Dusting Furniture and Other Furniture Care Tips

Keeping up with dusting around your home will make the place look neater and cleaner and also reduce dust-related allergens such as dust mites and pollen. When it comes to dusting furniture, there are definitely right and wrong ways to do the job. By following these tips, your furniture can stay relatively dust-free and looking great longer.

Before you begin dusting, you must choose the right tools to get the job done. Dusters with more surface area are better at grabbing the dust particles and holding on to them. Choose ostrich feather dusters, not the cheap colorful feather dusters from the dollar store. Ostrich feathers have lots of grabbing surface area and will also flow around standing objects on tables and shelves. Other excellent dusting tools are micro fiber cloths or lamb's wool dusters. Many of these materials are made into mitts for an even faster way to dust around furniture and force the fibers into furniture grooves that are hard to reach.

Once you start dusting furniture, work on the tallest and highest objects first and work your way down. This means tall bookcases, shelves and china cabinets should be the first furniture items you dust. Work your way down the items, then move to smaller objects, such as end tables, pianos and coffee tables.

As you dust, swipe dust particles so they fall lower down on the furniture. Then as you move lower, you eventually sweep the dust to the floor. Always dust before vacuuming, so that you can clean the floor of carpet dust as well as the particles you've swept off the furniture.

When you are caring for soft cloth-covered furniture, vacuum the upholstery to get dust out of the fabric. Sofas, chairs, loveseats and even beanbags can be vacuumed with the attachment features to improve the air quality and lengthen the life of the piece of furniture.

If you are dusting lots of wood surfaces, spray a bit of furniture polish onto the microfiber cloth you are using. Never spray directly onto the furniture. The furniture polish will grab the dust particles better and leave a nice shine on the wood.