Tree pollen season in Northwest Indiana, and how to clean for it

The first warm week of spring in Chesterton puts a yellow line along every windowsill in town. It looks like dust and it is not, and the difference matters for how you get rid of it.

What it is, and when it comes

The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, the federal institute that studies this, lays out the calendar plainly: trees in spring, grasses in summer, weeds in fall. Around here the trees start in March. The same page notes that the pollen season across the northern United States lengthened by as much as thirteen to twenty-seven days between 1995 and 2009, which matches what I see: the sills go yellow earlier than they used to.

Why the duster makes it worse

Pollen is light. A dry duster, a feather duster or a dry cloth lifts it into the air, where it hangs for an hour and settles back onto the same sill, the bed, and the pillow. A damp microfiber cloth holds it. Wring the cloth until it is barely wet, wipe, rinse, repeat. Sills, the tops of window frames, the screen door, the mat inside the front door, every week until the trees are finished.

If somebody in the home has allergies

• Keep the bedroom windows shut on the high-count days, which the weather forecast lists
• Wash pillowcases weekly, because pollen on hair ends up on the pillow and then in the air you breathe for eight hours
• Shoes off at the door, and the entry mat washed every two weeks through spring
• A damp wipe of the window tracks once the season ends, because that is where it all collects

Why it is on every spring deep clean

The window tracks are where a whole season of pollen ends up, packed in with the winter's dust and the first of the flies. Brushed dry, vacuumed, then wiped, they come clean. It is one of the first things I do on a spring deep clean anywhere in Porter County, and it is the reason the windows open properly for the summer.