How to deal with the storm of hair hitting your carpeting and hard flooring
The mutts will never be as downright fluffy and productive as my kid and I. Picture: iStock
There’s no denying it. I’m extremely hairy. My daughter is extremely hairy. It’s strange because I’m a bit obsessed with the amount of relatively short floof and dander my three dogs rain down on the floors and furnishings daily.
Despite my whinging, at six inches at the shoulder, in terms of luxuriant quantity, the mutts will never be as downright fluffy and productive as my kid and I. When covid hit, and hairdressers became moonlighting superstars, their details exchanged in hushed whispers in car parks, I defiantly grew the pixie cut back to waist length.
I was known in my former life as Kya deLonghair, I could sit on my mane, and I still like to fool myself it’s age-disrupting, hippy chic. When I make an arthritic six-point spin on the street, small children dart behind their mothers. If you have pigtailed girls about the house, or you yourself are still shaking your stuff, chances are your house is entangled in a fine mesh of gruaig.
My first tip is to choose the right carpet mower. We’re looking for a model of vacuum with an anti-tangle roller bar with a larger diameter, rubber ribs and an integrated comb element. This will sweep the hair up, clear the roller as you preen, and snatch most of it into the bag or bin without it fastening tightly around the mechanism.
Most new upright machines including Dyson, Sharp and even budget brands like Tower include this anti-tangle engineering. Otherwise, with every other vacuum, it’s regular clear-outs and deploying a secret weapon shared with me by my brilliant friend Anne McCarthy (Auction Queen of the now ghostly Paul’s Lane in Cork).
A seam ripper is fantastic for slicing hair effectively off the roller bar, and spindle whether you remove the whole mechanism, or do it in situ. Working parallel with the roller there’s none of the digging with the end of a scissors or forcing a blade under tiny clumps of hair repeatedly. Most haberdashers and craft shops sell them, with Vibes & Scribes offering a neat model at just 99c.
Now, this brings me to a short finger wag as a mother and long-haired lover. When you brush your hair, do it in the bathroom boys and girls. It’s much easier to clean up shed hair from a hard floor than it is from rugs and carpeting.
Don’t permit anyone to either clean out their brush and chuck it on the floor or dump hanks of hair down the sink. Disaster (more of that later). Now I know more about the dust storm caused by skin shed through the course of my newspaper work – I dress and undress in the en-suite.
Many of us in mid-life suffer hair thinning or serious loss, and it’s worth noting any changes in your hair thickness signalled by the hair on the floors, the amount caught in a pony-tail tie or left in your brush. Your GP should be able to discuss potential hormonal changes and/or point you to a specialist trichologist.
Wigs and extensions also drop strands over time. Whether you’re all-natural or have something woven in to create more fullness, a silk pillowcase and what is termed “protective hairstyles” for longer hair, can keep the hair (faux or real) in better condition, less tangled, and less prone to falling out in excessive amounts.
In terms of your bed linen, washing the bedding every two weeks will keep hair, skin, and hair products smeared into your pillows under control. Wash at 60C, as this is a bacteria hot spot and you’re vulnerable to thrashing around there in a face-plant for 6-9 hours a night.
If you’re finding clothes coming out of the wardrobe with hairs clinging to them, toss the piece in the dryer for even 3-5 minutes on cool. This will release any static and winkle the hair off into your lint collector. Don’t dump this into the compost bin – it’s inevitably blistering with microplastics.
Going forward? Show your brush to your hairdresser. They should be able to tell you if it’s simply too harsh for your hair, leading to extra hair loss (a couple of hundred a day is completely normal).
Around the house, for hard flooring try a flat mop or better still, a slender-headed rubber broom (as favoured by hairdressers). These will coral human and animal hair for quick whips around the floor, and as a pinch of hair alone is not blended into the synthetic rubbish in your vacuum bag, you can put it directly into the composting bin.
I like the Vileda Pet Pro Always Clean long-handled broom, €26, and the electrostatic Vileda Pet Pro (hand broom) €8, multiple suppliers nationwide. Bargain buy? Try a JML Wonder Broom, €12, Home Store + More.
Hand-held vacuums don’t have moving parts in most branding, and again, are ideal for just taking up a little free-fall where you need it. The upholstery brush on your vacuum is perfect for soft furnishings, and again, it will just tug any hair straight to the collection bin.
I like to use a lint roller for the top side of cushions. IKEA do an excellent deal on a Bastis lint roller with 40 sticky sheets for just €1. Throw a few in the basket next time you’re at the great Viking furniture hangar.
Right, back to the bathroom, where you should be managing most hair stirring. Before getting into the shower, comb or brush out your hair. This gathers the hair into the brush (rather than stuffing up the shower or bath drain), and leaves it ready for post-shampoo styling without snags.
Hair gathering in the plug can be dealt with in two ways. Clean out your waste regularly, and that includes fast-flow shower wastes too, as there will be a grey soup of soap scum and hair waiting for you in the little cup, that can impede their performance.
If you have a gang of hairy kids and adults, a drop in hair-catcher over a standard bath drain is fantastic, but they do tend to get kicked out of position easily. One of my favourite, ridiculously under-engineered solutions is the prickly long, plastic drain clearer. It’s like a long bendy branch and can be winkled into every type of standard plug hole to catch and lift the bung of hair and muck in one or two ventures. A vital under-sink saviour, clog clearers start at just 60c on Temu.
