5 Tools that will make Dusting Quick and Easy

I don’t know about you, but cleaning my house can sometimes be really enjoyable and sometimes it can really feel like a chore.  I think it is the repetition associated with the tasks that can get tedious.  It seems that every time I get a little bit ahead of the mess, I forget a task (a chore) and it somehow snowballs into chaos.  The answer to changing my chores into something enjoyable again is a cleaning routine that I can stick with.  When I follow a simple routine for cleaning my whole house each week, the mess doesn’t get out of control.  Over on my blog, Simple.Home.Blessings., I am sharing today more about how I keep ahead of the cleaning chaos and turn my chores into cheerfulness in just a few minutes a day, and I thought I would come here and share with you, my 3-bin system for organizing my cleaning routine and the 5 tools I use to make dusting quick and easy!

I love the rule of threes for organizing.  If I can, I try to boil almost every organizing project down to three bins or baskets.  I think it keeps things really simple and easy for me to follow.  So, as I settled into my weekly routine for cleaning, I found that my organizing needs broke down into three bins: bathrooms, dusting, and vacuuming.  I simply put all the items I need for each of these daily tasks into three separate bins.  I got mine on clearance at Pottery Barn Kids and they keep everything in order (and look pretty, too!).

Here’s a look at what my cleaning closet looks like when my bins are stowed away.

And since I have some unique things in my dustbin, I thought I would share what is packed in there to give you an idea of how you can pack your own dusting bin.

1. Microfiber cloths – I have three different colors of microfiber cloths in my house.  I use each for different specific tasks and just toss them into the wash at the end of each cleaning day to be washed at the end of the week.  My dusting microfiber cloths are orange and I keep 2-3 in my bin at all times.
2. A Swiffer duster and a few extra refills.  I use an average of one Swiffer refill per week on my whole house.  I used to think they were overpriced, but once I broke it down to a per week price, I found them to be worth it.  Considering their ease of use when trying to make cleaning (and specifically, dusting) less of a chore.
3. A tire brush – Yes, you just read that correctly.  I stole this out of my husband’s car cleaning kit – in fact I confiscated it before he ever got to use it on the tires.  When he brought it home and showed it to me, I immediately thought of it’s multiple uses in our house on surfaces that are not flat.  We have a lot of “rustic modern” pieces in our home – wood grain (unfinished and finished) and stone on our walls.  And the stiffness of this brush (with very gentle bristles) helps to clear these surfaces of the dust that gathers there each week.  I can literally dust my walls as I dust the rest of the house.  And it works really well on unvarnished pieces of furniture that the Swiffer dusters tend to get caught on, leaving behind little pieces of the Swiffer dusters.
4. A spray-on furniture polish – We don’t have a lot of finished wood pieces in our home, but for the ones we do, I treat them with a furniture polish about once or twice a month.  I usually spray the surface and wipe down (according to directions on the bottle) with a clean microfiber cloth.
5. A level – This is kind of an aha! discovery for me based on a random placement of a level close to some pictures that needed to be dusted.  We have started to display a number of family photos on a couple of gallery walls in our home.  And those picture frames need to be dusted every week (the curse of living in the desert is sand!).  So each week, I need to insure that the picture frames are rehung or readjusted to sit straight on the wall.  Enter my trusty level!  I love that the OCD part of me can keep everything in it’s place and our small level has a permanent residence in my dusting bin.

I use my dusting bin each week on my dusting day.  I simply take it out of my cleaning closet by the handle, work my way through the upstairs rooms and then downstairs.  I am usually able to get all my dusting done in less than 30 minutes because I have a well-packed dusting bin and an easy to follow system for keeping my whole house clean each week.

Do you have a dusting bin?  What do you keep in there?

Leah

Simple.Home.Blessings.

Looking for more household solutions?  Here are some of my latest posts:

Showroom Shine for Stainless Steel – the quickest, easiest solution! 

Vacuum Routines that clean more than just the floors