The One Thing Everyone Forgets To Clean In Their Home

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It can sometimes feel like you have a never-ending list of tasks to complete on cleaning day. You may have a deep cleaning checklist to make every room in your home sparkle, but if you're forgetting to clean your lampshades, is your house really clean? Seriously, you've probably tried vacuuming them, dusting them, or even just shaking them off outside. But those things hold on to dust and dirt like a 2-year-old with their blankie. There are many cleaning hacks to keep your home tidy, but this tip to keep your lampshades dust-free uses an item you most likely have hiding in your junk drawer right now — a lint roller.

Lampshades tend to be one item in the house that gets forgotten about when it comes to regular cleaning chores. And that is a huge mistake, especially if you have pets. The shades tend to be magnets for dust, hair, and all kinds of airborne fuzz. Usually, you don't notice until you turn the light on and a dust bunny happens to fall on your hand. Using a regular duster on them just seems to spread the hair and dust around all over the place. And the magnetic dusters don't seem to get all of the debris off your shades. That's why lint rollers are a better option — the sticky surface tends to grab dust and lock it in place so that it doesn't get transplanted to another location on the lampshade, side table, or floor.

The first thing you will need to do is choose your cleaning weapon. There are two main options when it comes to lint rollers: the sticky tape kind that has tear-off sheets or the rubber-like, washable kind like the Sticky Lint Roller by NUOBUT. They both have their advantages and are equally effective. It really comes down to cost-effectiveness. The tape-like lint roller will, at some point, need to be replaced, whereas the sticky, rubber kind is reusable.

You can choose to remove your lampshade from its base or leave it on — it's totally up to you. Removing it might be a little easier because you can turn it in various ways to reach all parts of the shade. If the shade seems delicate, test the roller on a hidden part to make sure it doesn't damage the material.

Always start from the top of the shade and work your way down. Rotate around the shade until you have come back to where you started, and roll the lint roller around the top and bottom of the shade as well. You may need to tear off a sheet and use a fresh one if the disposable lint roller stops picking up lint. A lot of people make the mistake of not adding dusting to their weekly cleaning list. To avoid this same mistake, you should absolutely add dusting your lampshades to your weekly cleaning tasks so that it's not such a huge chore.