4 top tips for keeping your furniture clean

A true indicator that someone doesn’t care about their home’s cleanliness is dirty furniture. 

Seriously, have you ever walked into someone’s home and seen coffee stains on the dining table, wine stains on the couch and food scraps strewn across the kitchen bench? 

It’s pretty unpleasant and, to be fair, completely avoidable. Cleaning your furniture doesn’t have to be akin to moving home or doing a massive hard rubbish haul - you just have to do it every now and again and be vigilant about it.

Here are four top tips for keeping your furniture noice and schmick.

1. For painted furniture 

People tend to be apprehensive about cleaning painted furniture. After all, it does have a nice paint job, so surely that means any form of attempt to clean the furniture will result in it being stripped bare? 

This couldn’t be further from the truth. In reality, painted furniture only really needs an occasional dusting and, at best, a wipe down with a clean cloth. The main thing to remember is to wipe dry any remaining water residue, as this remaining residue can leave unsightly marks that may then require special attention.

If your painted furniture has incurred what appears to be an irreparable mark then don’t despair: this is quite fixable, too. All you have to do is make any necessary repairs like sanding down the affected area. 

Next, simply paint the affected area in a tone most similar to the pre-existing tone and voila - you’ve reinvigorated furniture you thought was finished.

2. For upholstered furniture 

Upholstered furniture is like leather in the way that it must be kept out of direct sunlight. Dusting upholstered furniture is pretty futile, given the dust just settles back into the fibrous nooks and crannies, so you can instead use a vacuum cleaner with an attachment to get all that naughty dust off a material that might otherwise want to hold onto it. 

You can apply Scotchgard to protect the material from stains and spots whilst flipping the cushions over every week to ensure they both wear evenly as time goes on

For special attention: 

Use a damp cloth to get stains out and if this does not work you can also try steam cleaning the stain. If neither of these work, try a vinegar and baking soda combo to get that stubborn nonsense out of the upholstery.

3. For wood furniture 

Not all wooden furniture is the same. In fact, different types of wood require markedly different cleaning requirements to ensure you get the best results without damaging the material. 

The first thing you need to know is what kind of wood is your furniture made from? Next, do a quick Google search on how to clean said wood. This search will tell you pretty much everything you need to know regarding cleaners, conditioners, what kind of cloth to use etc.

And for special attention: 

If your wooden furniture has incurred a rather disastrous build up of dirt - this is okay - you can fix this! The best way to remove large swathes of dirt from wooden furniture is to simply take a lint-free cloth with some mineral spirits before cleaning the whole piece of furniture. 

Why clean the whole piece? Because simply cleaning the affected area might leave some rather obvious differences.

4. For leather 

The main thing to remember about good ol’ leather is that it doesn’t like the sun. Seriously, you keep that leather sofa in the sun for a few hours and it’ll be looking dry as a four day old bagel in January - so remember to keep your fab new Italian sofa away from direct sunlight. 

Apart from that, leather isn’t too hectic to keep clean. Naturally, some people love leather, for aesthetic and more perverse reasons, and these people may want to go the extra mile with leather cleaning. 

But for anyone else who simply likes their leather couch and is happy to give it the occasional all you have to do is give it a good wipe over with a damp sponge and the occasional dusting and your leather will remain good as new.

For special attention: 

For those of you who do want to provide a little extra attention to your leather goods, all you have to do is this: give it a good clean with ½ water, ¼ vinegar and a cloth before following up the job with a little leather saddle soap wash. 

Dry the leather with a cloth and you’ve just given your piece an amazing clean.