How To Keep Your Office Dust-Free

Dust is everywhere! Dust is the pesky common thread that connects nearly every building. While it may seem benign, and mostly just an annoyance to look at, dust often carries some pretty nasty stuff, that left around too long, is a potential health risk.

Dust is a cocktail of dead skin, dead bugs, hair, bacteria, and allergens. None of those parts is anything you'd voluntarily breathe in, or want to have sitting on your shelf right next to you at eye level. Mitigating dust is vital in protecting indoor air quality and keeping facilities safe throughout flu and allergy seasons. In this post, we'll show you where dust is most commonly found, and how you can get rid of it and keep your office, mostly, dust-free.

Where the Dust Settles

Dust can settle just about anywhere, but there are a few areas, or types of areas, that most commonly collect visibly large amounts of dust. Here are the most common areas dust settles in your facility. 

1) Vents

It is both logical and unfortunate that the most common area for dust buildup would be the vents to your HVAC systems. This is the most vital dust to remove, as the dust here is both blocking airflows in your facility and can be pushing dust through your indoor air. 

2)Desks, Shelves, and more

Simply put, any horizontal surface that does not regularly get touched or have objects moved across it. The most common areas under this category would be shelves, window ledges, unused desks, and computer monitors. 

3) Baseboards and Carpeting

Dust that is pushed out of your ventilation system will stick to the vents and horizontal surfaces in your office first, but dust that doesn't land there goes straight to your floor. This doesn't have much effect on hard surface floors as dust that lands there get swept up easily. It's much trickier and more harmful when dust falls onto carpeting. 

5 tricks to keep your office dust-free

1) Dusting

Frequent dusting is both the most obvious and most effective method we can offer to keep your office dust-free. Physically removing dust on a weekly, or more frequently if desired, basis will drastically reduce built-up dust throughout your facility. When cleaning our client's facilities we use extendable dusters that extend up to 6 feet which allows us to both high and low dust in most buildings. We've found success using backpack vacuums with long extendable attachments to reach higher ceilings that don't get dusted frequently. 

1a) Increasing Your dusting frequency

If lightly dusting your facility once a week isn't getting the job done, it's not that your cleaner is failing you, it means you need to allocate more resources to eliminating dust in your facility. Typically, janitorial services contracts call for dusting to be done weekly or monthly. This frequency might not be often enough for your facility, meaning you and your cleaners will have to go back to the drawing board with your cleaning company to get the frequency that is just right for your facility. 

2) Vacuuming

Vacuuming carpets and using vacuum extensions is a great way to remove dust from carpeting and baseboards. Vacuuming dust out of carpets does a couple of very good things for your office. First, removing dust from your carpets helps to protect the longevity and vibrancy of your carpeting. Dust acts as an abrasive in your carpets that are activated by foot traffic. Second, dust that resides in carpeting can get kicked back up into the air negatively affecting your building's indoor air quality. 

3) Check Your HVAC System

If your workplace is being overrun by dust there may be something wrong with your HVAC systems. Getting this checked is as simple as having an HVAC professional inspect your systems and ensure everything is working. 

4) Post-Construction Cleanup

If your workplace has recently undergone renovations, there is sure to be a lot of excess dust kicking around through the air in your building. Having your construction crew, or a commercial cleaning company like Summit Building Services clean up during and after construction can help you mitigate the negative effects of your most recent renovations. 

5) Limit office pets

Does your office allow pets? If so, this could be the biggest source of dust in your building. Dogs, cats, and other furry friends shed fur everywhere they go. That fur becomes the #1 largest source of dust creation. While we love our fur babies, they can wreak havoc on our workspaces and indoor air quality. 

Summit Wants To Help!

We know that dust can be a nuisance, it's something we have to deal with every day. If dusting is something that you decide is something you want to get under control, we can work with you to make sure that it's getting taken care of. We create our janitorial plans for your facility with your needs and best interests in mind throughout the process. All you need to do to get started toward a healthier, dust-free facility is to schedule a building walkthrough. From there we'll put together your janitorial services plan and send you a quote. The process goes completely at your pace, so you never have to feel rushed into a decision.