Welcome to the sandy part of the world.

How often do you do some dusting around your place? Once every couple of weeks at most? Well as we soon discovered after moving to this part of the world, approximately 3 months worth of dust accumulates easily within 1 week - we kid you not!

Because of the sand, windows are kept closed most of the time and use a lot of air conditioning to ensure you don’t roast in the desert heat. So you move the dust around but isn’t removed from the house unless vacuumed. The sand here is not like the beach we all knew growing up next to the beach. Beach sand grains are much coarser then desert sand. We aren’t geologists but this is our arm chair geologists’ theory:

Beach sand - Sand grains are bigger because the sand comes from sandstones/rocks in the area being eroded by waves. This erosion has happened more recent, so less wear and tear on the sand grains – hence more coarse and big.

Desert sand - These sand grains are noticeably much finer due to being constantly blown and moved around the desert over hundreds of years – lots of wear and tear from brushing against each other.

If you know a thing or two about geology and our theory is a complete work of fiction, well keep it quiet because it sounds very scientific anyway!

The roads around the area we live haven’t been sealed yet and a lot of houses are under construction so on a windy day, even the slightest breath of wind will whip up the sand. So once a week we do a major dusting and vacuum to get rid of all the tumble weeds of dusts gathering in every corner.

We experienced our first significant sandstorm of the season the other day. That morning we headed out, leaving a few windows slightly open to allow air flow – boy was that an understatement. While driving around we couldn’t see much further then a few hundred meters down the road because there was so much sand being blown around. If you usually navigate according to landmarks then that day you would have gotten so lost even using a GPS wouldn't help. Because the sand in the air was so thick, it total blocked out building in a familiar landscape and thick blankets of sand would dance across the roads as you drove.


In the afternoon when we returned home, to our amazement there was more sand inside the apartment then outside! The heart breaking point was Quyen did the cleaning and dusting the day before and now the lounge room looked like a sandbox. We needed professional help to relocate the sand out of our apartment and back into the desert, so we called in a cleaner to get the place looking spic and span - within 3 hours the job was complete.

Lesson – Do not have the windows open unless you’re at home to close them incase a sandstorm whips up unexpectedly.