The feather duster – friend or foe in house cleaning?
With warmer weather already here and spring just around the corner, many people are going to start opening up their windows and letting in the fresh spring air. Hopefully, you have been good all winter and kept up on your dusting! In the event that you have not, opening up the windows is going to leave you with less than “fresh” air. Over the next few posts I’m going to discuss five dusting techniques that will help make this dreaded task more bearable and more effective. If you apply these five techniques prior to opening up your windows, you’ll truly be able to enjoy all of that “fresh” spring air.
One of the most common dusting tools used is a feather duster. If you go through almost any hardware or grocery store, you’ll see variety of feather dusters, supposedly having a different purpose. Honestly, purchasing all of these different dusters for different tasks is simply a waste of money. All you need is a simple feather duster to get portion of the job done. At Total Cleaning Plus, we use feather dusters with ostrich feathers. These normally retail for around $15/duster. You want to use the feather duster to get the high corners where spiders love to make their homes, as well as underneath low furniture that you can’t get to with a vacuum. Using feather dusters for anything other than those two things is really counterproductive.
The problem with a feather duster is most people are not using them properly and, if they are, they are rushing. When using a feather duster, it is important to work from the top of the room to the bottom. Using it from the top to the bottom will allow you to bring the dust from the top of the room all the way down to the floor for it to be vacuumed. If you are dusting randomly, you are completely wasting your time. You’ll return to the area you just dusted only to find dust everywhere, making double the work in the process.
Due to the lack to time people have, they very often rush through the job of dusting. The problem with rushing while dusting and using a feather duster is that it leads to the scenario mentioned above. Short on time? Here’s a hint – do it right the first time!
One little trick you can use to help reach some of those hard-to–get, higher areas is to place the duster in the end of your vacuum pole. This will extend the height you can reach to dust. Obviously, this can only be done if you have a canister style vacuum that comes with a vacuum pole. For those who have an upright vacuum, you can certainly try a step stool or an extender duster (pictured here). If those two options don’t work, then surely you can call a professional! If you have any questions call Total Cleaning Plus to get all your answers.
