Cleaning Furniture

Wooden furniture can be cleaned with:
  • Detergent solution or
  • Soap solution or
  • Washing -up liquid solution or
  • Vinegar solution
    • Rinse off and leave to dry. Raw wood then should be dressed with a mixture of beeswax and oil or turpentine (which is an oil derived from pine trees). Wax will not clean if your furniture is heavily soiled, unless it is antique wood in which case your furniture should be kept waxed as a preventative measure, to avoid drying and subsequent warping. Teak or linseed oils are the usual wood dressing oils. If your wood furniture is laminated or varnished, as most modern furniture is, then it will not need dressing at all. Avoid the spray polish anywhere around your home - it does not clean, but merely attracts and seals in even more soiling. Life goes on well enough without it. So throw it out.
    If your furniture is antique and valuable, then french polishing is an answer to a poor finish. This is a mixture of shellac in methylated spirit and it leaves a beautiful glossy finish, which is easily maintained by a polish with a dry cloth after a gentle quick wash if needed.

    FABRICS

    Fabrics are tricky -curtains can be washed but we hold no hope out at all for chairs which attract children, cats, dogs and large amounts of food and grease and worse. You may be able to steam the chair fabric but isn't prevention rather better than cure? Throw a cover over the chair - you can throw that in the washing machine. Spot treatment on most fabrics will show as spots when dry and the whole begins to look very unsightly -clean in some places and not in others. Always consider the end result when cleaning or attempting to clean.
    For a more comprehensive guide to stain removal check out stain removal guide.

    MATTRESS CLEANING

    We have used a wand - type carpet cleaner and a carpet cleaning solution on a mattress quite successfully. It then should be dried properly and thoroughly. A mattress needs a very good vacuum cleaning and should be turned regularly Should you have any bedwetters around, turn the mattress over immediately after the accident onto a towel or two and leave until dry. Can you tell this is the voice of experience here? Protect the mattress with a rubber sheet for preference.

    HOW TO AVOID THE DUSTING COMPLETELY

    Is it necessary, and can it be avoided? But of course it can be avoided! What a waste of time. Dust is human hair and skin wrapped around grease from humans and particulates from the atmosphere. You dust, you put it back into the atmosphere and half an hour later, it is back again. With a new lot to keep it company. Real dust is what we find on a construction site -plaster, cement, particulate, concrete, wood -the list is endless. That has to be removed, but not in ways you would think. It takes the same length of time to wash a surface as it does to dust, and the effect lasts for a week. Think it over when you next pick up your feather duster, and go and have a cup of tea instead. Then throw out your feather duster or use it on the spiders hiding in the lampshades.

    BOOKSHELVES

    We have thousands of books in our house, and we read them. They get dusty; we get the vacuum cleaner out all along the edges and the tops of the books. You can't wash books. If your house is very damp, then your books are going to attract mold and mildew. To prevent loss of books, which is tantamount to a national calamity (in our house at least) use a dehumidifier.