The Unexpected Way I’m Keeping Pet Hair Under Control This Shedding Season

I love my pets. But what I don’t love? The spring and summer (aka, the shedding season), when it feels like my cats and dogs lose enough hair daily to comfortably cover a whole new pet. And unfortunately, I’m also a little bit lazy when it comes to chores, so I’m not exactly keen to add a daily vacuum and brush routine to my to-do list. So I’ve found the perfect, no-stress secret weapon to help keep those pet hair dust bunnies at bay: the air purifier.

I bought my first HEPA-quality air purifiers a few years back to help remove pollen and microbes from the air, and found another unexpected benefit to them: a big reduction in dust and pet hair in my house. And that meant a lot fewer trips around with the duster or the vacuum cleaner, and a lot less pet hair clinging to my clothes.

If you want to reap the benefits of an easier shedding season (and a lot less dust year-round), try these tips to optimize your air purifier use.

Placement is key

Placing air purifiers near where the pets tend to congregate ensures that more hair and dander gets caught up in the purifier, not wafting around the house. It also helps to place the purifiers on the floor, not a tabletop, to grab as much dust as possible before it lands (along with anything that’s kicked up by the pets as they play).

Opt for a pre-filter

Some air purifier models come with stretchy fabric pre-filters that can fit over the air purifier or over the interior filter and collect all the big stuff (aka, the pet hair). That helps extend the life of the filters, and it seems to do an excellent job of grabbing all the hair, judging by how mine look after a week of running when my pets are in shedding overdrive.

Just keep in mind that you’ll probably need to run the pre-filters through the wash at least weekly to clear all that ick off of them—so you may want to invest in extras.

Use the air purifier’s most sensitive settings—or run them on high

Many air purifiers have settings where they monitor the air at regular intervals, and then start running on high if they sense that the air quality has gotten worse. But to try to maximize the amount of pet hair they collect, choose high manual settings or the most sensitive levels for an auto setting, to get as much hair out of the air as possible.

Don’t be afraid to overdo it on the air purifier front

An air purifier’s power is measured based on CADR (that’s the clean air delivery rate), which tells you how many cubic feet of air per minute (CFM) it can process. The minimum to aim for is a CADR that’s at least two-thirds of your room’s size (so a 200 CFM for a 300-square-foot room). But the more, the merrier on the air purifier front—and opting to overdo it will ensure that your room’s air is cleaned even faster and more effectively. I run enough air purifier power in my main living space for an area twice its size, which means that very little dust has the opportunity to settle.

Look for pet-focused filters and purifiers

Some air purifiers offer specialty filters or settings that are meant for pet families—generally, they come with heavy-duty pre-filters that are good at attracting pet hair and dander, and carbon filters that work wonders on pet odors. If, like us, you’re dealing with multiple furry friends, that’ll be a wise investment.

Don’t forget your soft surfaces

While the air purifiers do a bang-up job on the air quality and keeping pet hair off of our floor and hard surfaces, inevitably, our sofas still get a lot of it. (We do love a good puppy snuggle or kitten cuddle at the end of the day!) We keep a pet hair removal tool right on the coffee table during shedding season, so we can do a quick touchup whenever the sofa gets a little too hairy for us.