almost-instant product recommendation

So we're having all this work done on our house, as you know. The crew are very diligent about e.g. putting down cardboard ("ramboard") rather than tracking crud and dragging heavy and/or sharp things across our hardwood floors and about cleaning up the mess their work makes—but there's just no getting around the fact that plaster dust goes effing everywhere. We spent a lot of time Saturday and yesterday sponging things off with damp paper towels. And by "things" I mean the refrigerator, the pictures on the refrigerator, the kitchen cabinets, the kitchen counters, the coffee maker, the stand mixer—all this had been covered with plastic sheeting, by the way; I shudder to think what it would have been like if it hadn't—the tops of cereal boxes, and so on. Did at least three dishwasher loads because everything in the cabinets and drawers was dusty. We have a couple of bakers' carts doing the work of pantry shelves and I have dusted boxes of pasta and the lids and shoulders of jars and the covers of cookbooks and ... the idea of course is that we would like to be able to pick things up without our hands coming away covered with plaster dust, to say nothing of wanting to be sure we're not eating the stuff.

The floors, too, are covered with superfine grit. I don't like how any kind of grit feels under my feet—I'm sort of the Princess and the Pea of shoeless living—but the superfine plaster-dust variety I can't really feel as something under my feet as much as I can feel it stick to my feet and make them feel chalky, which I also hate. I got some hardwood floor cleaner and have been waiting for the right time to mop the shit out of the place.

That time may not yet have arrived, but yesterday I bought the relevant mop, which for me was going to be something Swiffer-like but with a reusable, washable head. I bought the Bona hardwood floor mop, which came with a fluffy microfiber floor duster head and a loopy microfiber mop head, and an extra mop head.

I should have got an extra duster head as well. Here's the rec: this shit is better than the Swiffer by miles. I mean I know the floor was a different kind of dirty than it's ever been when I've tried to Swiff it up. But dudes. The Swiffer can do okay with shed hairs and dust bunnies, but even then it often maxes out before I'm done with it (and we're not filthy, okay; I do sweep fairly regularly). It gets to where it's pushing things into corners and then I have to do a weird backward-sweeping digging-out maneuver to get it out where the Swiffer will have a chance of picking it up again. The Bona heads are bigger than the head of the mop object, so they crunch up and do edges and corners much better. And the whole duster head was covered in (a lot of!) plaster dust when I was done—not just the edges like the Swiffer, which has an odd honeycomb pattern that's supposed to trap dust and whatnot but ends up meaning it's not making full contact with the floor.

I expect the mop head to be equally marvelous. Run, don't walk, to your nearest Bed Bath & Beyond and ditch your Swiffer.