Your determined efforts to eradicate the dust from your desk seem to be bearing no good results and so you’re almost giving up. How shouldn’t you give up when all you do all day is keep wiping your desk? It’s not fair that you should spend a lot of your time and energy fighting a battle that seems to be unending.
But just before you’re completely fed up, you might want to take a look at these simple life-hacks that can help you deal with this irritating problem. These solutions will work no matter how dirty your desk tends to get, so long as you implement them correctly.
Read on to learn what you can do to ensure your desk stays clean, whether day or night, summer or winter.
5 Great Ways to Stop Your Desk From Getting Dusty
1. Regularly Clean Your Carpeting
Dust is a product of dead skin, cells, fabric particles, dirt, food remains and many others. When all these disintegrate into smaller pieces, they land on your carpet, where they’ve got a very nice cover from your view.
From the appearance, your carpet could be looking spotlessly clean when in a real sense, it’s dirty. Sometimes, you only need to vacuuming the carpet to find how concealing of dirt they can be.
If you’re not in the habit of regularly cleaning your carpet, you’re making it easier for the dust to accumulate and sooner than you know, it will start up in all the wrong places, including your desk.
You could be saying that your desk is located in a place not close to the living room, so there’s no way your carpet could contribute to the dirt on the desk. Right?
Well, not exactly. You see, dust particles are very light, which means they can travel throughout your house to land anywhere, including your bedroom. For this reason, you have to commit to cleaning your carpet regularly so that there’s no dust hiding in it.
The good news is that vacuuming is an easy task that you can perform daily if you wanted. But given the tight schedule you keep, you can pick several days in a week on which you will commit to vacuuming your carpet. Three days should be good to start with’ preferably Monday, Wednesday and Saturday.
Start from there and work your way up with time depending on your desk’s condition after initiating this cleaning routine. If you realize that things are turning out great, you might then maintain that cleaning schedule.
But again, it’s important to note that your locality will also determine how regularly you clean your carpet. Some regions are generally known to be dusty and so if you’re living in such areas, you’ll have to ensure that you do regular vacuuming. If you’ve got the time, you might even have to do it twice per day.
It might turn out to be a lot of work, but it’s necessary if you want your desk to remain clean all day. If you can manage to do the entire house every week, then you’ll stand higher chances of keeping not only your desk but your entire living space dust-free.
2. Floors Without Carpet Need Cleaning as Well
This might sound so obvious, but it’s so important that it’s worth reminding you. Most people put a lot of emphasis to cleaning the carpet areas of their house and living out the rest. The truth of the matter is, you might not see plenty of dust accumulating on the floor without carpet but remember, there’s more to dust than what you’re able to see with your naked eyes.
To prevent a lot of dust from accumulating on your floor, you’ll need to clean it regularly. Otherwise, it can get dirty and one of the indicators that things are getting out of hand is when your desk can’t stay clean even for just a few hours.
How often should you be cleaning your floor? It depends on how quickly the floor gets dirty. One of the factors that determine this is the number of occupants in the house and your residence location. A house with many people tends to need cleaning more often as the rate at which it gets dirty is relatively high.
Also, do you have pets living with you? If yes, then you know what that means. When your puppies go out to play, they carry dirt, including dust that might not be visible to the naked eye. Furthermore, some of these pets, especially dogs, are heavy shedders and so your house tends to get messed up by their hair.
Whichever the case for you, your house can never get too clean. There’s always something you can do to keep the floor dust-free. There’s no sure answer as per the number of times you should do the cleaning, but it all depends on your set of circumstances. But for as long as you’re committed to keeping your house clean, you’ll always find the time to do the cleaning.
3. Wipe Ceiling Fan Blades
Ever looked up your ceiling and thought it needed some cleaning? What about those fan blades? If it’s something you don’t usually do, don’t beat yourself too hard over it because it’s not just you.
A vast majority of people usually do an excellent job of keeping their house clean. Well, save for the ceilings and whatever else is up there. Cleaning your ceiling fan blades might have a tremendous effect on the general hygiene of your desk and the entire house.
Is it finally starting to make sense why your efforts of keeping your desk clean aren’t giving you the results you expect?
Something about dust on your fan blades is that you might not see them, especially the backside. But it’s until you take a ladder and get up there. You’ll be like, whoa, so these blades can get this dirty?
If you’ve got a step-ladder, you might as well get it right now and climb up there to assess the condition of the fan.
The most unfortunate thing about ceiling fan blades is that they can’t just keep the dust to themselves. Every time you turn them, they’ll blow the dust that’s accumulated on them around.
Because they’re way up there, it makes sense that you’ll unconsciously not give them a lot of thought when you’re cleaning the house. But from today, you need to commit to being regularly checking them up.
It’s not complicated to clean these up. All you need is a rag and some cleaner and, of course, a step-ladder. Make sure to exercise some caution while up there. If you’re not confident with the stability of the ladder you’re using, get someone to hold it for you while you go up to clean.
4. Check and Clean Air Conditioning Filters
If you’ve previously tried everything else we’ve talked about so far and the results were not so good, then you also need to check and clean your air conditioning filters.
Like the ceiling fan blades, these also tend to be left out quite often when cleaning around the house.
These can also carry and spread dust around if they’re left unmonitored. That’s why you need to be intentional about cleaning them now and then. It doesn’t matter whether you’ve got a window air conditioner or a central air unit.
The two have got filters that need to be maintained and cleaned to rid them of the dust, or anything else may reduce their efficiency due to the debris that accumulates in them over time.
Your air conditioning filters take in everything that isn’t meant to get into your breathing system. We’re talking dust, hairs from your dogs or cats, and other things that you might never imagine until you see them.
As they accumulate in these filters, they become too much for the system to bear and so they start discharging and sending them flying around, albeit slowly. That’s why no matter how hard you try, your desk is most likely never going to be spotlessly clean until the day you start looking in the direction of the air conditioning filters.
During cleaning, you must follow the instructions manual that comes with your air conditioning to know how to go about it. If you rely on your eyes, you might end up causing damage to the air conditioner, which you can avoid.
Some filters are meant to be in use for a particular period, say three years, and then they’ll need replacement. For this reason, you must check and know when yours is bound to go out of service so that it’s not just sitting there.
5. Avoid Furniture Oil or Wax
Furniture oil and wax always don’t work well on desks. Yes, your desk will get a nice shiny look that’s attractive to the eye. But in the end, this attraction won’t just attract humans, but dust too.
And when the dust finally comes along, it won’t just be a mess that you’ll clear with one big and a quick wipe. Instead, it will stick and give you trouble getting it off the desk. So, instead of attracting all this trouble, it’s only reasonable to let the furniture oil and wax do their job; cleaning the furniture.
As for the desk, you don’t have to get fancy about what you use to clean it up. Consistency is the key here. If you implement all the other measures and tips we’ve shared above, you’ll realize that with time your desk will stay sparkling clean for a long time. When thinking of the cleaning agents, only go for those recommended for the type of material your desk is made of.
Whether it’s plastic, wood or metal, you can’t run short of options. You only need to determine the type of material your desk is made from, do your research, and go out shopping. But whatever happens, resist the temptation to want to lay your hands on that furniture oil or wax, regardless of the type of desk you’ve got.
As we said earlier, so long as you do the other cleaning types we’ve recommended here, you might soon realize that you don’t even need to trouble yourself looking for many other cleaning agents.
Dust it!
Regardless of the specific circumstances surrounding you and your home, you should never doubt even for a sec that you cannot keep your desk dust-free. The same goes for bookshelves and other items you might have around the house that always seems to be giving you a headache when maintaining them.
If you follow our tips and tricks, you’ll start enjoying a clean and appealing desk soon rather than later. Most of the cleaning isn’t related to the desk itself but other house components that seem to be the most carriers of dust.
After you’ve successfully done those, you’ll only need to be doing quick clean-ups of your desk a couple of times a day. You now have got the power to take charge of your desk’s appearance and cleanliness. Remember, the secret is doing and not learning and staying put with the knowledge you’ve gained. Take action and enjoy your desk.