Cleaning Microfiber

While there are surely plenty of chemical cleaners to sufficiently lift stains away from your sofa, household laundry soap will also work. Plus, it’s a hell of a lot cheaper.

Our sofa gets dirty. We can blame the dog for most of it, but seriously, we’re slobs. We eat on them, spill stuff on them… we use them. And for the first year we didn’t need to clean them. Years two, three and four we’ve had to because, well, they get gross, mostly because of the dog. She leaves body oils and drool wherever she lays down, both of which discolor the microfiber microsuede fabric that covers our sofa. Makes you want to come over and sit on them, doesn’t it?

Originally when the sofa would be soiled I used actual cleaners made specifically for the type of fabric it had. However, they must be quite harsh because it wore the fabric covering the seats so thin that they began to tear… again, mostly because of our dog. It had gotten to the point that we had taken out the head and armrest covers that came with the sofa and chair-and-a-half from the closet and put them on to cover some of the stains, and put an old department store quilt to cover the rips and tears on the seats. Well, eventually those head and armrests needed to be washed, so with the rest of the dog bedding, I threw them into the wash (even though it said not to on the tag) and sure enough, they came out of the dryer looking like new.

Figuring that if Tide in the washing machine could clean them that well, what would it do if directly applied to the stains on the couch? Mixing a few drops of detergent with about a quart of hot water, I tested out my theory on a section of the couch using an old white rag. Sure enough, the stains started coming off, so I continued cleaning the rest of the couch. I took a dry white rag afterwards and went over the areas I had washed to wipe up any excess liquids. Once dry, I used the vacuum cleaner upholstery brush to fluff the fibers back up.

When on a tight budget it is sometimes necessary to use what you have on hand. However, sometimes those fixes you find actually work better than the products designed for that specific purpose.