Cleaning an electrostatic duster-on-a-pole

When ever I finish using my electrostatic duster-on-a-pole I always take it outside and remove the dust by shaking and hitting it against the verandah railing. I know it gets rid of the collected dust because I can see it flying into the air.

But of late my lovely silver duster has started looking grey. It was time to give the duster-on-a-pole a wash. As it is electrostatic I had to be sure the electrostatic attribute didn’t get ruined. This meant washing with a light product and not using overly hot water.

Because the duster is on a pole it makes it difficult to fit in a laundry tub. So the only way I could ensure all the duster got washed was to half fill the tub with water so at least the head of the duster would be submerged and then splash handfuls of water over the other end of the fibres.

The water was tepid, in other words, equal parts of hot and cold. I used soap flakes, but only a rounded teaspoon. I did froth the flakes and when I placed the duster in the water agitated the fibres with my hand generating a lather. I managed to lather up the whole of the duster and noticed the dirt that the froth was removing. When I placed the duster in the water to rinse out the soap I was quite pleased with the dirty colour of the water. The agitation of the fibres was working.

It required several handfuls of water over the handle end of the duster to remove most of the froth, but it still needed a good rinse. I emptied out the water in the tub and instead of replacing it, turned on the taps and held the duster under the running water. Now I do have a mixer of the hot and cold taps in my laundry, but if I hadn’t I would have found a large jug and filled that with tepid water and poured it over the duster several times until I was sure all the soap residue had been rinsed away.

The next step is the important one. Once the duster was clean it had to be dried. Firstly I held the duster by the pole between both hands and rubbed the hands backwards and forwards making the duster spin. As it spun water sprayed out of the fibres making them stand up and out and removed the excess water.

I did dry the duster outside. I was able to hang the pole from the metal wire of the washing line, allowing the duster to dry in the sun.

When the duster was dry I did a further spin between the hands just to get the air and the fibres into position. Once that was done the electrostatic duster-on-a-pole was ready to be used again.