Wash and Recycle a Swiffer Duster

The Ask a House Cleaner Show and Podcast with Angela Brown

House cleaners ask me if they can wash and recycle a Swiffer Duster. Some have even told me how they do it. Homeowners have also shared how they feel about cleaners re-using disposable dusters in their homes.

Listen: Wash and Recycle a Swiffer Duster

Watch: Wash and Recycle a Swiffer Duster

Hey there, I’m Angela Brown, and this is Ask a House Cleaner. This is a show where you get to ask a house cleaning question, and I get to help you find an answer. You can find this and 400 other answered questions in this series on our YouTube channel.

Can You Wash and Recycle a Disposable Swiffer

Can you wash and recycle a disposable Swiffer duster head? That’s a great question.

This is a used Swiffer duster. And if you take a close look, you’ll see that it’s been used to touch every surface inside someone’s home. How gross is that? It has dust, it has dog hair, and it has dead bugs and dust mites trapped inside this Swiffer duster head.

So the question is, can you take the head off, throw this inside your washing machine, rewash it and use it again?

You Can, But It’s Not Recommended

The answer is, technically yes, and I do not recommend it. Okay. I’m going to stop for a second and say that this show is not sponsored by Swiffer duster. I wish it were because maybe they would give me a discount to pass on to you.

I don’t have any discounts or anything. This is just from one professional house cleaner to another. All right. So this is a brand spanking new Swiffer duster, never used on anything. Can you tell the difference? The answer is yes, you can. And you can tell a mile away, right? So can homeowners.

The Swiffer duster company released Swiffer back in 1999. It’s owned by Procter & Gamble. In the last four months of the year, they did $100 million in sales. What that means is that every homeowner understands and knows Swiffer. The Swiffer duster itself was not released until 2003.

Swiffers are 18 Years Old

And so at the making of this video today, this Swiffer duster is 18 years old. It’s older than some of your children. I know. Really amazing, right? The point I’m trying to make is, when you show up with a used Swiffer duster head to a customer, a customer can tell, okay? Now, there are house cleaners that have lost their jobs because they recycled Swiffer duster heads.

And they thought they were trying to save a little bit of money but what that translated into, and I spoke to the customers themselves, what that translated into was my company that I’m paying a premium service fee for coming to my house and they’re cutting corners with the equipment that they brought to my house.

What other corners are they cutting at my house? Right? And the house cleaning companies lost the job as a result of it.

Swiffer Duster Heads Can Get Expensive

Now, the Swiffer duster heads, as I said, they’re expensive. They come in a box of 11 and they retail for about $12. And I will leave links in the show notes where you can get them. Again, I don’t have any discounts or savings or anything. You can buy them in lots of places, but they are not cheap.

The homeowners, however, because they’re willing to spend $200 or $300 on a house cleaning, are willing to pay an extra dollar or two for equipment that has not been used in someone else’s home. The scare is this, okay? We’re in an era right now of cross-contamination.

And so, if you have a Swiffer duster that has touched every surface inside someone else’s home, what on earth would you think is okay to bring it to another person’s home and touch every surface inside their home. Right?

Washing Duster Heads Makes Them Look Ratty

So the homeowners are really scared. Even if you wash it and it’s cleaner, the homeowner doesn’t know that you washed it. It looks used and ratty when you show up. And so as a result of that, because it never goes back to looking brand new again, it never does.

What happens is, they automatically think, “Oh no, this is already contamination they’re bringing into my home.” And it makes homeowners just furious. So please don’t do that. It’s bad for your company brand. It makes your company look cheap. Please just don’t do it.

We would not think, we would not think of recycling the latex gloves that we used in someone else’s home. We would not think of reusing the shoe covers that we wore in someone else’s home. And we would not think of reusing our face mask, which was a disposable face mask, that we used in someone else’s home.

You Have to Throw Disposable Equipment Away

We throw that stuff away. And we wash our face masks that are washable between every single job with our clothes, right? We don’t cross-contaminate from home to home. And there’s no difference when it comes to the Swiffer duster.

So there are homeowners that say, “Well, can I use it in my own home? Can I recycle it?” You can. And again, I don’t recommend it. The Swiffer duster has a trap and locks technology. And what that means is when you dust something, it grabs it, right? It grabs it and it holds it here. So if you shake it, there’s nothing that comes out. It’s not like a feather duster where all the dust comes back out onto the floor. It traps and holds it.

It’s designed to at the end of a job, you pull the lid off, right? This is the lid. You pull the lid off and chuck it in the trash and then you dispose of it properly with your personal protective equipment. And so, that way there is no cross-contamination from job to job.

There are Washable Duster Heads

If you decide that you need a replaceable, washable, duster head, I will leave links in the show notes to those as well. They sell some that are microfiber, and I don’t prefer them because it’s a different fabric. It’s heavier. And with the Swiffer duster, you can dust a lot of fragile items by just tapping it and getting in there.

With the microfiber duster, it’s denser, and sometimes it will catch on the edge of something and it’s easier to rip or shred things that are fragile.

Resources

Microfiber Washable Swiffer Heads – https://amzn.to/2KXNsuo

Swiffer Duster Refills – https://amzn.to/3hha84T

Swiffer Duster with Extender – https://amzn.to/3nN4NVh

Swiffer Duster with Handle Shown in Video – https://amzn.to/3hhJ2dM

Swiffer Duster Super Extender for Baseboards & Ceiling Fans https://amzn.to/3mMOxlJ

HousecallPro Service Software – https://housecallpro.com/Angela

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