Our Dusty Vent

I've been trying to clean the house in anticipation of baby Joseph's arrival. Nesting instinct? Well, I wouldn't say I'm gung ho with this whole process but it is constantly on my mind. So, I figured I should at least do some random things as far as cleaning goes. One particular cleaning task my mother pointed out when she was here for my baby shower was that the return air vent upstairs needed some serious TLC. Ever since she mentioned it I have noticed that disgusting vent every single time I walk up the stairs.
Yesterday I had my husband help me take down that large ceiling vent so I could clean it. It was in pretty bad shape. It's a return air vent, so there was ALL KINDS of dust and dirt on it....

That picture doesn't do it justice. It almost looks clean there compared to what I remember it looking like...you'll just have to trust me when I say there was dust literally just hanging off it.
The first step in the cleaning process involved me simply running water and my hand over the vent to remove the large chunks of dust - blech! I then took a rag to it and quickly realized that I needed to actually get in between every single vent hole. So, I broke out the q-tips.
While the q-tips did a great job cleaning, it was taking forever and making quite a mess in the tub. Even though I was making progress I just didn't have that kind of patience and my back and legs just weren't going to let me continue much longer. You can see the "before" and "after" cleaning with q-tips in the picture below.

In order to spare my back from crouching/kneeling and leaning over the tub any longer I decided to whip out the pressure washer to clean the vent. Why didn't I think of this sooner?

I wish I had thought to take a picture of the cleaned vent before I uploaded this series of pictures. Alas. I did not. Perhaps I'll post one later once I get a chance to put the vent back up.
Until then I need to clean the tub....