On being ... unhappy consequences

By Ingrid Sapona 

I thought I’d start with some facts: 

I have very hard water. 

My living room is south-west facing so I get sun all afternoon. 

I vacuum pretty much every other day because I shed a lot. 

Dusting is my least favourite chore. 

Years ago, I asked a woodworker what to use when I dust a piece of furniture I bought from him and he said just a damp (not dripping) cloth. Though I grew up in a Pledge^® household, I figured he knew best, so that’s how I’ve been dusting since. 

I had some renovations done last fall. They were completed in mid-November. After the contractor left, I did a thorough clean of the place. 

Tariffs are a beautiful thing. (Haha… Just checking to see if you’re still with me. Or did you read the title of this column and think maybe that’s what I’m writing about? Well, I’m not. Or am I??? Anyway…) 

When it’s very dry I get shocks when I touch light switches and my hair stands on end when I take off a sweater. So, from late November to about the end of March I run a humidifier. The static magically disappears and my dry eyes and mouth are even a bit better. 

I bought a new humidifier last October because plastic bits on my old one were crumbling away. I liked my old one but every week I had to chip away at the calcium on the heating element. The amount of calcium build up was kind of unreal – proof of my hard water. 

The new humidifier lets me set the exact humidity I want. Unlike my old humidifier, the new one doesn’t give off warm steam – the vapour it produces is cool. So, no condensation on the bedroom windows. 

Before leaving for vacation in January, I turned the humidifier off and cleaned it well. I started it up as soon as I returned in February. 

One day in late February I retrieved something from the filing cabinet in the den. When my knee brushed against the cabinet, I noticed how dusty it was. I also noticed that the dust looked like fine, white, drywall dust. I silently chided myself for clearly not being that thorough in my cleaning after the renovation and then I got a damp cloth. This time I very carefully dusted between each cabinet handle and around the front, sides, and top.  

A couple days later I was sitting in my living room on a lovely sunny afternoon when I noticed an area on the floor round my t.v. that was VERY dusty. Yes, one of the consequences of having a lovely sunny room is that the sunshine highlights errant dust and hair. 

On closer inspection of the dust by the t.v. I noticed that it didn’t seem like regular dust. Ugh… another “spot” I missed cleaning after the reno. (I made a note to myself: Dust on sunny days so you can see all such spots.) After wiping the floor, I took a close-up look at the cocktail table. It too was covered in fine dust. What the heck? I knew I had dusted that dozens of times since the reno. 

I then went back into the den and looked at the filing cabinet again. Jeez, it was as dusty as it was two days earlier. Then I remembered a comment a friend who lives in my building said a year ago about fine white dust she has everywhere. She thought it was coming through her heating/AC unit. At that time, I told her my dust seemed like regular dust. Well, this new stuff must be what she was talking about. 

The following weeks I noticed a fine white coating on everything. Think I’m exaggerating? Here’s a photo of the inside of the cabinet under my kitchen sink. The inside! (Toward the left you can see the squiggle I made through the dust it with my finger.)

I started to wonder whether I should be concerned with what’s causing this different dust. Fairly quickly Google let me know that such dust isn’t unusual if you’re running an ultrasonic humidifier and you have hard water. Though I didn’t know it at the time, turns out my new humidifier is ultrasonic. 

Still finding it hard to believe the humidifier was the cause, I asked on the condo Facebook group whether anyone else had any fine, white dust. Half dozen folks quickly responded that they get it every fall as soon as they turn on their humidifier. A few of them even mentioned it’s because of our hard water. 

I’ve since learned of a few things that may help reduce the dust. Using filtered water – or better still – distilled water (a WAY too expensive solution, BTW). Decreasing the humidity level might also help. And there are demineralization cartridges I can add to the humidifier water tank. I bought a package of the cartridges and I’ll dial back the humidity level next year. We’ll see if they help. 

Because it was already late-March, I shut down the humidifier for the season. Then I cleaned the house. Thoroughly. 

I know that static, powdery white dust, and hard water are pretty minor problems. But still, the way various seemingly unrelated facts came together was a real-life (at home) example of something we often lose sight of (at our peril): solutions often come with trade-offs you don’t expect, much less like. 

© 2025 Ingrid Sapona