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One of the most unexpected side effects of working from home from a home office has been the amount of cleaning. Whilst a lot of us tend to get a little bit lazy when it comes to household chores as we enter the world of remote work, working from a home office means dust and other particulates built up a lot faster than before. So how exactly can you remove dust from a home office?
To remove dust from a home office, declutter your office space, vacuum your floor, curtains and blinds regularly, wipe down your surfaces every day and set a schedule to clean your office frequently. Consider investing in an air purifier or dust remover for best results.
So which of these tips work best? And what are some ideas that you can implement today to automatically remove the amount of dust from your home office? Keep reading to find out more.
(Now it’s worth mentioning that this post has a lot of information and so if you’re curious about the best equipment needed to work remotely simply go to my resource page here)
Invest in an air filter
Whilst Ross Geller definitely put air purifiers back a few years, air filters can be a fantastic way to avoid an excessive build-up of dust particles from being left in your home office as they work.
Air purifiers work by putting the exciting air through a series of fans and filters, removing particles that can be hard to spot from the naked eye.
This can include excess unseen dust that can be hiding in unwanted areas such as on top of the lightbulbs in your room.
Now whilst some air purifiers can definitely be distracting due to the loud noises, my suggestion (and recommendation) would be the Levoit air purifier which you can grab on Amazon.
Invest in a new vacuum cleaner
So unless you live like a 14-year-old boy (and let’s face it who doesn’t want to live like this) it’s likely you vacuum your home office regularly.
Sadly, vacuums have been known to be notoriously fragile with some even only lasting a few months before needing a new one.
In my opinion, you should look to replace your vacuum cleaner every 3-5 years and you might find that despite you vacuuming your office, you still find excess dust.
If this is the case, it’s time to invest in a new vacuum.
My recommendation has to be the Dyson Hoover Max (link takes you to Amazon) which I’ve found ( as well as several studies) to be the best option which not only lasts the longest but also comes with enough accessories to get the dust out of even the tightest corners.
Declutter your office space
A lot of us started working from home at the start of 2020 as a way to mitigate the virus that shall not be named.
As such it’s likely that your home office spaces have gone from looking organized and stylish to appearing like you have made some questionable life choices.
If this is the case for yourself, the best thing to do would be to declutter your office space.
Make a list of all the items you use on a day to day bases such as your phone, laptop, office desk and chair) and keep them nearby.
Everything else can be tucked away in storage.
Now everyone’s storage space will be different depending on your needs so check out some of the options I recommended on my recommended gear page here.
Reduce the amount of paper you use
Did you know that an average family throws away 6.3 million tonnes of paper every year?
Paper pollution is a real problem. Luckily one of the easiest ways to reduce your pollution but also reduce the amount of dust in your room is to use less paper.
Old newspaper and files degrade over time and as the paper breaks down, more dust begins to accumulate,
As such, consider using things like virtual sticky notes on your laptop or productivity apps as a way to take notes instead of paper which is likely adding to the problem in your room.
Keep your windows closed
This one sounds like I’m making it up, right?
Afterall having a window open means that the dust in your room will be able to escape, right?
Airborne pollutants like mould, pollen and spores will actually enter your room which can further add to build-ups of dust.
Anyone who has tried to clean out mould from their home office before knows exactly how frustrating it can so definitely try to keep your windows closed… especially if you live near a park or a busy road.
Clean your office regularly one per week
Let’s face it, working from home can make us a little bit lazy.
Whether it’s taking fewer showers or wearing our PJ’s or comfy clothes to work every day one of the major benefits of remote working is that we get to do things at our pace.
That being said it’s super easy for basic chores like cleaning your home office to go out the window,
I would set a weekly schedule to have a good clean in your office, for me this included the following:
- Vacuuming the floor
- Wiping all the surfaces down
- Dusting off items
- Moving items back where they belong
Doing these four things don’t take too much time and in the space of 15 minutes per week will keep your office looking clean and new.
Have a deep clean in your office every month
Whilst cleaning your home office once per week is a good start, to really get rid of excess dust from your home office space, one of the best things you can do is do a full deep clean in your office once per month.
A lot of the time moving heavy items like storage units or our desks can be cumbersome however a lot of dust can get built up underneath them.
Deep cleaning stops this from building up and doing this one a month as opposed to every week means that you won’t get burned out cleaning.
A good deep clean then costs of the following:
- Moving your furniture out of the office if possible
- Vacuuming your floor
- Using carpet cleaner
- Wiping down or vacuuming the skirting boards
- Busting down your furniture and then wiping them down
- Wiping down your windows and there frames
- Cleaning any curtains/blinds you have
In total this should take an hour but will leave your office in perfect condition and dust-free for a few weeks.
Avoid eating in your home office
One of the things us remote workers are definitely guilty of is packing on the pounds as we work from home.
It’s easy for the panty to become our best friends as our work lives and personal lives merge and sooner or later you might find yourself eating in your home office.
Doing so can lead to food waste or crumbs building up in your office which can be tough to clean or even worse… attract mice.
The best thing to do then if you find yourself doing this is to meal prep your food in advance.
Not only will you find you have a cleaner office, but your waistline won’t be as bad as it is likely you will be prepping healthier homemade food.
Take your shoes off when you work in your office
Whilst there are some arguments for wearing shoes when you are in the home office (feeling professional, lack of foot pain) the truth is that studies have found that there are over 400,000 different types of bacteria on the bottom of the average shoe.
Pair this up with the amount of dirt and gunk that people bring from outside, it’s easy to see how fast wearing shoes in your home office can add dirt, debris and dust into your office environment.
Instead, if you do decide to wear shoes in your home office, ensure they are comfortable and are shoes that you only wear whilst inside your house.
Shower every day
The human body sheds 30,000 to 40,000 skin cells per day.
Whilst these are tiny in size, they add up over time and a lot of the dust you see around you is made up of dead skin cells.
Whilst a lot of these skin flakes ( gross sounding I know) flake off while you sit down showering every day can help remove them in the shower, stopping you from having an excessive buildup on your home office.
This is also good for those of us who work from home whose hygiene has fallen by the wayside a bit.
Wipe your surfaces down once per day
Monthly and weekly cleaning is super effective but if i were to recommend you do one thing per day to keep your office clean it would be to wipe down your surfaces.
A lot of us will have laptops, desks and storage units in our office, all of which sadly are dust magnets.
The best thing to do then is to come up with a prevention strategy which simply means wiping down your surfaces once per day.
This takes no longer than 5 minutes and should avoid grime on what you use most frequently.
Use a duster
Part of the reason why so many of s have so much dust built up in our home office is that we don’t have the right materials to clean them with.,
It might seem a little old fashioned but a good old feather duster is one of the best items to help wipe off the dirt from hard to reach surfaces.
My recommendation would have to be the QIDEBK duster which you can be bent to any position for especially difficult hard to reach places. You can grab it here on Amazon.
Have a schedule to clean your office
For most of us, cleaning and dusting our office down isn’t the problem, It’s actually fitting into our schedule.
Working from home keeps us productive too much sometimes to the point where we overwork and don’t get a lot else done.
One of the simplest things you can do then makes cleaning your home office a part of your day.
For me, I like to add 5 minutes at the end of the day to wipe down my surfaces, see this as the last thing on your workday to do before you leave.
After all, you wouldn’t leave your desk a mess at a traditional office so why do the same at your home office?
Keep your pets outside your office
Working from home with pets can be incredibly difficult especially if you are new to working remotely.
If you do keep them in your home office you’ll find that excess fur, damage and even poop can build up in your office space.
Having a designated space for your pets to relax whilst you’re busy at work ( where they have adequate food and water) will be the best option for you to avoid any dust and dirt brought in by your pets into your home office.
Use a doormat
So if you’re adamant that you need to wear your shoes in your home office space I would definitely recommend having a doormat outside your house.
Whilst it’s not ideal, this will at least remove some of the dirt, dust and bacteria that would have built up on your shoes as you are out and about.
You can pick these up pretty much from any general home store but my recommendation would be the Gorilla grip doormat which you can grab on Amazon here.
Get rid of your carpet
Carpets whilst looking pretty in a lot of home offices can add quite significantly to the dust problems in a lot of home offices.
This is because whilst vacuuming and cleaning do a good job of getting rid of as much dust as possible removing dust all together from your carpet will be almost impossible due to the fibres they are typically made out of.
Whilst this will be fine for most of us, if you are asthmatic or have other problems with excess dust it might be time to remove the carpet from your home office altogether and invest in things like laminate flooring or a liner in your home office to reduce the amount of dust.
Use a damp mop and microfibre cloth
If you do decide to go down the route of using laminate flooring or a liner as the flooring in your home office, I would recommend wiping everything down with a damp mop.
This will pick up excess dust a lot easier then a vacuum or brush would with wet dust being a lot easier to clean then dry dust.
I’d also recommend investing in a microfibre cloth like this one here which is perfect for wiping down surfaces if again you have issues like asthma where normal wiping down of your office items can cause significant problems for you.
Avoid static electricity
A lot of static electricity can be a magnet for building up dust around your house.
This is one of the reasons why in rooms like offices where we typically have a lot of electric equipment that static electricity tends to build up.
The best way to avoid this is by investing in a humidifier either for your house or for your office specifically – you’re going to want to aim for humidity levels around 4% to 50% to avoid any excess static and you’ll find that the air is a lot easier to breathe in too.
Clean your skirting boards
So one of the largest ways in which dirt and sadism accumulated in a home office that a lot of us tend to forget about is our skirting boards.
Take a look now at your skirting board and you might realise that you’ve neglected them and that they are in need of surprise cleaning.
The good news is that while they can be a little hard to reach, they are super easy to clean.
Simply remove the top nozzle from your vacuum cleaner and use the tube to suck up all the dust and this dust will be busted in no time.
Don’t forget to dust your upholstery and blinds
Windows too are amongst some of the most commonly neglected areas in a home office when it comes to dusting.
Curtains, netting and blinds need to be treated in exactly the same way as you would your carpet and so dusting them or vacuuming them on a regular basis is going to be crucial of you want to avoid excess dust buildup in your home office.
Store away the items you don’t use every day
Trust me when I say this tip saved me so much clutter and dust!
A lot of us working from home only use a set number of items every day, usually in some variation of a laptop, desk, chair and a notepad to do our work.
As such, leaving the items you only use once in a while like a tripod out in your home office is just taking up excess space and adding to dust being attracted to your workspace.
The best thing I like to do then makes a list of all the items in my home office and categorize them in three sections:
- Items that I use every day
- Items that I use every month
- Items that I rarely use
Items that you don’t use as frequently can be stored away for when you need them. For a full look at what I recommend for storage, you can check out my recommended gear page here.
Empty your vacuum in a different room
Defiantly a rookie mistake that I have made more times than I care to admit.
So you’ve done a fantastic job of cleaning your home office, just finished up the vacuum, only to empty it into your home office trash can and then your dust ends up all over the floor.
This can be easily avoided, simply ensure that once you’re done vacuuming, you empty the airbag or dirt box into the trash away from your home office.
Wipe down your plants
A lot of us have plants in our home offices as a fantastic way of being close to nature without having to actually go outside.
That being said, plants, like electronics, are notorious for getting dusty, especially if you don’t maintain them.
The best thing to do then is at the end of the day as you wipe down your other items to give a quick wipe down of your plants – just ensure to be gentle as some plants can be a little bit thicker than others.
Wipe down your windows
As windows are clear, a lot of us think that they don’t need wiping down, after all, you should be able to see the dust that has built up on the right?
The trough is dust is super hard to spat and is notorious for getting into hard to reach spots such as in between your window and the frame or the corners of your window sill.
Ensure you wipe down your windows frequently either with a spray and a microfiber cloth or a sponge to ensure you’re not missing out on one of the hardest to reach spots.
Move your office to a bigger room
Finally, and most controversially you could consider moving your home office to a bigger room.
If you have followed all of the tips and are still finding that you have too much dust build up in your room the most likely explanation is that your office space is too small or too cluttered for you to be able to work from effectively.
Consider looking to switching out your home office to larger room or even a shared workspace if the excess dust is too much for you to deal with.
Finally, a lot of people reading my blog want to know what products I recommend for a home office/remote working. You can find out my recommendations here and learn how I make money whilst working remotely on the side here.
The content on this on this site has been written by Fehed Nicass who has over a decades worth of experience in sales and has worked remotely for the past 2 years.
