When this thread started, i was in the early days of shooting with a DSLR and dealing with dust on the sensor. It seemed pretty traumatic at the time... Now I feel I'm something of a hardened vet and, having incorporated it into the process, it's not a big deal. Although it is a small deal, but one I'm willing to cope with for the other advantages of shooting with the camera that feels like the best overall solution for me.
I have one of those little sticky ended post things and that works brilliantly the vast majority of the time, particularly for quick little spot cleans. I also have a wet cleaning kit (no doubt paid too much, but a price that's worth it to me for the handy nature of it). I just spent about a week and a half traveling, spending time in a sandy, dusty beach environment, and changed lenses in the wild quite a bit. At one point I processed a shot in a way that exposed EVERY dust spot on the sensor and there were a lot of them. I had the little sticky ended bit along with me, and about two minutes with that and the sensor was effectively clean - there were still a couple of minor spots that showed up only in the perfect storm of circumstances, but nothing difficult to deal with. Then when I got home, I gave the sensor a good wet-clean. Probably a 5-10 minute process by the time I'd let it dry, reassemble, do a couple of test shots, and repeat a couple of times to get it really immaculate. What I've found is that if I do that ten minute wet cleaning routine every few months (or after a particularly heavy spell of shooting - I think I've done it three times, maybe four, in the past year), then using the quick little sticky ended thing for spot cleanups in the interim works just fine.
It's one of those things I'd never had to do before with my years of shooting Olympus gear (which is really well known for it's self-cleaning capabilities) and Fuji (which isn't particularly), so initially it seemed like a big deal and a major hassle. But I love shooting the Df and I've found that now that I've done it a few times, it's really not a big deal to keep the sensor reasonably clean and to clone out the occasional spot that makes it through to a visible part of a file. With mirrorless I spent a lot more time charging and swapping batteries (I think with the Df I charged ONE time during that week and a half of travel and heavy shooting over the holidays and I'm not sure I NEEDED to do that, but did it to be safe) - with the Df I spend a few minutes cleaning every now and then. A small price to pay - just another tradeoff...
-Ray