me_irl

And pets et. al.

Love our pets to death but four of them is going to generate some stuff

used to be. i think synthetic fibers have changed that alot

I'm going to wrap myself in saran wrap

not necessarily. if you live on a delta or a river bank the soil is very fine. particularly in dry seasons, it travels far (more than sand) through air and comes through opening of a house. fine particles stay suspended in air for long. so even if you close the windows you will see dust depositing on surface, especially electrically charged ones.

I promise you most of the dust in my house is from me.

Because I work construction, and I often forget to dust off before entering.

Have you read your own linked article?

From the article you've linked:

And since an individual with the average amount of skin surface area sheds 1,000 skin cells per hour, that means a lot of the dust in your home, and many other places, truly contains a lot of dead skin.

“[T]he debunkers are debunked,” Muller says in the video, adding that “dead skin cells do make up a significant portion of household dust.”
[...]
Are you shocked to learn that this “myth” is, essentially, true?

Sand is mostly shed human skin.

How to get OCD and obsessed with cleaning

Counter-point: AFAIK "fecal matter contamination" usually means "we found some ecoli". A bacteria that is completely ubiquitous and almost always harmless unless you manage to ingest a significant amount or rub them into your eyes. It can be a useful general cleanliness indicator, for example if high concentrations of ecoli are measured in a body of water it probably means raw sewage made its way there, and you should be worried about the things that aren't ecoli. However you're not particularly likely to catch cholera or dysentery from your own sponge.

Furthermore sponges aren't meant to be clean per se. They're meant to be mechanically abrasive, so that all the impurities are detached from the surface you're cleaning. Those impurities then bind to the soap molecules which prevent them from clinging to surfaces, and therefore allow them to be easily washed away when rinsing.
It does not matter much if the sponge was dirty because the bacteria from the sponge will rinse away alongside the bacteria from the item you're cleaning. Just make sure to soap, rinse, and dry things properly and wash your hands after handling a sponge.

Do not look into bathrooms and tooth brushes then.

Why newspaper? Is it just lint free, or does it do something that paper towels won't do. I still get coupons in the mail with news print pages, so I'll have to give it a try.

I'll add to the conversation and say, denatured alcohol works great on anything that sticks or smears if you have a particularly tough spot.

Sorry but this is not something you can just avoid doing. Your air conditioner/furnace will literally break if you're not staying on top of filter replacements. New filter every 3 months is the longest you can get away with not replacing it before dust buildup starts damaging your system.

Please take care of this ASAP.