People with pets: how do you deal with all the fur?
2y 11mon ago by lemmy.world/u/kadu in adulting
I have 4 cats. I love them very much.
They also produce more fur than there are grains of sand in this God forsaken earth. There's fur in my clothes, food, mouse, ceiling fan, body crevices.
Help. Me.
Easy, just make your entire existence about constantly cleaning. But seriously, we just do what we can and the rest is what it is.
Robot vacuum. We programmed it for morning and evening cleanup so the built up is okish. You have to accept that this is your life meow
I run mine daily and manually vacuum once a week.
This is the way.
We have two cats and a dog, like you, the robot runs twice a day and we do a thorough vacuuming once or twice a week.
you think four cats are bad. I have one golden retriever!!!
I see your golden retriever and raise you one German shepherd/corgi mix.
I don't mean to disbelieve you or anything but that sounds like less hair.
Yeah, it might be a tie at best, I don't actually know how much golden retrievers shed.
I raise you a medium coat Belgian Shepard. All the fluff of a golden in a double coat.
I have a Collie. I just keep getting the most expensive vacuums I can until all the hair inevitably binds to our pores and turns the whole family feral.
My fiance sheds more hair than the 3 cats. Can't be angry at the cats when she's worse.
Do those reusable ones actually work okay? Or do I need the disposable paper ones?
I have one of these and it works surprisingly well. The gray squeegee looking flap flips back and forth as you roll it causing the red strips to take turns sliding into the cylindrical housing where they get wiped off so the hair collects inside. It essentially relies on the red strips short fibers snagging hair better than the fabric you're wiping it on which is usually smoother (the only thing I could see it not working on would be like a really fuzzy soft sweater or something with its own stiff short fibers that catches hair). Static might be helping there too.
I got these in January. I've started to replace household single-use plastics and this one turned out to be a pretty good buy. They're great for sturdy, unpatterned material. I use it to defuzz the cat tree and it is so satisfying. I only use it on one of the couch covers, though, as the one with a pattern in the surface of the material catches and snags. The vacuum takes care of the rest. The rest that I notice, anyway.
We have two cats, we vacuum once a week, and brush them every two weeks, and the fur buildup is really not that noticable.
We also have them on a vet diet which has been incredibly good for their skin and fur, so they don't seem to shed as much.
They're trained not to go up on the countertops and cabinets to prevent fur getting into food. They do it when I'm not around, but it still reduces fur up there.
It probably scales up linearly for 4 cats, so vacuum twice a week and brush them weekly.
Robot vacuum.
Is there a particular one that you would recommend that is the biggest bang for the buck? Having a robot vacuum would be cool but I know some brands are more expensive than others.
Can recommended the Eufy RoboVac. Its made a huge difference and requires little effort to set up. I run it every other day and its basically eliminated "tumbleweeds".
Thanks! I'll check that one out. Ha, I have hardwood floors so tumbleweeds between the cat hair, dust, and them ripping apart their cat tree they are a pretty common site. Having this around would definitely help!
Check out vacuum wars on YouTube, he tests a bunch of root vacuums.
How do people use robot vaccuums with 3 floors? And closed doors? Do you need like 6 of em?
I've had 4 iRobot vacuums over the years since the Roomba was introduced. I kind of hate them. On the one hand, they do a decent job of keeping things neater all the time, but every one of them quit working within two years (mostly due to failed motor drivers). At $350 each (I see they cost quite a lot more these days) they just weren't worth it, especially compared to a similarly priced standard vacuum. I've been using one of Shark's upper-end models for about 5 years. It cost about the same as a robot vacuum, does more, lasts longer and has no expensive consumables. It's excellent, especially regarding maintainability. I can quickly and easily disassembly and clear/clean the entire air path with no tools.
Also they aren't that powerful. For bare floors great carpet it's just physics that a corded 12 amp with HEPA bag will do a better job
I hired a cleaner lol.
I have Golden. I just accepted that, robot vacuum help a little but fur in the coffee is just part od morning routine
Increase your vacuuming frequency and get a robo-vac for daily cleanup of drifting fur if possible. A good attachment for cleaning furniture really becomes the biggest factor when buying a new one. Also you'll want those tape rollers (buy the multi-pack from Costco) to de-fur your clothes before going out alongside pretty much abandoning black clothing. A lily brush is great for collecting fur from the fabrics that really hang on to it.
If they'll tolerate it, brushing the cats more frequently also is great for reducing how much floats free.
Live with it. Comes with the territory.
sorry but how does it get in the food
I ask myself the same question
God I wish I knew
lots of little hairs float around in the air, and settle on everything including the meal you just set down.
source: 2 labradors
The better question is, how does it get in his mouse??
A quality vacuum. Robot or otherwise. Get something with a good HEPA filter and schedule a clean every other day in common areas, Living rooms, bedrooms, wherever they hang out. Even just a couple minutes hand vacuuming the couch every other day will help with hair build up.
Dust surfaces frequently as well. That one i can get away with once a week but your mileage may vary.
We have a labrador. He gets brushed with a Furminator brush every few weeks, and we vacuum EVERY. SINGLE. WEEK. Otherwise the shedding is out of control.
We discovered shortly after we adopted him that I am allergic to dogs, something I never noticed growing up with dogs, likely because my family's house was larger than our small apartment. So now the solution is being better about cleaning, as well as a daily dose of zyrtec for the life of our dog.
Badly :-) Two golden retrievers create a lot of hair every day and at some point you just learn to live with it. Even if you regularly clean then there will be fur tumbleweeds behind and underneath everything. It really helps having hard flooring through the ground floor of the house (my dogs don't go upstairs), as that's easier to keep clean, and regular grooming reduces but certainly doesn't eliminate the shedding.
People have said that a good vaccuum cleaner helps, which is true, but my last Dyson (pet edition) got so clogged with fur that the motor caught fire! Now using a Henry vaccuum which seems to be working pretty well.
Using a robot vacuum when pet hair is concerned is a lot like running a dryer on things that have a lot of lint. You need to regularly stop it and empty the buildup for a few cycles, otherwise it's just going to be pushing things around. I can't speak for the self-empying ones, I suppose for them it depends on how well the sensor works to get them to dump.
i recently bought a clipper set for my cat. he's an orange tabby & maine coon mix and he is huge. medium haired but let me tell you... the amount of freaking fur that is on everything all the time!! i brush him, comb him. i vacuum, i sweep. tried the clippers on him and he sits for a bit to let me do it but then scurries off. so i have to keep chasing him around to get as much fur as he'll let me. he gets mats really easily too. scared to give him a bath, which would honestly help a ton. he's just so finicky and won't sit still to save my life. i wake up with fur in my hair, eyelids and even my mouth. it gets in my food and drinks, and you can just see strands floating around. no material of clothing i own is without his fur. i just want to be free.
god help you
I have 9 cats, several of them very fluffy. They generate quite a lot of fur.
First, I keep cat grooming brushes everywhere I spend much time (desk, couch, bed) and when a cat is within reach I brush them. They enjoy it greatly (can take some training, and some of them only like it on some body parts) and it helps enormously with reducing the amount of fur that ends up here, there and everywhere (also it makes petting them nicer as they shed less when stroked).
Incidentally, if you keep the fur collected by the brush it can be felted into toy balls or other items (see "Crafting with Cat Hair" and other cat fur crafting guides), and if you want to make a drop-spindle you can spin it into yarn that you can knit with (this works best with long-hair cats and underside fur which is softer and more flexible than the topcoat).
Second, I have no carpet anywhere in the house, so fur that the brushing doesn't get tends to collect as fluffy balls in corners where the air currents push it, so my regular sweeping and vacuuming pick it up easily.
Third, I have low-nap area rugs in a few rooms. Loose fur tends to collect on them much more than on the bare floors, which tends to reduce the amount of fur loose in a room, and vacuuming them frequently is faster and easier than vacuuming the whole room (I usually vacuum the rug, then use the hose attachment to quickly run around the perimeter of the room to collect fur and other dust.
Last, select a clothing washer that does a good job removing fur from clothing. In my experience front-loaders that use minimal water are pretty terrible at removing fur, it just gets balled up and sticks to the clothing. I prefer top-loaders that use plenty of water as they seem to do a better job removing fur. I know that increases water use, so it might not be desirable in some locations, so if you are in a place where water use needs to be restricted it might be worth doing some research to discover what low-water machines do the best job with fur.
Make sweaters. Survive the winter.
Get a pair of gloves like these: https://www.amazon.com/Upgrade-Version-Pet-Grooming-Glove/dp/B01N9KSITZ/
My cat loves to be rubbed down with these gloves and they accumulate a massive amount of fur every session.
Oooh I really like that idea, thanks for the suggestion. I'll order one for sure!
I can also vouch for the gloves. Figure out which of your cats sheds the most and target brushing them at least twice a week, maybe more, if you can get them to hang out while you're watching TV.
Only one of my two cats really does 90% of the shedding, and since I started using the gloves, the level of fur tumbleweeds collecting in the corners of my house had decreased dramatically.
You can also use the gloves to brush the couch to remove fur!
Both our cats hate them.
Robot vacuum. Dusting all the time. I mean dusting every single surface that isn’t vertical once a week. That includes windows, doors, molding, blinds, fans, lighting, etc. I also don’t let my pets on the furniture and they’re totally ok with it. People who let their dogs on their couch have a couch that smells, and I don’t want to sit on it. Also, furniture used by animals age more quickly. I don’t like replacing big expensive items. It is wasteful. Animals have their own beds etc. It’s good for them to have something that is theirs.
Sweep, vacuum often. If you have carpet theres a tool like this I used that really made vacuuming much easier https://www.amazon.com/FURemover-Hair-Remover-Carpet-Rake/dp/B000EFDOOA/ref=sr_1_16?keywords=carpet+scraper&qid=1687500477&sr=8-16
Whenever I enter a house that doesn't have fur, I feel like I'm around robots.
We were given a Dyson Sphere Vacuum as a wedding present.
A vacuum that encompasses a star, capturing all its energy output? Neat.
When I was young we had 3 cats. One had really puffy fur. We just kind of existed alongside the fur. There's nothing you can do about it. You just have to coexist. I think it's a part of having pets.
I solved it by getting a dog that doesn't shed.
We have to get her groomed every 6 weeks, though or else she turns into Fluff McMuffin.
Embrace the chaos
Roomba and chomchom
Team Roomba/chomchom here. Agreed, this is the best combo.
I’m not familiar with a chomchom, but my Roomba is a lifesaver
When we got our first GS we realized we could lose our minds or just redefine what CLEAN actually means.
Carpets/rugs. Vacuum cleaner. Air Filter Fans. Look up how to DIY an air filter fan with the cheaper box filters though. Otherwise you'll pay a lot for the proprietary ones.
An extra-powerful vacuum cleaner with a HEPA filter. And a supply of those sticky rollers for taking up fur that got on your clothes.
get a small handheld vacuum and just pick up all the hair as you find it; the key is to be super proactive
No offence but that's neglect on your part as they can be carriers of bacteria & viruses. For starters reduce their contact with young ones, there have been studies that prove the build-up of allergies from them.
Owning them is a responsibility toward yourself & others:
- wash your hands after handling them & avoid contact with animal's faeces.
- Vaccination up to date.
- Disinfect the pet area regularly.
Are you implying having pets is negligent? I find that claim very funny.
If your point is that fur contains bacteria, that's true but not really - it's absolutely not where you'd find most bacteria in an average household, and fur isn't particularly easy to degrade either. As for viruses, that's absolutely not the case.
If your concern is with my animals, I don't see how anything on my post implies I don't take care of them. Their vet visits them once a month, they are fully vaccinated, they have nice litter and premium food. They are at a healthy weight, have plenty of toys, and a lot of vertical enhancement.
And no, there are no young ones living with me. Though you're incorrect, contact with animals is correlated with a decrease in respiratory allergies, not an increase. Their feces are however dangerous to infants.
The confidently incorrect redditors are starting to arrive.
People like that were around even before Reddit, or the internet. When I run into them face-to-face I just smile and let them spew their "facts", it's easier and faster to not engage them in debate.
You and I must read different scientific manuscripts. The ones I read all show that owning dogs and cats with newborns lessons the likely hood of getting pet allergies, and also reduce allergies to dust, pollen, etc.; oddly enough, hamsters increase allergies
It's a pet in a home not a wild animal in a meat market, jesus
Does anyone else smell diarrhea?