Dust can be a nuisance for multiple reasons: Tiny particles of skin, dirt, and dander can coat the surfaces of your furniture and walls (making things look dingier), and also — as gross as it is — fill your lungs, which is why dust is often the underlying cause of allergies. Regular professional cleanings are often the best way to deal with dust, but on your own time, you can also keep your home fresh by avoiding clutter (a dust magnet), keeping windows closed, and laundering dusty linens and curtains.

Dusting surfaces regularly is also key, and by now we’ve come a long way from the traditional flouncy feather duster. Here, we asked ten professional cleaners to weigh in on the most efficient ways to get rid of dust in the home, and the best tools for the job.
VibraWipe Microfiber Cleaning Cloths
All ten professionals we spoke with recommended microfiber cloths for picking up dust. “Microfiber, thanks to its microscopically tiny weave, holds ten times more dirt per square inch than its cotton counterparts, so you will collect more dust and keep it from redepositing as you clean the next surface,” says Melissa Homer, chief cleaning officer for MaidPro. (If you’re curious about the classic feather duster, Jack Prenter, owner of Toronto cleaning company Chore Bliss, explains that they “don’t attract and trap dust, they just displace it and move it around your home.”)

To make sure you’re working efficiently (and won’t need to double back), you’ll want to dust from the top down, say Prenter and Homer, since particles can fall to the floor and circulate in the air when you’re wiping doors frames and shelves. A few spots that would be good to hit first are the tops of fan blades, blinds, paintings, door frames, and picture frames, says Kadi Dulude, the owner of New York’s Wizard of Homes cleaning service, because they’re often the most neglected. The inside of your radiator and the filters of your AC unit are two other places she calls out as dust traps.
OXO Good Grips Microfiber Extendable Duster
If you’re aiming for a hard-to-reach cobweb or a dusty, far-off corner, you might need something longer. “One alternative is a microfiber duster, which is simply a microfiber cloth on an extendable pole,” says Prenter. These can be great for passing over lofty spots, but you might not even need one. “Most homes, in my experience, don’t have high ceilings and [spots that need dusting] can be easily reached with a small stepladder.”
Shaklee Basic H2 Organic Super Cleaning Concentrate, 16 oz.
A few people suggested spraying microfiber cloths with an all-purpose cleaner before use, to help them grip and remove dust better, as well as to disinfect surfaces. “If the item [being dusted] cannot tolerate any water, like a collectible or art piece, tickle-dust it with a fluffy microfiber duster over a surface you can wipe clean afterward,” says Homer. Here’s a biodegradable cleaner which Dulude says is an “all-time favorite.”
Shark Navigator Upright Vacuum
The cleaning experts feel about brooms what they do about feather dusters: get rid of them. “Always vacuum your hard floors, never sweep,” says Homer. She explains that sweeping kicks as much dust back into the air as it does into your dustpan, while using a vacuum hose with a horsehair floor brush sucks everything up without scratching your hardwoods. “It will protect even the most delicate floors, like fine wood and marble, but actually extract and remove dust. Plus the vacuum cleans the dust out of your air as you clean the floor — double points.”

We’ve covered vacuums extensively, and would advise you to revisit our lists of the best stick, handheld, cheap, and robot vacuums. Just to cover our bases, though, we polled some of our experts on their favorites here, too. Prenter mentioned Shark vacuums “because they are essentially cheaper clones of Dyson, with similar longevity, at a fraction of the price” — they’ve popped up on our expert lists many times before. Here’s an upright Shark model that converts to a handheld version, has a microfiber dusting brush for hardwoods, and comes with a built-in HEPA filter.

Source: https://nym.ag/2x3Pqz0