Living room: Sofas and upholstery

What you sit on in the living room becomes the center of attention when you have company and guests. Cleaning your sofas, chair, and your upholstery is going to be needed to cut back on oils from the body, to clean stains, and to keep odors from sticking in your furniture.

Weekly you will need to run the vacuum over your upholstery. There are attachments that come with most all vacuums that will take hair, pet dander, and dust from your furniture. What you are going to do is sweep the crumbs from out in the cushions, sweep off the cushions and the armrests, and sweeping between the cushions to get all the crumbs out. You can prevent crumbs in the living room furniture by not allowing anyone to eat in the living room but we all know that is really hard to do!

When you are cleaning the upholstery in your living room, be sure to rub against the grain of the material. This will keep your material from being too matted down and will prolong the lovely look of your furniture for months or years to come.

Your couches and chairs that are upholstered with fabric will often need a good cleaning by shaking or beating them outside. All types of dust and dander can gather on and in the fabric and will not come out when you just sweep them off all the time. It only takes a few minutes, but taking your cushions outside and beating your hand or a broom against the cushions is going to beat out more of that dust and keep it from staying in your furniture. This keeps your furniture looking great and can help in saving the color of your materials longer.

If you have found that your pets (or maybe you) are losing hair and it is all over the furniture you can clean this up fast. All you need is a wet cloth or rag, and rub it over the fabric of the furniture. The wetness will pick up the hair that is clinging to the material leaving your furniture looking great. This is something that you can do while talking on the telephone, when you are getting ready to get a movie on for the night or when you are waiting for your dishes to air dry.

The arm rests and the cushions of your furniture are one of the very first things on your sofas and chairs that will make your furniture and chairs look older than what they really are. You can take off the slip covers on your cushions and purchase new ‘insides’ for your cushions from local furniture or sewing stores if they are stinky or if they have lost their ‘cushiony’ feel. 

The arms of your sofas and chairs can also be refilled with a bit of fluff by grabbing a bag of filler from the local sewing store.  Turning your furniture upside down, you can often find a way to put more stuffing in and puff up the arms of your furniture once again so they look brand new!

You should not use leather cleaner on vinyl upholstery instead use this simple recipe.

To make 1 pint/570ml

• 4 tablespoons washing powder
• 8 tablespoons baking soda
• 16 floz/450ml warm water

Mix the washing powder and baking powder together in a bowl and add the water. To use, moisten a soft cloth with the solution and rub the vinyl surface with it, concentrating on the arms, seat and headrest; then rinse well with clean water and wipe dry.

Sprinkle Baking Soda on upholstery to eliminate the day-to-day odors that settle in them. Wait 15 minutes, or longer for tough odors, and vacuum up. Not only will your furniture smell sweet but it will eliminate odors in your vacuum cleaner.