Keeping your home clean and dust-free is important to ensure that your home is rid of bacteria, which can be hazardous to your health. Apart from wiping down surfaces, it’s important that you keep your sofas, mattresses, curtains, and carpets clean as well. Read on for 5 tips on how you can keep your upholstery hygienic and fresh!
Keep your upholstery clean and fresh
1. Protect them adequately
The first line of defence is protecting your upholstery adequately. Enter mattress protectors, upholstery protector treatment, leather conditioning, and carpet protectants.
These protective layers will make maintaining your upholstery much easier and slow down any damage from the sun as well. However, do note that they are not foolproof as well.
2. Vacuum them regularly
By regularly, we don’t mean once a year. Here’s how often you should vacuum your sofas, mattresses, curtains and carpets:
- Sofa: Once a week
- Mattress: Once a month
- Curtains: Once every 2 weeks
- Carpet: Once a week
Vacuuming them regularly will help to remove any surface dirt and prevent any dirt from being embedded into the fibres over time. Once the dirt is embedded in the fibres, it will be harder to remove them. It’s also damaging to your upholstery and accelerates wear and tear.
If you have pets at home, you might even want to vacuum more often to get rid of pet hair.
3. Spot-clean stains as soon as possible
While you can protect your upholstery and clean them regularly, accidents do happen. In the event of a pet’s accidental pee, a spilt drink or a toddler’s dirty hands, the key is to spot-clean as soon as possible. Always dab or blot gently instead of rubbing. Rubbing will only push the stain deeper into the item and make it harder to remove.
If you do want to try using a stain remover, always test it in an inconspicuous area first, especially if you’re using it for the first time.
4. Follow the care instructions
Your sofa, carpet, curtain, or mattress will come with care instructions whether in the form of a care tag attached to the item or a separate manual. Keep this information handy so you can reference it when you need it.
5. Hire professional cleaners
Even if you religiously follow the four steps above, we’d recommend hiring professional cleaners at least once every 6 months. If you have pets or people with allergies living in your household, you should consider increasing the frequency of cleaning.
Professional cleaners would know what kind of cleaning methods are suitable for your furniture and furnishings and be able to carry them out appropriately.
For instance, because light-coloured fabric sofas are more prone to showing signs of wear and tear and stains, the professionals would recommend the hot water extraction method. Or if your mattress is a memory foam mattress, the professionals would know that only the UV-C cleaning method is suitable as memory foam mattresses cannot take wet washes.
This article first appeared on Helpling. Helpling is a digital home concierge service with a vision to provide quality living for everyone through their tech-enabled platform and dedicated home advisors. They take care of the time-consuming and dreadful household tasks for you so that you can spend time on other things that matter.
