Happy Holidays from your fellow cleaning fanatics at Microfiber Wholesale!
While we will be closed for a few days to enjoy time with our family and friends, we don’t want to leave you in a cleaning lurch. So here are a few cleaning tips and tricks you’re sure to need before the ball drops on New Year's Eve!
For many, the holidays are full of stickiness, from tacky trees, to craft glue, to taped up decorations and more! The good news is that ALL the sticky-yuckies of the holidays, be it a Christmas tree smear, a Hanukkah craft project dribble, or Kwanzaa Decor tape residue, can be easily removed.
Get your hands on some De-Solv-It or Goo Gone (direct competitors that both work great, though as a professional my favorite is the De-Solv-It Contractors’ Solvent). Both products are safe on anything from fine wood floors to clothes to even hair full of putty and slime (don’t ask how we learned that one)!
Just apply, wait a few seconds, and wipe up the mess with a microfiber towel. For stubborn stuck on stickers & sap, use a plastic razor to scrape up the mess without risking cutting yourself or damaging your surfaces.
The festival of lights can be beautiful to behold, but a pain in the tuchus to clean up after! If your menorah is covered with intricate designs filled with wax, fear not, as your freezer can fix it. Pop your menorah in the freezer for a few minutes, as the cold will make the wax hard and brittle, so it practically pops off in chunks.
For intricate spots, a little plastic scraping pic scrigit can flick out the stubborn bits without scratching or snapping like the toothpicks your Bubby always used. After you’ve removed most of the wax, if your menorah is metal, a little hot water and dish soap is all you need to remove the final residue and make it shine.
If your menorah is too delicate for a bath, that same De-Solv-It or Goo Gone we used for the tree sap works great on wax too! Once your menorah is clean and wax-free, buff it to a beautiful shine with a plush microfiber towel, soft enough to baby even the fanciest family heirloom.
Let’s face it, some people just can’t hold their eggnog! Whether it’s over-indulging in the spiked punch, undercooked Christmas Turkey, or too many sweets, many a holiday party involves an unwanted christening of the new carpet or couch.
No need to fear your home will stink for the rest of the new year if you keep a bottle of Odoban and Tide Hygienic Clean on standby! Odoban not only removes the smell, it kills the germs that are causing the stink in the first place.
While real carpet cleansers are designed to foam less, Tide’s incredible stain fighting power is great on any fabric fiber, including carpet and upholstery—as long as you use it sparingly. Their new hygienic formula can free up even the most stubborn organic soils.
First, scoop up the rough stuff with some paper towels. Next, mix up a bowl of hot water and drizzle of Tide, grab a microfiber towel, and plunge it into the water, then wring it out. Scrub the offending area till it’s visibly clean, and blot dry with a towel (step on them to force water out of the padding).
Then mix up a bowl of Odoban (follow manufacturer instructions) and blot it onto the area and let it sit at least 20 minutes before drying the area again with more towels. Finally, run a fan in the room till the stain air dries, leaving it fresh as a daisy (carpet padding holds onto water, so run the fan longer than you think).
Decorating your home for holidays is magical, but undoing the holiday cheer can be anything but merry! Spray-on Fake Snow can create a dreamy effect on windows, but is a nightmare to get off if left on too long.
The key to getting your glass sparkling again are a plastic razor, Dawn Professional Dish Soap, a scrubbing sponge, and a glass cleaning towel. Insiders know that Dawn Professional formula has more active detergents than any formula P&G makes, so just 1oz can make 10 gallons of soapy dish water!
A drizzle of Dawn in a bowl of hot water and scrubbing sponge should be all you need to scrub off all the snowy mess. For any stubborn spots, the plastic razor will scrape off the stuck bits with ease.
Finally, flick a little more fresh Dawn water on the glass and wipe it dry with the glass cleaning towel. The special weave of the fibers literally pull of any residue and lint, leaving a streak-free, lint-free shine in a flash with no fancy squeegee training required.
Whether it’s a Kwanzaa Kinara, Hanukkah Menorah, or festive Christmas Centerpiece, all of them have dripped wax on their holiday host’s tablecloth at some point of the night! Don’t despair that grandma’s embroidered tablecloth is forever ruined, just grab an old paper grocery bag and your clothing iron and get to work.
First, use the old freezer trick from the Menorah wax hack to freeze the tablecloth for a few minutes so you can pick off the big bits of wax easily. Next, rip up the paper bag into a few big flat pieces and place one on your ironing board. Then lay down your tablecloth and top it with another piece of paper, so you have a nice waxy sandwich.
Use your iron on the hottest setting the fabric can tolerate and iron on top of the paper and watch with amazement as the heat melts the wax and draws it up into the fibers of the bag. As soon as you see a section of paper get saturated, take it away and put down a fresh patch of paper and keep ironing till all the wax is removed (don’t forget to swap the bottom paper occasionally too).
While most tablecloths will be all set with just the ironing trick, any final residue on stubborn situations can be laundered out easily by pre-treating the patch with a few sprays of De-Solv-It or Goo Gone.
Do you have a Holiday cleaning disaster that we didn’t address? Send your cleaning questions to us, and we’ll be happy to help. We may even mention you by name in a future cleaning article! Till then, have a wonderful holiday full of great memories, and we look forward to teaching you more cleaning tricks next year!
