Well, I dust when I can visibly see dust and it starts bothering me and not a minute before! I'd say once a month for me.

I have a new house with white carpet. I don't like carpet, so as soon as the weather warms up and I can have the house opened up all day, out the carpet goes. I will be replacing it with bamboo flooring, which, in my opinion, is much easier to clean.

I have two dogs and a cat, so I know there will be hair, but I bamboo floors in my house in Florida and liked it for the most part. It is not cold, but then it didn't get that cold in Florida. I have not had hardwood or vinyl here in Missouri, so can't attest to how cold it is. I just know, for the dirt and germs it harbors, I'm opting for hard floors that I can adequately clean.

I don't like uncarpeted flooring because... it means I have to sweep up dust all the time. Funny, how we all see it differently!

I put my large plants in the shower, small ones in the sink. I have several mother in law tongue plants which are in the cactus/sedum family and I wipe them down because they don't do well setting in wet soil.

kayjones - white carpet! At one time that was my sister's dream. And then kids came. lol

I have vinyl in my kitchen and bathrooms. It seems cold to me. Naturally it would be colder than carpeted flooring, but I'm wondering if my whole house would feel colder. I'm not in Florida. :)

rob - therein lies my problem! I'm thinking that I won't mind swiffing a couple of times a week. But I have dogs and cats. Maybe I will have to swiff the whole house daily?

I'm just sick of the dust. When the sun is shining just right through the windows, sometimes I can see dust particles floating in the air.

I have pale tan carpet. LOVE it! It doesn't show dust.

I dust "the house" once a week. Vacuum the carpet once a month or run the static sweeper around. It always looks clean.

I have a fairly powerful box fan. When the weather is halfway decent I open the front door, point the fan so it is blowing towards the outdoors, and open another window at the back of the house or in the kitchen. The resulting breeze escorts the dust particles in the air outdoors.
The new air coming in is not dusty.

This post was edited by lucille on Tue, Dec 30, 14 at 15:49

When my cleaning lady comes! I am extremely allergic to dust in the air so I don't like it disturbed too often. I get out when she is dusting and I only allow wet dusting, no feather dusters that just released it into the air to settle on something else. I want it wiped clean and contained. The ceiling fans also are wet dusted or better yet vacuumed. I prefer every thing be vacuumed prior to any dusting to lessen the amount released in the air. If I have to be in the house I am never in the room being cleaned and during the dust part I have a mask to wear. It can literally send me to the hospital which is no fun. I have learned how to deal with it. It takes time to get a new house cleaner to understand the importance of the process.
My last girl that was with me for many years would actually take my little bedroom fans out into the atrium on nice days and take them apart and clean them squeaky clean. She would completely clean my bedroom and the last thing she did was changed my bedding and fix the bed so no dust could get on it. She had seen me having an asthma attack from dusting the ceiling fan blades wrong, she thought she had killed me lol.

I hate carpet, I have it in the den where we are most of the time and in the bedrooms and hall. I would prefer not to have any, but as I get older and have problems with walking at all and fall a lot, I have decided it is probably best to have it in those areas. But I want to change it to the extremely low pile type, similar to industrial carpet. That's what I had in my Oklahoma house and it was so much better than regular carpet. No pad, just the carpet applied to the concrete floor. It is harder to fall on but better than falling on tile or wood.

I have tile in the majority of this house and it's cold to walk on in the winter. I had tile all over my Dallas house and it was never as cold as this tile is here. I don't know why, I know it was a much better grade of tile. Every time I fall on this tile floor I am scared to death I have broken something. I hate the kitchen tile it's much too slick for a kitchen.

I would like to have the underlying heat layer for the future tile we have installed. Kitchen and bathrooms definitely need replacement.

I really like the new wood laminate flooring we put in the formal living room and dining room. It has some cushioning layer to it so it doesn't feel as hard as others. We never use those rooms and it's incredibly easy to clean and stay clean. I was really against it at first but very happy with it. No one believes me when I tell them it's not solid wood. It is very unique.

raven, My neurologist told us that 1,000 milligrams of vitamin B12 is very helpful in keeping our balance. It helps me to avoid falling. There is no danger in taking it, because what your body doesn't use, it will eliminate.

I would like to clean often, but we have a new kitten and she always wants to
"help" me by riding the broom, dust mop, or vacuum. No dust clothe or paper
towel is safe in my hands unless it's cleaning very tall furniture. I'm thinking of getting a roomba, although she might consider that a toy, unless it makes a scarey noise. The house stays dirty until she is confined in "jail".

House plants get knocked down regularly. Cleaning up the loose soil certainly makes one notice if the leaves need cleaning on what remains of the plant.

I do take the liquid vitamin B12 by recommendation from my doctor, because the metformin I take for diabetes is known to strip you of it, so he thinks the liquid is a bit better. I also have to get the shots on occasion.
So maybe it will help my balance also. Good to know.

I have hardwood floors except in the kitchen and bathroom, where I have tile.

Yes, I think it feels colder.

Yes, I have a rug in front of the sink, one in the bathroom, one in front of the bed, and often put a heat pad on the floor under the dining room table for dinner. :)

I vacuum once a week, and chase a bona mop around the house once or twice a week.

No, I don't have pets. I have allergies that keep me from it... besides the fact I am gone a lot and they would be home alone or in a kennel a lot.

Kay, I think, you will like the no carpet house.

Moni

In my world carpeting is The Enemy ! I have three little rabbits. Need I say more? Its not dropping a poop here and there, it's the digging ! I always have jugs of peroxide to pour on peep spots. My dream house has floors that look like marble but are some kind of vinyl with some give to it, and some texture for traction.

I like Kayjones' answer:

Well, I dust when I can visibly see dust and it starts bothering me and not a minute before!

For myself, I can add "not often enough." I live in a very old house on a dirt road, and dust appears quickly.

Our previous apartment was formerly owned by an elderley landlady. When she died, the daughter fixed her apartment up for us......and we looked after the building.

She removed all of the carpeting and put a dark brown/barnboard style laminate flooring in the main areas. The bedrooms were left in their original oak hardwood state. They didn't get replaced with the new laminate.

This was my first experience with hardwood like flooring. I hated it!!!
Our footprints showed anytime I didn't have my slippers on, and the dust showed greatly. Dustbunnies all at the edges. Kitty litter showing on it.

I was so glad to see the carpeting in the livingroom in our apartment here!!! Much easier to keep clean. The bedrooms are still the original hardwood, but I just have an area rug in them, and that works for us.

I wear slippers all the time, and I love the warmth of carpet. Bare floors are definitely colder......and noisier. With the laminate, it seemed that we could hear our neighbour who lived below us much more.

Moni, I know I will love it - when I lived in Florida I didn't have one speck of carpet in my house and it was wonderful!

I agree with Alisande that the amount of dust our houses collect probably depends on where we live. A friend mentioned that living 1/4-1/2 mile from a main road means the particulates rise up and over to land in our area, often. I really can't keep up with the dusting and have learned to live with it for a few weeks before it gets cleaned up. Bending is so hard on my back.