reusable duster

I'm a fan of Swiffer products.  The original Swiffer was genius: not a broom, not a mop, but somewhere in between.  I'm also a fan of the disposable aspect.  Not because I like spending money on something to throw away, but because reusing things like old fashioned mops are disgusting (old school mops? How much of that dirt/disgustingness doesn't go out with the wash water?).  Last month I made a reusable Wet Jet pad; today I made a reusable Swiffer duster that I can toss in the laundry basket with it. 

blues!  dustin' for clues...

My house is dusty.  Might have something to do with the lack of weather stripping around our doors which causes sizable gaps (which the bugs love).  Or the the various holes in the ceilings/floors/walls.  Or the dog.  Yeah, a lot of it is the dog, but it was dusty before we got her.  Most of the house has an odd ledge about the height of a chair rail that separates the cinderblocks from the interior walls or siding (it used to be a barn).  It's painted white; dust and black dog hair love it. Why not just use a cloth with an appropriate cleaner on it?  I don't have a great answer for that. But pet hair is wiley.  It sticks to what you don't want it to (coffee tables, white undershirts) and not to what you do (towels/paper towels with the appropriate cleaner on them).  I'm hoping that mimicking sweatpants/fleece shirts will confuse it. 

I've been wanting to do this for about a month, but there was one sticking point: I don't own a Swiffer duster.  Since the point in making one is to not spend money on a product I will dispose of, it seemed silly to go out and buy a starter kit just to get the handle.  I scoured Goodwills and the REstore and came up dry. I kept doing google searches trying to find an alternative, but it seems that most people have spent money on it only to regret their continued payments to the Swiffer corporation in buying replacements.  Finally, I found someone on etsy who gave me a solution.  At the end of their description, they put in a throw away phrase: "also works on rulers."  BINGO.  I have rulers.  I have many rulers.

I'm not going to go into the step-by-step because I mostly followed Sew Much Ado's tutorial.  I did change a few things: I used fleece and I loosely followed the widths.  They get cut down anyway and I was trying to even up some scrap fleece I had.  Oh, and since I was using a ruler that does not have the little tabs that make it stay put, I sewed a straight line (vs. broken) and sewed a corner at the top so it wouldn't slide down the ruler.

I was excited to clean... so my close up ended up being a close up of dust sticking to it.  yuck.