In newer construction, especially high-rise apartments, there’s a lot less dust. But in older buildings, it’s just an endless torrent, and the solution has been…

Robot vacuums

While they must be maintained, and won’t work well if you’re not diligent about picking up and keeping obstacles off the floor, they make it far easier to keep the whole house clean by reducing the overall volume of interior dust and debris inside the building envelope.

To illustrate (this will be gross) I change the bags about every month and weigh them and it’s usually ~1 kg (~2 lbs) per bag, and each year they remove roughly 30-40 kg (70-90 lbs). And every time I’ve cut them open to see what’s causing all the weight (or make sure nothing important was eaten) it appears to be mostly dust and hair.

It’s freaky thinking how all of that would be floating around, settling on surfaces, collecting in corners and crevices, saturating carpets and upholstery, and of course getting breathed in constantly. Instead I don’t have to manually dust and vacuum very often and our indoor AQI is usually better than outside.

So yeah. Robots.

Edit: added imperial mass equivalents

i don’t, its a nightmare

The best advice I have is one I found on the internet: Whenever you walk through a room pick something up and dispose of it, or put it back in its place.

As a wise friend once said about home repairs “It’s easier to keep up than to catch up”

You can do a lot at once, you can do a little all the time but either way you have to clean regularly to stay on top of it.

You’ll never be able to get things clean - all you will be able to manage is “cleaner than it was before.” It becomes easier if you accept that.

Roomba twice a day. A dishwasher run every day. A biweekly cleaning by a professional, and a tolerance for some degree of chaos. We live in the world, not in some clean lab. There will be dirt, dust, clutter. Just don’t let it get too much.

I have a yard of weeds, and a flower garden and a vegetable garden, some trees. It will never be a weed free environment in my gardens, I just try to advantage the plants I want, and keep the weeds under control not gone. Same with the house, don’t let perfect be the enemy of the good.

I’m a little late to the party but keep in mind that people who stay on top of cleaning and have sparkling houses are doing just that and nothing else because it is so time consuming. You don’t want to invest all your free time (or all your time) into cleaning that will never end. Good enough is good enough.

Smaller houses tend to be better for this, generally. Cut down on all the stupid useless crap you own that you only use like once every 3 years, it’s not worth it to keep it sitting around. Buy and sell everything on craigslist, and rent the rest of what you might need. Maybe look into a storage shed or something, or dedicate a portion of your house to this, a room, something like this. Most people have a garage, I think. Pawn stuff off on everyone around you, call them when you need it, and then that’s a good opportunity to socialize. The same goes for “makerspaces” or whatever. Get out of your house more.

Work from the top down, start in an area with your fans, cobwebs, whatever, then work down to the pictures and higher shelves, the windows, lower shelves, tables, then hit your walls and baseboards, and then, after all that’s done, do the floors.

Remove clutter and little aesthetic baubles on shelves where dust and hair and crap might accumulate, unless you’re actively using the things in that space, or frequently moving stuff around in that area. It also pays to be conscious of how airflow moves throughout your house and how dust settles. It always tends to be the corners, but then corners also tend to be the deadzones where people put things anyways. If you can turn this on it’s head, and keep things away from the walls and corners more, that’s probably a decent idea, and could also help you open up your house more. If you can’t do that, you could look into like, these triangular dust guards they make for the corners of things, especially stairs, though those are mostly for sweeping, and I think dust might end up sticking to them regardless. The best solution for most people is probably just to go in the complete opposite direction, and get some big sealed corner cabinets with actual doors, instead of just having a bunch of open shelves everywhere.

Make sure you always remove your shoes when you come in from outside, and if you’re especially dirty, your outerwear. It’s easier to clean this all in one location by the door. Cats and dogs and all your other pets also shed a ton which can suck really bad and get on everything. I really like having pets, but god damn it can get pretty nasty. I would probably not do it all over again if I had the choice. Maybe look for breeds that don’t shed as much. Or just brush your pets maybe more than daily, that might also help.

Also, invest in a good stick vacuum, don’t get one of those huge corded garbage vacuums, or those ones that roll around and have the tube, those also suck and are awful. Also a good spray mop with the bottom that sticks to the cloth pad, and not like a normal stupid mop with a bucket or whatever, because those suck.

Yeah. Do all that, revolve your life around just cleaning and maintaining the shit that you own, and then you can probably get away with like an hour maybe once or twice a week for your whole house. How fulfilling!

I splurged on a Bissell cross wave pet and I can’t believe how amazing it really is. I wish I would have gotten the cordless version but it really has changed how often and easy it is to keep our floors clean!

I also really try to do a “closing shift” every night. And even if I have dishes in the sink, they have all been rinsed.

I wipe down the surfaces in the half bath every time I use it.

And I wipe the hand rails and base boards once every couple of months. We have 4 kids so there is always some kind of “mess” but I’ve gotten so much better about keeping up with the house. And I don’t beat myself up when I skip a day or two.

Bold of you to assume my home is clean.

You’re never going to be sterile; good enough is good enough.

Keep an abundance of cleaning supplies. Soaps and rags in the kitchen and the bathroom. Think about investing in a vacuum and a carpet cleaning machine. Edit = Also get more trash bins. One for the kitchen, one for the desk, one by the coffee table, one for the bathroom.
Some people find it easier to do one big push where they clean the whole house in one session; other folks like to do a little bit every day. Figure out which type you are.

Also, check and see what cleaners charge in your area. It might be worth it to have a pro come in and do the work for you. Figure out what your leisure time is worth to you and then compare.

If you’re sweeping, it’s possible you’re kicking a lot of dust up in the air, so that by the time you’re done mopping, it has resettled back down on the floor. You could mitigate this by vacuuming instead, or opening your windows and using fans to blow air out of your house. But also, you’ll never get all of the dust anyway.

Keeping your house clean is a good thing to do. But it’s easy to stray into obsession territory. There lies madness.

Remember we all have far more visitor microbes in our bodies than our own host cells. Life is dirty. Life is germy. Embrace this.

You don’t need to live in a hoarder hell hole, but the sooner you accept that living is a messy business the more time you’ll have to enjoy actually living. Cleaning tasks should be quick and efficient, not sterilization.

I can’t believe no one has said this… Don’t wear shoes inside the house.

This will dramatically reduce the griminess of your floors.

Its a big commitment. You’ll prioritise shoes you can just slide your feet into, or at least out of. I still have nice boots and stuff but wear them less often.

I pay someone to clean once a month. I hate cleaning and it’s worth the $200 to me.

I keep my sink clear of dishes and take out my own trash, but the rest is just stuff I don’t want to do.