I dropped $200 on a fancy air purifier that does nothing for my dust problem

So I got one of those fancy HEPA air purifiers about 3 months ago because I was tired of dust gathering on my nightstand every few days. I spent like $200 on it, one of the bigger name brands. Set it up in my bedroom, ran it on high for weeks straight. But I swear the dust on my furniture looks exactly the same amount as before. I changed the filter after a month like they said and it was barely dirty. I think my apartment just has way more dust coming in through the window gaps and the baseboards than the purifier can keep up with. Maybe I should have bought one of those foam seal strips for the windows instead. Has anyone else bought a purifier and felt like it was a waste for regular dust?

2 comments

2 Comments

patking28d ago

The seal strips for your windows are what you need. I lived in an old apartment building for 5 years with gaps around the windows you could see daylight through. Bought a $40 kit of foam weatherstripping and did all the windows and the bottom of the front door. Dust cut down by probably 60 or 70 percent in the first week. Those purifiers just recirculate the same air over and over, they can't keep up when new dust is constantly getting pulled in from outside. Check your baseboards too, sometimes there's a gap between the floor and the wall where dust comes up from the crawlspace. A tube of caulk and an afternoon is way cheaper than a $200 machine.

sanchez.blake28d ago

Oh man, tell me about it. I got so fed up with dust in my place that I actually taped a HEPA filter to a box fan one weekend (real high-tech solution there). Never even thought about the baseboards though, that's a solid tip, I bet there's a whole ecosystem of dust bunnies living under mine that I've been ignoring. My cheap fix for the front door was just a rolled up towel on the bottom, which works great until you trip over it at 2 AM getting a glass of water.