How To Keep House Dust-free In Chennai?

Babyhope86 · Mar 15, 2017

Hi ILites,

I am from Chennai and residing in a center place of the city. And married for the past 3yrs. Ours is a duplex-type house and we don't have a servant maid.
My in-laws are not very strict towards me in maintaining the house clean as they are aged and can't involve in much cleaning. But to avoid their comments I do sweep and mop the entire house on weekends as far as I can. Other than that small cleaning works my mother in-law does in between that too only in the ground floor.
As I have seen many instances of houses in the US/UK/Australia/ other foreign countries looking very clean and dust-free.
I have inferred it from the pictures that my cousins/friends/co-sister (australia) who reside in those places send or post on social media. My doubt is how can they maintain the house tidy and neat? is there nil pollution in those places?

Please give your suggestions how to keep our house dust-free, that too in a pollution prone chennai city?

thanks!

AkilaMani · Mar 20, 2017

Hi Babyhopes86,

Pics can be deceiving... that too the ones posted on social media. No one wants to post a pic of their dusty table. That said, it is possible to keep a clean (relatively) dust free house. I am from Chennai and I live in Singapore. So I understand things getting dusty around the house. SG is one of the cleanest countries, but of course there is dust... even in high storied apartments.

My way of keeping things relatively dusty free is having a schedule for dusting and cleaning. I have done this both back in chennai and here and it works well. I alternate dry dusting and wet dusting for alternate weeks. If I do not have time for dusting during the scheduled weekday, then I do it on the day I mop. So just as I sweep, I carry a wet cloth with me and wipe all surfaces including doors, switchboards etc. It takes hardly 10 mins extra.

Also it helps a lot if the house is picked up / tidied before starting the sweeping. Otherwise we get side tracked every time trying to put back things. So usually, I go around first and pick up the rooms and then start cleaning.

Hope this is of some use to you. Take care.

anika987 · Mar 20, 2017

Well In USA,lesser pollution and probably because of that dust dosent settle easily.We hire maids who are mostly reliable and does hard work.They come once or twice a month and clean the house including windows.

Secondly,in many cases hubby and wife pitch in together to clean the house.Plus for some reason,maybe because of the weather people do not tire easily.

No,pics are not deceiving Atleast when it comes to many(not all)clean homes here.Even I have wondered despite the above ,how people maintain such a a beautiful home.

I asked my neighbor who has a home which looks like a picture out from a home magazine.She said she does "on the go cleaning".Anything we spot,we should pick it up right away

Also,have to admit seems like there is more time in a day in USA coz of maybe privacy and doing things in our own pace maybe.