When you are in spring cleaning mode, you know you’ll have to tackle the chore of dusting and lots of vacuuming. This is going to need to be done before you can begin weekly maintenance cleaning. Our general rule is to vacuum almost everything first if there is a heavy buildup of dust. Even if you’re going to wash the woodwork or the windows, you should vacuum the woodwork and sills first to avoid having to remove all the mud you’d make. The vacuum will quickly remove the dust in the corners and on the small bits of the woodwork. If you get that same dust wet, it’s far more difficult to wipe it out of all the corners and tight spots.
Routine dust management is a task for daily or weekly cleaning. As we discuss in Speed Cleaning, your main ally in the war against dust is a professional feather duster made of ostrich down. But what do you do if you encounter a really nasty accumulation of dust – something beyond the capacity of a feather duster? Something like, let’s say, under the refrigerator, in a storage room, or in back of the washer/dryer, or behind Aunt Sophie’s hatbox collection in the closet? In such cases, the feather duster would not be able to absorb the volume of dust and would just spread it around.
The main objective, besides removing dust, is not to make work for yourself by spreading the dust into the air or onto other surfaces. There is a difference between “old dust” and “new dust”: Old dust is the dust you are trying to remove. New dust is what will resettle two minutes after you finish cleaning. Keep new dust to a minimum by making as little as possible of the old dust airborne. This is best done during heavy cleaning by using the vacuum cleaner rather than the feather duster. The equipment of first choice is our canister vacuum, Henry, equipped with the brush attachment at the end of the hose.
More on vacuuming dust next time…
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