Your dust comes back because of how you remove it: 7 free fixes

1. Swap the feather duster for a cloth that holds what it touches

1. Retire the feather duster. It fluffs dust up and away from the surface instead of taking it off. 2
2. Retire the dry rag as a dusting tool. Dust is an accumulation of tiny particles, and a dry cloth moves them around the way a disturbance moves anything light. 3
3. Reach instead for a soft microfiber cloth, a microfiber duster or an electrostatic one, which holds particles by static charge. 1
4. Dampen the cloth and wring it until it stops dripping. Even the dusting spray route works through a cloth rather than on the surface. 1
5. Match the cloth to the job: a dry microfiber cloth for routine dusting, and the wrung-out one for the floors, baseboards, doors, door frames and windowsills. 4
6. Give each zone its own cloth, so kitchen grease and bathroom residue stay in the room they came from.
7. Wash the cloths in cold or warm water with other microfiber cloths, without bleach and without fabric softener, then let them air dry. 4
8. Keep fabric softener and dryer sheets away from them. Those products coat the fibres, and the charge that holds dust is what goes first. 4

2. Work in one direction: top down, a level at a time, vacuum last

1. Start at the height of the room: ceiling fans and overhead light fittings in every room, before anything below them. 2
2. Drop a level and finish that level everywhere before dropping lower: shelf tops and picture frames first, then table lamps, side tables and the objects on them. 2
3. Work across the house on each level rather than finishing one room. That route gives the dust you have just stirred time to settle onto the level below, where the next pass collects it. 2
4. Take the dry dust off a floor before any wet mop goes down. Grit left under a mop is pressed into wood and laminate, and the finish dulls over time. 5
5. Dust light fittings before you take a damp cloth to them, or wet clumps of dust drop onto whatever sits underneath. 5
6. Vacuum at the end of the pass, and take the machine over upholstery and curtains while it is out. 6
7. In a busy home, run the vacuum over the floors every few days rather than saving all of it for one weekly session. 6

3. Make the dusting the first job of the day, not the last

1. Dust and vacuum in the morning or early afternoon, and finish a couple of hours before anybody goes to bed. 7
2. Switch the heating or cooling system to fan only while you work. The fan pulls air through the filter and takes some of what you have just released with it. 7
3. Open a window once the cloth and the vacuum are away, so the room turns over. Houses with poor air circulation build dust faster than well-aired ones. 8
4. Keep anyone with a dust allergy out of the room while it is cleaned and for about two hours afterwards, because the work puts the allergen back into the air. 9
5. Hand the vacuum to somebody without the allergy where the household has that option. It is the worst of the jobs for a sufferer. 10
6. Put the filter in the heating and cooling system on a schedule: replace it when it is dirty or clogged, and about every three months as a working benchmark, or every one or two months in a home with pets. 8

4. Leave the dust at the door

1. Put a mat outside the door and a second one inside it. 1
2. Give the shoes somewhere to stop: a rack, shelf or bin at the entrance, and a household rule that they come off there. 6
3. Vacuum or shake out both mats regularly and run a stick vacuum over the entry floor, so the grit that the mats caught leaves the house instead of migrating down the hall. 1
4. Check the frames for gaps. At night, shine a torch at a door or window from inside and have somebody outside watch for the light; if the light gets through, so does fine dust. 8
5. Treat the small gaps: cracks under about 6 mm take a bead of sealant, and larger ones need draught-proofing strip, expanding foam or somebody who knows what they are doing. 8
6. Keep the windows shut when the outdoor air is poor — pollen season, smoke, a dusty street — and let the system filter do the ventilation instead. 6
7. Groom and wash the pets outdoors or at the door, and vacuum their beds. Hair and dander are part of the same mixture. 8

5. Take away the surfaces the dust lands on

1. Clear one surface at a time, and put back only what genuinely belongs there. 8
2. Move the small display objects — ornaments, candles, figurines — behind glass or into closed storage, and keep a few out at a time in rotation. Clutter creates surfaces at every height, including the awkward ones. 8
3. Keep the high flat surfaces clear: shelf tops, wardrobe tops and windowsills. An empty surface takes seconds to wipe, and the objects that used to sit on it were the reason the same wipe took minutes.
4. Keep the air moving in the room. A ceiling fan on a low setting stirs settled particles towards the filter, and its blades need the first wipe of the whole job. 8
5. Reach into the tight places with a clean natural-bristle brush, a soft paint brush or a makeup brush, then finish the surface with the cloth. 1
6. Close the loop on the front end: every new shelf, basket or open tray of small objects is another place for dust to settle, and it arrives faster than the cleaning does.

6. Wash what the dust clings to

1. Vacuum the sofa, the cushions, the upholstered chairs and the curtains weekly with the upholstery attachment. 10
2. Wash the covers, throws and lightweight curtains on the cycle their care label allows, and dry them thoroughly. 10
3. Treat heavy curtains as a decision to revisit: they are hard to wash and hold what they catch. Lightweight washable curtains or a blind are the manageable version. 10
4. For plush toys that cannot be washed, use the freezer: at least 12 hours kills the mite, and the wash is what removes what it left behind. 910
5. Steam the fabric furniture that cannot go into a machine, then vacuum it; the steam reaches the mites near the surface and the vacuum lifts what is left. 1
6. Put nothing back damp. A damp cushion or curtain is a better home for mites than a dusty one.

7. Keep the humidity under 50%

1. Measure the humidity instead of guessing at it. A small meter gives the number the rest of this fix works from. 9
2. Aim for somewhere between about 30% and 50% relative humidity indoors. 10
3. Ventilate the wet rooms first: open a window and run the extractor fan in the kitchen and the bathroom. 10
4. Dry the washing outdoors or in a vented dryer where that is possible. A load drying on a radiator puts its water into the air of the room it stands in.
5. Where the rooms still read above 50% after ventilating, a dehumidifier is the tool for the job, and the 30% floor still applies. 10
6. Keep the two figures in mind rather than one: below about 50% is where the mites stop thriving, and 30% is where dry air starts causing its own trouble. 10