Discourage Dust from Your Lampshades

Does it ever seem like your lampshade is a magnet for dust? Well, it is. Lampshades will actually attract dust from the air around them because the air is dry and lampshades are often charged with static electricity. This unfortunately means that no matter how many times you wipe away the dust from a lampshade, it will quickly attract more dust from the air.

To help keep the dust off of your lampshades, try wiping them off with a fabric softener sheet instead of a plain old cloth. Fabric softener sheets are used in the laundry to add a fresh scent to your clothes as well as to prevent the static electricity that naturally builds up in the dryer as fabrics come into contact with other clothes. Wiping the lampshade with a dryer sheet will help prevent static build-up in the future. This prevents the static electricity that normally attracts so much dust to lampshades. It will also wipe off the dust that has already been attracted to the lampshade. If you wipe the shade with a dryer sheet it will go a longer time without having to be dusted again.

An added bonus of using most fabric sheets is that they contain fragrance that makes your clothes smell great when they come out of the dryer. That same fragrance will get on your lampshade, and they will have the fresh laundry smell for the next several days. You may be tempted to wipe your lampshade down more often just to get the fresh smell.

As a side note, if your clothing is full of static electricity and sticking to itself and other clothing, you do not have to wait until your next laundry day to use a fabric softener sheet to get rid of the static. You can rub the fabric softener sheet right on to your clothing, and it will make that static a thing of the past.