Making Furniture Dusting Easier

Mom taught me and my siblings how to clean house when we were each younger than ten years old. Dad was fastidious about cleaning fingerprints on glass and wooden tabletops, while Mom postulated the virtues of maintaining sparkling dishes and understated elegant decor. Because it is time consuming, dusting furniture was—and still is—my least-favorite cleaning chore.

The chore of dusting furniture wouldn't be such a chore if not for the objects sitting on the furniture. Lamps, plants, candles, small framed photographs, stereo speakers, televisions, whatnots, and knickknacks all have to be removed before you can dust the furniture, and then you also have to dust the objects before you replace them. What a pain!

While you can make furniture dusting easier by not having any objects on your furniture, you certainly would have a boring room decor without pictures and lamps and plants. Fortunately, the science of cleaning house has improved vastly since I was twelve years old, taking hours to dust the first floor of our house, when I really wanted to be outside playing tetherball with my sister. In the last several years new cleaning products have become available to make furniture dusting much easier. Some of those products are:

• Microfiber cloth. Constructed of a blend of knitted thread and wedge-shaped polyester filaments, microfiber cloth follows a surface, lifts dirt, and then traps it inside the fibers. Because microfiber cloth attracts dirt and dust, you do not need to use furniture polish. You can purchase microfiber cloths that are also mitts to wear so that you can dust knickknacks quickly simply by picking them up.
• Disposable dusters. Made of a plastic handle to which you attach a disposable frond of microfiber material, disposable dusters have saved me many hours of dusting. Two brand names of disposable dusters are Swiffer Dusters and Pledge Multi-Surface Duster. They have a 360-degree design that gets into tiny cracks and crevices, and in and around whatnots and lamps with scrollwork sitting on tabletops. The best thing about disposable dusters is that they are so lightweight that you do not need to remove objects from furniture in order to dust the furniture, and you do not need to use furniture polish. It normally took me an hour to dust my living room with conventional soft cloth and furniture spray, but now it takes me about ten minutes to complete the same amount of dusting with a disposable duster.

You can also purchase disposable dusting clothes made with pockets that create a static charge to attract dirt, hair, and dust. Some disposable dusting cloths also have furniture polish built into the cloth.

Furniture dusting is much easier and faster now than when I learned how to do it. The products available today also make it possible to dust less, since each time you dust with their products, they clean more thoroughly.