Fight Hard-To-Reach Dust With The Inexpensive Painting Tool You Didn't Know You Needed

Cleaning the home and eradicating dust from every nook and cranny is a monumental task. While a vacuum cleaner will help you get rid of most of the accumulated dust, it often fails at cleaning tight spaces. Think of your door trims, the minuscule space beneath immovable furniture like wardrobe and bed frames, and baseboard moldings. It's challenging for cleaning tools to reach such spaces, and even a washed microfiber cloth will fail to eliminate all the gunk, dust, and grime that will happily settle in for the long haul. However, if you'd like to fight the hard-to-reach dust and banish it from your home, all you need is a tack cloth.

Tack cloths are slightly sticky wiping rags that mimic a cheesecloth coated with beeswax or petroleum-based wax. These anti-static cloths are specifically designed to remove dust, dirt, and lint sticking to a surface. While these rags are primarily used to clean surfaces before a paint job, they can also remove dust from hard-to-reach places. Better yet, this is an inexpensive solution. For instance, you can purchase a pack of two tack cloths from Trimaco for under $4 at Lowe's. However, you should avoid using this cloth on materials like glass, metal, ceramic, and leather, as it could ruin them.

To get this inexpensive painting tool to latch onto the accumulated dust and grime in nooks and crannies of your home, start by cleaning with a vacuum cleaner or damp microfiber cloth to get rid of as much of the dirt as possible. Then, take a sharp utility knife to cut the tack rag into smaller sections. While you can use scissors to get the job done, they might get jammed because of the sticky nature of the cloth.

Once you've got the small squares, gently wipe the surface requiring cleaning to allow the gunk to stick to the rag. Try not to press down too hard, as the cloth could leave behind a sticky residue that you'll have to clean. If this happened, since you can't easily wipe the hard-to-reach places, you'd be back to square one. But don't worry if you get some of the stickiness on your fingers, as you can easily remove it with soap and water. The only downside to this inexpensive painting tool is that tack cloths aren't reusable, so you'll have to keep tossing them in the trash can as soon as they get too dirty. However, if you're left with some extra cloth, place it in a sealed bag or container to use later.