need weekly attention.  Baseboards, especially baseboard heat needs to be dusted weekly along with the furniture.  Make sure your cloth is pretty damp when you give the baseboards a swipe, you want to capture as much of this dust as possible.  Being close to the floor, the content of this dust has ingredients from outside; dirt, road dust, dried and ground up animal droppings, pesticides, settled pollutants from the air, you get the idea.  Vacuuming the baseboards is a good idea, too, less bending over.  Most doors have panels with a lip all around and the bottom lips hold a lot of dust.  Chairs and couches collect a lot of dust and it's best to vacuum the upholstered furniture and wipe the leather or wooden pieces, but how often?  Once a week is best, once a month is better than not at all.  If you have to skip some dusting just don't skip the bedroom.  Keep those bedside tables uncluttered so you'll be more likely to dust them.  Vacuum the lamp shades if they don't wipe well and if your bed doesn't have a headboard, vacuum the wall at the head of your bed more often.   Find a routine for yourself, like when you go into the bedroom after washing your face, use the damp hand towel to give the bedside table a wipe before you toss it in the laundry.  Don't forget to wipe the sides and back side of the bedside table from time to time.  I see a lot of bedside tables that are in the corner of the room with a bed immediately beside and a window with draperies also near this corner, with books, tissues and spare change, kids toys and clothes all piled on with pictures hanging on the wall where you can't possibly reach to dust.  If this is your bedroom, you are really working against yourself.  Give yourself some empty space to be.  If you must have a box of tissues by your bed, you should dust here more often.  The action of pulling that tissue through the hole in the tissue box makes a lot of dust.  Maybe, as you sit on the edge of the bed before you climb in, take a tissue and give the area a quick wipe with it.  It'll leave some lint but at least it's fresh lint and not inhabited by dust mites just yet.  

That's enough for now, these are all just suggestions, you know, based on what I've learned over the last dozen years.  I'm not telling you how to set up your bedroom but I have also learned that if no one tells you, you might not know these things.  Have a good week, my darlings and breathe lots of good, fresh air.