How To Keep Dust Out Of Your Home

There is nothing quite as gross as lying on your floor to play with the kids or cuddle up to your pets only to feel the dry dust slide up your nostrils as you breathe in, tiny particles attach to your skin, on your face. Keeping dust out of your home can be a difficult task, but with a little bit of work you can minimize and sometimes eliminate it from your indoors.

I know what you’re thinking. Why can’t I get rid of dust completely? Unfortunately, there are no easy solutions to dust infestation, but by simply taking a few precautions, you can greatly reduce the amount of dust in your home and sometimes stop it from ever entering your indoors again.

Remember, Dust Is Good

Sure, it is a little gross to look at, but dust does serve a very important purpose. If you like your soft furnishings and clothing, you definitely for sure see it around. Materials naturally break down to finer particles, float in the air adding to a multitude of other materials and organisms and bacteria and skin and pet hair losing particles and breaking down so we can all look our best. If you get rid of the materials in your room, then you will find that you have a lot less work ahead of you with your dusting, I promise you that.

When Is Dust a Problem?

Most of the time you will have to worry about dust taking up residency indoors, as it settles in quiet undisturbed areas in the building, soft and hard surfaces, accumulating, and diversifying in response to what materials are in the room, entering or extracted. However, in the spring and even the summer, when it gets a little warmer outside or during windy days, the dust tends to collect inside as all the doors and windows are open to air and cool the house, yet lets in particles if not sealed correctly.

You know what I mean. We have all seen dust swirling around in corners around buildings, across pathways and hard surfaces, across flat land. The southerly busters and nor easterly winds here in Sydney Australia whip up a rate of knots and speed drives particles from pollens, dust, pesticides, herbicides, gases, smoke from bush fires in summer and fireplaces in winter, construction cutting and grinding, vehicle exhaust and industry all to the entry points in your home and if you happen to have doors and windows open around your building, dust will often make its way from around the region to your home, inside!

Once it has done that, the strong breeze doesn’t seem to have the momentum inside, and dust can often simply float onto any surface. Once it falls down, dust is trapped and can’t get moving again or out of soft materials.

Keep That Dust Away

No matter how unsightly it may be for your furnishings, it is a nuisance if you have to try to wipe it off your hard furnishings or vacuum or wash them out of your bedding, lounges and carpets.

So what can you do about it? Unfortunately, there is no one size fits all fix that will take care of dust, and you may never be able to totally eliminate the problem. Still, you aren’t left without options. Let’s take a look at a few strategies you can use to reduce or eliminate your dust problem once and for all.

1. Remove Your Shoes

Your shoes aren’t always the most convenient to put on or take off, but if you have a big dust problem they will do the trick. By removing your shoes at the front door or back door will prevent those dirt and dust particles from entering into your home and transported throughout the rooms. Of course, you will have to put your shoes on and take them off in order for it to work, and that isn’t all that convenient.

Try only using this solution when it really is the only option available. Is to wipe your feet on a door mat before entering. Look for storage space that provides quick and easy place to store your shoes so you can quickly take them off and then put them on when you are ready to go outside.

PRODUCT:

Door Mats

Choosing the right door mat will help reduce the dust entering your house. To help you out, we have done some research and found these that will do the job.

2. Check Your Building After a Storm

I know this isn’t always possible, after all we all are busy. However, if you can, after the storm has passed go ahead and give your entry area a quick check and a cleaning if need be. If you can get to it soon enough after the heavy rains, you may be able to capture that debris and dirt before it has had a chance to reach your front and back doors and maybe before being dried by the sun and becoming dust. Pick up and move debris to garden beds or compost so it can, well, decompose.

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Buy a Broom

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3. Move Your Landscaping

Who doesn’t love great looking gardens, clean paths, manicured lawns around their property. In many ways it really completes your home in ways that brings nature in touch with buildings. Still, with plants, comes pollens, leaves and soil, decomposing. That means that there will be debris, there is just no way around it.

If possible, you could try reconfiguring your landscaping more away from your building entrances and pathways. This will increase the distance any pollen and dust that drift, will make it before its dried by the sun and decomposes outside.

4. Entry Level in Relation to Ground

Does the entry level of your home meet the soil of your landscaping or the grass of your yard? If so you may want to consider altering the design, at least a little bit. Instead of keeping it even at the entry level, move it a little, if possible. Even a slightly higher step entry can’t stop those dust particles from reaching your entries because it is not that difficult for these particles to be blown in, can be wiped off your shoes whilst on the ground.

Some dust will inevitably manage to make it, despite the odds, so don’t expect this solution to put a stop to it. But it will reduce the quantity of dust that reaches your home meaning you will have less to clean out of the interiors.

5. Hard Surfaced Pathways

Try adding hard surfaced pathways, large tiles or unique stepping stones around the perimeter of your home. You can even add it just on top of the soil where the concrete meets the ground. This hard surface will reduce decomposition of the soil around your home, something that can be swept away really easily.

6. If All Else Fails, Screen!

I want to start off by saying that I recommend this, and I will talk about it just so you understand that this is another option. If dust and debris are a problem, and you have tried reducing the load in the gardens and just need more help, you could always try screening.

Screen the landscaping and grassy areas around your home. This will deflect any dust present in that area and capture dust from going into the home.

Now, you can also screen doors and windows with fly screen materials, this will capture larger dust particles at the entry. I only think you should do this if it is a major problem and you have tried everything else, as it will also reduce the ventilation that is very beneficial to your indoors and air flow. See the bottom of this blog post for a few suppliers we found online.

PRODUCT:

Find some great indoor plant options at your local garden centre- these are a selection that we recommend you look out for.

7. Watch Your Windows

Some dust will inevitably manage to make it inside, you’ve noticed how dusty those window sills get, right? This entry can be observed to what’s going on outside, dust and debris on hard surfaces around your home, something that can be swept away quite easily. Pay attention to what’s going on outside when you open windows to avoid letting extra dust and pollution in. Dust or vacuum screens with the brush attachment before wiping with a dampened microfibre cloth to help cut down on what blows in when you’re simply trying to get a little fresh air.

PRODUCT:

Microfibre Cloth

Probably the one item you will use most of all, a microfiber cloth will let you easily remove dust, dirt and even sponge up water in a flash.  After all, no one wants to breathe in air that is filled with floating dust particles or potential mould.  So pick up a microfiber cloth and start removing those contaminants as you work to keep your indoor air clean once the cleaning week hits.

8. Seal up your home

Don’t let dust weasel its way in on the regular! Caulk those cracks and crevices, and add sweeps to door bottoms. Here is a leaf making its way through ceiling cornice crack above entry door to our home (Circa 2017).

Dust Away!

Dust in your home won’t really hurt your home, it’s just kind of dusty, especially if you enter the door and get a strong whiff up your nose and you can’t stop sneezing. There is no set cure for dust in your home, however there are many options for you to try to reduce or eliminate your dust problem once and for all.

Experiment with the different solutions and maybe even use a combination of more than one for the best results. If dust is a problem in your home or office, what do you have to lose?

Towards healthier living, Carol Parr ♥

Thank you to my high school science teacher Ms Selby for answering my mum’s only question, “How do I stop dust getting into my home?” way back then! “Never! Dust will always keep coming back”. Much to my mum’s dismay,  the answer has guided me through a life long career in questioning “let’s see what this does when …” nature and buildings meet head on.

As a result of working with me, women and their families thrive, work places and their personnel prosper, mouldy and chemical / electrical sensitive occupants heal. They’re healthier, they’re alert, they’re happier, more relaxed, more productive, and enjoying life.

Together we bring about healthy indoor environments and create rooms that provide calmness, healthy sleep, relaxation and restored energy for you and your family, create workplaces that provide ideal personnel attendance and elevated productivity.

By returning indoor spaces to more natural conditions, we strengthen you and your family and your personnel’s mind, body and spirit. It’s nice that it also sustains our planet’s ecology, you’d agree.

You can find my latest enterprises by clicking here: http://www.linkedin.com/in/carolparr

Fly Screen Suppliers:

Sydney Blinds: https://www.sydneyblinds.com.au/doors-screens/fly-screens/

Sydney Flyscreens: https://www.sydneyflyscreens.com/

The Flyscreen Man: https://theflyscreenman.com/

Author

  • Carol Parr

    We’re glad you’re here. We’re Carol and Tony, founders of one of the longest running Healthy Home Blogs in the world, Mitey Fresh Australia. We’ve been on this journey for the last 25 years and are passionate about helping families sift through health hazards and triggers like allergens, mould, water damage, chemicals and EMFs, to get clarity about what’s toxic and what’s not so they can create a healthy and happy home for their family they love. Each month, people visit this blog seeking focus on the health and wellbeing of their loved ones, sustainable and effective practice tips and guides, to help create and manage healthier indoor spaces, improve the built environment that is pleasing to the senses and support healthy living and nature, every day. Starting this blog was to help change people’s lives, one family at a time, and we can’t wait to share how its allowed us to stand next to you and show you how interpreting these synergies between buildings and the environment they are built in will impact upon the health and well-being of those who occupy them. Find out more about Healthy Homes and what this blog can do for you!

2 thoughts on “How To Keep Dust Out Of Your Home”

    1. Hi Evan, is this what you mean when a pollutant such as mould or pollen spores, microbial contamination, animal dander, dust mite, asbestos or metal particulates, combustion gases, smoke or gas, or other organic material is in your air, it is regarded as combined dust. This just floats around in your air until it settles and can be captured and removed.

      In order to capture, you must “shock” the air by adding enough ‘filters’ – and manual dusting using micro fibre cloths is a central key to reach cleanliness. I welcome you to check out https://www.miteyfresh.com.au/case-studies/basic-indoor-air-science-101/

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