Or ways to remove that accumulation fast?
Non-vacuum cleaner tips would be more actionable for me currently, but please do share your ways.
Kipple is unavoidable, but an air filter helps a lot more than you think.
Also if you have pets, might be worth it to get a robot vacuum. Even the 3+ year old models are still great.
Can confirm. With a dog who sheds enough hair to build a statue of himself every week, a robot vacuum has been a great help. Just make sure to get one with a self-emptying bin, or your gonna be emptying it yourself after every lap around the house, and it'll be more tedious than just vacuuming yourself.
I really want one that self-empties, seems so convenient. After my current one dies, I'll def get one.
Don't have dogs. Don't have woodburners. Don't have horses. In fact, don't live any kind of outdoorsy life if you want a dust-free home.
My home is dusty. I decided that the above was more important to me.
When I was with my ex: every saturday morning. It sucked, but the reward of both chilling on the sofa in the afterglow of a clean apartment was awesome. God I miss that.
Now: rarely. If it begins to affect my mental health, I might pick up clothing off the floor. I don't clean for myself, I clean for the happiness of others
Robot vacuum cleaners aren't great a cleaning, but they are very effective at keeping the dust down. You will still want to clean occasionally but with a robot vacuum running regularly you can do it much less often and the house feels cleaner in the meantime.
I'm also lucky enough to be able to afford house cleaners now. It is such a nice gift to our family to not have to worry about doing these things. We can spend that time doing stuff together rather than cleaning and we don't think about how dirty the house is and dread cleaning it nearly as often. If you can afford it I would highly recommend it. It definitely isn't cheap but many people have more expensive habits that bring less joy IMHO.
I'll second the robot vacuum. Doesn't even have to be an expensive one or a "top reviewed" blah blah(don't get a lemon though). It's not a replacement for a vacuum or having to clean, it's just a nice little companion that helps out a little and reminds you that you have to clean. Don't have one myself but a relative does and it's fun to see (over there a lot to help out because they're older).
If you're into sci-fi or electronics or little animal/robot companions in games, it kinda feels exactly the same but in person. Such a strange sensation to feel joy when the little robot guy runs between your feet or you have to shoo them out of the bathroom so you can use it lol. Even my older relative kinda treats it like a pet but all you have to do is empty it's belly.
Well the way to avoid dust is to not have any soft furnishings including carpets and rugs because they shed fibres that form dust, not have any clothing, because that also sheds fibres and forms dust, not have any skin because that sheds and forms dust, also have no hair, pets, unsealed surfaces, open windows, wear outside shoes inside, etc etc…
But if the above sounds too tricky then yeah the alternative is you just have to vacuum, mop and clean. I hoover several times a week, my partner dusts roughly weekly. It sucks. Entropy is a cruel mistress. But the upside is, having less dust in the house a) looks cleaner, b) is better for your respiratory system. So it’s worth doing, especially if you have someone in the house with something like asthma that would make them more sensitive.
As @xmunk said, cleaning needs to be embedded in other tasks. If you cannot figure out how to embed a given task then you can set it for a fixed schedule. For example, you say that you clean your desk or office on Saturday morning and you have a given set of steps you accomplish.
Another trick I learned from corporate world is to delegate the tasks. It is more manageable to follow up on someone doing it for you than you actually doing it. This can be someone else living with you, or someone you can hire to do. For example, you can hire someone to clean the house every Sunday. This later option could be expensive.
If you want to embed tasks and do it yourself, then you need to make them easy for you, for example, you can overstock cleaning products. Let's say you have a kitchen microfiber towel that hangs nearby and a dedicated cleaning product at reach. You consider that a meal (launch or dinner) equals, fetching the ingredients, cooking, eating and cleaning dishes, putting away dishes, and finally cleaning them. If you don't clean dishes then you consider you did not finish your dinner.
Same thing for the bathroom, you need cleaning tools at reach when you are in the bathroom, don't reuse kitchen stuff to clean the bathroom. Then when you shower, you clean the bathtub, the mirror, the sink, your underwear, wipe the floor, etc.
Same thing for the bathroom, you need cleaning tools at reach when you are in the bathroom, don't reuse kitchen stuff to clean the bathroom.
Bleh, this reminded me of a housemate who insisted that buying two of a cleaning product was a waste of money and space and then routinely lose them. Very annoy. Big fan of keeping stuff for cleaning a space around that space instead of the other side of the house.
About once a week, though I live in a one bedroom apartment. Deep cleaning is about once a month.
we've got a super tiny apartment.i clean constantly, and dust isn't much of an issue cause just about every surface sees constant use.
I wipe my floor with a damp cloth/mop every two weeks or so. That removes a lot of the dust with relatively little effort.
I walk around the house with a swiffer mop before I take a shower. Then vaccum the carpets in the rooms once a week. Showering is usually the trigger to do some sort of maintenance cleaning in the house. My logic is that if I’m gonna get dirty, I’ll do it before I shower.
If we're strictly talking dust accumulation, there's a few things you can do to reduce this.
- Make sure to change the filter in your HVAC system and intake vents every few months with a high quality filter. The better the filter, the more you need to change it.
- You can also add an air filter to individual rooms. I added them to all our bedrooms and it helps a ton with keeping dust down.
Aside from that, you'll still need to dust every so often and how often will depend on how fast it gets dirty again and how deep you want to clean. I use a vacuum and damp rag to dust shelves and such every month and I dust other things like blinds and fan blades and pull out furniture and appliances once a year. Every few years we'll need to remove something that usually never moves and we'll clean up the dust from that. I will say it's much easier to clean stuff regularly when you don't have lots of things laying around or taking up space. Keeping literal objects tidy makes it less of a chore. It's a lot easier to just wipe a table than to wipe a table and all the knick knacks.
I bought a mop bucket that has a separation in the middle, it separates the clean and dirty water and its working great, its cheap to buy too!
buildings are designed to be closed. its a horrible design thats irreversibly invested upon.
What use are buildings if they aren't closed spaces? If they're open, then you're open to the elements and/or wild animals, and at that point it's not a shelter.
I only vacuum every other week to a month.
I offset this by having air purifiers running in every room.
I run my robot vacuum every day, just because it's possible and it always manages catch some amount of dust every day.
A large part of why robot vacuums are great is because they decouple basically all effort from the task, making it easy to do it frequently and hence keep up with it. The same applies for dishwashers.
the problem I have worth my robo vacuum is hair, I live with a long haired human and a long haired cat, so the vacuum needs constant maintenance. I normally resort to a broom...
I have to occasionally remove hair from my robot vacuum as well due to my partners long hair, but this is far less time consuming than either sweeping the floors or vacuuming manually.
Maybe the cat complicates things? I only have to remove them like at most once a month, probably less.