I am the last person who should be giving you cleaning advice. Here’s my cleaning advice, nonetheless:

• Don’t clean too often. It just makes the dust more obvious.
• Put stuff away where it belongs, or throw it out. Throwing it out is the best, but don’t throw things out if you’re just going to buy them again. Everything looks cleaner when your house is tidy.
• Straightening books on the shelf, for instance, means you can’t see the dust behind them.
• Yes, every time you flush the toilet you spray microorganisms everywhere, even if you close the lid. That’s because they are everywhere all the time anyway. You are surrounded by microscopic things. Most of them aren’t dangerous. You are immune to most of the rest of them if they are your bacteria.
• Bleach is bad for bacteria, but it’s also bad for you. If you don’t want your bathroom to infect you, don’t get food poisoning, and wash your hands after you go to the bathroom.
• Most bacteria don’t do anything except make things smelly. Just clean so your house doesn’t get sticky or smell bad.
• Don’t lick bathroom fixtures. Otherwise, you’re not going to get any infections from them. They look nice when they’re clean, though, so go ahead and clean them.
• If you don’t want grit and dirt all over your floors, change your shoes when you come in the house and put them in a tray by the door.
• Eating out is the most common cause of food poisoning. That and eating old take-out food. Throw out old food. I don’t care what your mother told you about starving children in wherever.
• A nice small vacuum cleaner, a proper string mop, a straw broom, and a dustpan and brush are all you really need for cleaning. Those and a bunch of rags you can launder. The nonsensical disposable things they sell for cleaning are just capitalism trying desperately to replicate itself.
• COVID is spread by aerosol, mostly in enclosed spaces where people are talking or singing. Wear a mask, get vaccinated, and if someone starts coughing, leave the room. Have a a HEPA air filter in your house. Open the windows. Hand sanitizer isn’t particularly useful and it’s hell on the skin.
• Colds are spread in the air, but also by hand to hand contact. Wash your hands so you don’t share your cold (or your food poisoning) with anyone else. Soap is a heck of an antibacterial.
• Wear shoes outside. Parasites are really annoying. So is tetanus.
• An old fashioned fluffy duster on a handle is marvelous for getting dust off baseboards.
• When everything looks dirty and you despair, buy a can of paint and paint your walls.
• Laundry tip: Have a uniform of basics. Wash them in cold water with a quarter of the amount of detergent they tell you, don’t use fabric softener, and hang the clothes to dry. You can hang them in the basement. Your clothes will last forever. Again, most of the laundry products on the market are capitalism trying to replicate itself.
• Rugs get really disgusting. They are dust magnets. If you must, have a small area rug, and vacuum it regularly.
• Cats shed like crazy, but the little hairballs that form all over are great for mopping up dust. Brush your cat regularly, however.

My house smells like Pine-Sol right now because I have a cheap rug shampooer I haul out a couple of times a year, to get the smell out of the IKEA rug I bought for my cat. He needs something to sharpen his claws on, you see. But he threw up on the rug this week, the little monster.