Or ways to remove that accumulation fast?
Non-vacuum cleaner tips would be more actionable for me currently, but please do share your ways.
For the ‘remove the accumulation’ part - get a pack of microfibre clothes. One wipe over a surface will be enough to get most dust, plus they do a great job of windows & mirrors, windex/glass cleaner is much more effective followed up with microfibre rather than another cloth or paper towels.
Once the cloth gets a bit of dust built up put aside and use the next clean cloth and keep cleaning, throw them all in a normal wash whenever you’re done (just do NOT use fabric softener).If you’ve got central HVAC: replace your air filters. Consider going for the high-grade HEPA ones, too.
If you have HVAC, make sure the filter is replaced regularly and try running a higher MERV filter.
I have dust mite allergies. 2 most important changes I did were:
(1) no carpets, no curtains, only tile floors.
(2) and I love my robot vaccuum. They do 80% of the work, daily, whilst I’m away.
- 1 for using the word whilst betwixt daily and I’m.
Do you have dust mite resistant sheet covers, that was the biggest improvement for me
As someone with ADHD I actually keep a broom leaning against my standing desk and sweep to busy my hands whenever I’m thinking or on a call. Dusting/washing walls simply doesn’t happen in our household due to how many steps are involved - but for most other cleaning we build it into tasks - so as I cook I clean cookware as I go - when I finish showering I squeegee the glass, and there’s cleaning fluid within reach if I notice build up.
These are all really exploits designed to help ADHD people do shit but maybe they’ll help you!
About once a week, though I live in a one bedroom apartment. Deep cleaning is about once a month.
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
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.
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.
I have dogs, I wish it could detect when it’s full more easily. I think it does it by weight or suction resistance. May even be nice to have a built in trash compactor - or I should just get the one with the bin/wash base station.
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.
I only vacuum every other week to a month.
I offset this by having air purifiers running in every room.
So many things factor into this…
Our house became significantly (like 97%) less dusty when our dog passed.
The age of your house
The type of furnace filter
Routine
We have 3 small kids, so we try to tidy up physical stuff (toys, clothes, bags, etc) every day. Dishes too.
Once a week is wiping down nin-kitchen surfaces
Once a month is wiping down baseboards and door trim
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.
Usually after a while of being able to see the routes I walk in my apartment visibly, it manages to stress me to the point where I can do something about it and I’ll spend a solid 10 hours cleaning and tidying