My quest has concluded, finally, with a good measure of success. Simple enough; I was looking for a good-quality dry floor mop. Certainly not a mop head made of micro-fibre; utterly useless. They don't slide easily along a tile or wood floor; they don't pick up dust the way a cotton, wool or mixed-fibre mop head will. They have critical parts made of plastic, which don't last; obviously deliberately, built-in obsolescence to force the user to continue buying replacements.

As a result of a costly, ubiquitous public relations/advertising campaign the Swiffer brand appears to have swept the market. It has certainly swept retail shelves clean of the old-fashioned, well-made and useful types of floor mops, which are no longer available at hardware stores, big-box retailers, even cleaning supply outlets. In favour of the microfibre types which, coasting on the success of Swiffer, are now made by a large number of other brands.

Searching online gained me little satisfaction. Online inventory of various cleaning supply outlets also largely featured the microfibre mops. I did manage to buy a really inferior product at a nearby hardware shop made by Tormax with a well-designed mop head, a long-strand-fibre mop head that performed well, but many of its vital constituent parts were of plastic and they rarely lasted longer than a month. I kept buying them until the store's stock was depleted, and that was it. Evidently the company no longer makes the product.

I found just what I was looking for in design, quality construction, size and material on an pop-up advertising site that has lately become ubiquitous. Among those products that really fit the bill for my requirements (size being of absolute importance; anything up to 18" but preferably smaller, for domestic, not industrial use: those large dry mops used by industry, sized 24", 36", 48", are enormous and too heavy), but shipment was a problem. I would try to order them but would be informed that shipment is not available outside the U.S.

Finally, my husband, telephoning around various industry cleaning supply outlets found one in the distant far west of the city that claimed to have what we were looking for. We had previously gone along to others and weren't too hopeful this time. We made the long, confusing drive out yesterday afternoon, and sure enough, they had a mop called Histat by Marino, manufactured in Concord, Ontario. The handle is universal to all their sizes, but specific to the mop head, made of solid wood, and heavy, but the mop head is a reasonable 12", (the smallest in a wide array of sizes) its strings made of polyester and it works extremely well. All its other parts are of metal, and meant to last.

I also was able to buy there stick-handled furniture dusters made of lambswool, in two sizes; one type with expandable handles, the other a short handle, and availed myself of five of them to replace the annoying thin polyester-fibre ones that continually drop fibres when they're being used. This product is made in Winnipeg, Manitoba, called Furgale. And they were priced at a fraction of the cost, purchasing these types of lambwool dusters from regular retail outlets.

As ridiculous as it seemed, I felt like a kid in a candy shop. Oh, and when we got home with our treasures, my husband obligingly sawed a foot off the top of the dry mop handle, making it more useful for my five-foot frame to handle.