When it comes to making sure that your home is free of dust, there are plenty of things that you can do. Some people dust and vacuum the room regularly, whereas other people might keep fans going to keep the air moving so dust can’t settle. However, some people might wonder how well opening the windows can reduce dust. The unfortunate truth is that it doesn’t help that much at all.
Why Shouldn’t You Open Your Windows?
Opening the windows can bring a lot of benefits. It can bring in fresh air, the smell of the outdoors, and it can help alter the temperature of the house. Despite all of the good things that opening a window can do, if you are trying to get rid of dust in your house, opening your windows is one of the worst things you can possibly do, even if your window has a screen.
To understand why opening the windows doesn’t work, you have to understand what exactly dust is made from. Dust contains tiny particles of different types of waste, mostly human skin. Depending on your surroundings, dust can also contain dead mites, pet dander, mite eggs, and even pollen. This is one of the many reasons why dust is so undesirable in homes.
When you think about it, the outdoors also has a lot of near-microscopic waste as well. Of course, there is going to be pollen, but there is also going to be the possibility of the following:
- Dirt
- Sand
- Spores
- Insect parts
- Insect droppings
- Animal hair
Additionally, opening the window also draws in an airflow, causing the dust outside to flow into your house as well. In the end, opening your window will increase the amount of dust that you have in your home.
With this being said, you might feel discouraged at first. Nobody really wants to have dust in their home, and realizing that you can’t get rid of dust the way you wanted to isn’t a fun realization. This might leave you wondering about other ways that you can get rid of the dust in your house. Thankfully, there are quite a few other methods that won’t leave you with more dust than you started with.
How Do You Get Rid of Dust?
There are several different ways that you can get rid of the dust in your home. As you might be able to imagine, you are going to want to make sure that you keep your clothes as clean as possible. While dust is mostly made up of human skin cells, a good portion of dust is made up of fibers from your clothes as well. Having a clean wardrobe will reduce the number of fibers flung into the air every time you open the doors.
Similarly, you will want to make sure that you take good care of any carpets in your house. If you can afford it, you might want to opt to remove the carpets in the first place. Carpets are a major source of dust for the same reason as clothes: the fibers can come loose and become part of a dust particle. What makes carpets considerably worse is that the fibers of the carpet will actually lock in dust particles, making the room even dustier than it appears to be at first glance.
In the same line of making sure your clothes are clean, you should make sure that your bedding is cleaned regularly as well. Dust mites thrive in bedding, laying eggs and breeding. Unfortunately, there is really no way to stop this cycle. The best way to keep your bed from becoming dusty is to wash the bedding once a week. This will make it much harder for dust mites to lay their eggs.
You should also make sure that you clean rugs, pillows, and duvets outside. Trying to clean these articles inside your home will only launch the dust, and the dust mites, through the air. This spreads the dust even more, and nobody wants that to happen. Beating these articles outside will leave your home a much more dust-free environment.
Keep Dust Out of Your House
There are several other things that you can do as well to make sure that any dust mites are not going to want to settle down in your home. For one, you can consider using air purifiers to keep the air free from most contaminants and airborne particles. Air purifiers are especially helpful for people who have allergies and respiratory issues.
You should also make sure that you do not use feather dusters. While they do a good job at giving the illusion that they clean your home, the truth is that they only spread the dust around, dispersing it into the air. Instead of using a feather duster, you should try and use a damp microfiber cloth to absorb the dust with.
Finally, when you are working on dusting your furniture or parts of the room, you should work from the top and make your way down to the bottom of a room. Gravity plays a role on dust, no matter how tiny the particles are. Whenever you disturb the dust by cleaning it, any remains are going to fall down to the ground where you can safely vacuum them up. Before you know it, your house will be significantly more dust-free than before.
