How to clean your furniture with natural products

Green cleaning products are revolutionising the way people clean their homes and furniture. The increasing awareness of environmental issues makes people switch to natural furniture cleaners and environmental-friendly cleaning remedies. 

Cleaning your home is more like breathing, you can’t live without it. You just can’t allow your furniture to sit under a layer of dust and dirt or be stained and soiled. While most commercial cleaning products aren’t healthy and eco-friendly, simple household items can do the trick for you. You can make wonderful all-natural furniture cleaners using basic kitchen ingredients like baking soda, lemon and vinegar. In fact, baking soda and white vinegar are often counted among home cleaning essentials for their excellent cleaning abilities. 

For those wondering how to clean furniture naturally, this post covers everything about DIY furniture cleaning using natural products minus harmful chemicals. Let the furniture cleaning begin!

Cleaning Upholstery with Natural Furniture Cleaners

Stained upholstery perhaps is the most common dilemma in households. It doesn’t matter whether you’re living in a villa or a furnished rental apartment in Dubai, your upholstery can be easily stained. This is especially the case when you have children and pets. 

Spilt juice, dripped ketchup, food, spilt coffee – things like that happen all the time. But it’s not something to worry about. You can remove these “easy” stains with club soda and a clean cloth. That’s all you need.

It’s actually the problematic stains of urine or pet stains that require more heavy-duty natural furniture cleaners like vinegar. Vinegar removes the stains, kills the bacteria and even gets rid of the odour. 

Natural Furniture Cleaners for Fabric Upholstery

To make your own DIY natural cleaner for fabric upholstery, here’s what you need to do. 

• For the dry upholstery cleaner: Mix equal parts of baking soda and cornflour. The mixture, when applied to the fabric will soak the moisture and remove undesirable odours from the upholstery
• For liquid upholstery cleaner: Combine three parts of warm water with one part of white vinegar and a half tablespoon natural liquid soap. 

Shake the mixture well and spray on the soiled fabric. Use a soft cloth to scrub the stain in a circular motion. Repeat the process until the fabric becomes clean. To remove any excess soap, scrub the area with a cloth damp with warm water.

You can make natural liquid soap by adding grated natural soap to water and simmering it for 15 minutes or until the two ingredients combine.

Natural Furniture Cleaners for Leather Upholstery

Whether it’s that beloved leather chair in your Dubai rental studio or that aged leather couch you’re so fond of – you can’t always save them from stains and discolouration. Thanks to DIY natural cleaners, cleaning leather upholstery is not that complicated. 

• For simple cleaning: Mix one tablespoon of lemon juice with one cup olive oil
• For stain removal: Mix two parts of olive oil with one part of vinegar.

Shake this natural cleaner for leather furniture well and then spray it on the leather. Rub the surface using a soft cloth and repeat if necessary. Using this DIY natural cleaner, you can remove stains, fingerprints and body oils from leather upholstery. The vinegar in it cleans the leather and then evaporates. Use a dry cloth to buff the leather enough for the olive oil to absorb into it. 

Alternatively, you can use a paste of cream of tartar and lemon juice to tackle discolouration spots on your leather upholstery. Apply the paste to the spots and gently wipe them clean. 

Natural Furniture Cleaner Recipes for Synthetic Upholstery

Synthetic fabrics are great for upholstery especially when it’s not removable. Fabrics containing polyester, acrylic, olefin or nylon fibre are easy to clean. Synthetic fabrics respond well to water, which is why you should always opt for water-based cleaning products for them. If you’re looking for water-based natural furniture cleaners, here’s how you can make them at home. 

• Normal: Combine one cup of warm water with half cup vinegar
• To tackle stubborn stains: Add half tablespoon natural liquid soap to the above-mentioned mixture. 

This natural solution for cleaning furniture works best on nylon, plastic and synthetic leather. 

When cleaning synthetic fibres, make sure you use gentle circular motions to remove the stain. Always use a lint-free cloth for this. 

Natural DIY Furniture Cleaning for Upholstery 

When cleaning upholstery with DIY natural products, just follow this basic process.

• Step 1: Spray or apply the natural homemade furniture cleaner to the desired area
• Step 2: Allow the solution to sit long enough for it to penetrate through the fabric
• Step 3: Gently rub that area using a soft clean cloth, until it’s clean
• Step 4: Use a dry, clean cloth to blot it dry.

Natural Wood Furniture Cleaner

If you have a lot of wood furniture in your house, buying off-the-rack furniture cleaning products can prove costly – not to mention that it may be harmful to the environment. 

You can apply two simple natural furniture cleaning product recipes here.

• Mix two parts of lemon juice with one part vinegar and one part linseed oil
• Mix one part of olive oil with one part of white vinegar and one tablespoon lemon juice

Shake them well to combine and then spray on the wood. Use a clean, soft cloth to rub this natural furniture cleaner into the surface. Make sure you align your hand movements with the grain.  These natural cleaning product recipes are only good for sealed wood – do not apply them on varnished wood.

Natural Products for Polishing Wood Furniture

Wood adds a rustic feel and beautiful texture to your home décor. But when it’s not properly taken care of, it can ruin your entire living space. To avoid such mishaps, all you have to do is turn to your kitchen pantry and make up a natural furniture polish mixture for your furniture. 

Like most natural cleaning product recipes for furniture, lemon is the key ingredient. There are two basic natural furniture polish recipes that you can use:

• For varnished furniture: Mix one tablespoon of lemon juice in one cup water. 
• For non-varnished furniture: Mix one tablespoon of lemon juice in one cup olive oil or jojoba oil. 

When using these DIY natural wood polish mixtures, simply spray the all-natural wood polish on the furniture and use a soft cloth to wipe it dry. Once you’re done, clean any remaining residue with cornflour. 

If you don’t have lemon available in your kitchen, you can substitute it with vinegar. When you use these mixtures to polish your wooden furniture, the oil nourishes the wood while lemon cleans it.

With that, we wrap up this post on natural products for cleaning furniture. While home cleaning is an essential aspect of everyday life in Dubai, most professionals barely get time to manage it with their fast-paced lifestyle. Thanks to the availability of cleaning services apps in Dubai, you can now easily get your home cleaned at your convenience. 

If you need something more permanent to take care of cleaning your house and looking after your household, reach out to the Tadbeer service centres. Through Tadbeer, you can easily hire household help and domestic workers that are reliable and more importantly, good at what they do. 

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