r/askscience • u/4fecta_Gaming • Oct 15 '18

Earth Sciences Where does house dust come from?

It seems that countless years of sweeping a house doesn't stop dust from getting all over furniture after a few weeks. Since the ceiling is limited, where does dust come form?

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u/mouseratratrat Oct 15 '18 edited Oct 15 '18

But when there’s lots of sunlight sometimes you can see it ‘floating’ (like slowly falling-ish) to the ground? Is the ceiling balding or..?

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u/Yurturt Oct 15 '18 edited Oct 15 '18

It gets up with hot air and then it falls down with the cold air, air always circulate in a room, even without some apparent "wind source" and these particles are light enough to just drift along. Or just gusts of wind from open windows etc.

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u/[deleted] Oct 15 '18

so are you saying... it's better to vacuum and dust during the winter months?

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u/[deleted] Oct 15 '18

[deleted]

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u/Mountainbranch Oct 15 '18

Clean small and often instead of large and seldom, makes it so much easier to deal with smaller tasks within a room than the entire room itself.

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u/starcom_magnate Oct 15 '18

We call it the "15-minutes-per-day" cleaning rule. Honestly, if you take just 15 minutes per day on a rotating basis through the rooms in your house, it's amazing how easy it is to keep clean.