Dear Jenny: Cleaning Upholstery

Dear Jenny:

I noticed in this post, you mentioned you used outdoor velvet on your new upholstery. How amazing must that be! I wondered if the linen on your new gray sofa was also indoor/outdoor? If not, I would love to know what cleaning supplies you use on the upholstered pieces in your house. I have four children and I feel like there might be something to those clear plastic covers they used to put on everything back in the 50s!! Ha!!

Thanks,
Kelly P

Hi Kelly! I am the HUGEST (and completely un-sponsored) fan of Folex upholstery and carpet cleaner. It is so incredibly easy to use. Basically you dose the stain with the spray, let it sit for a sec, and then sort of rub it in with your finger. The stain will disappear before your eyes and won't damage your carpet or fabric! The best part is there is no rinsing required at all. You can blot up the cleaning liquid with a towel if you want though. Fast and so easy!!

Want to see it in action? I got this adorable little kids settee at a flea market last year. I love the chippy guilding on the frame.

The upholstery is really old, but it's still in good shape. I'm waiting to change out the fabric until I have the other fabrics in the girls room nailed down. So really, I hadn't done anything to the piece other than clean it since buying it last year. It held up well for a while, but then recently we had some play dates at our house and there were a couple of messes on the piece:

Pen is always the hardest thing for me to get out of fabric. Here's the 'during' shot, after a couple sprays of Folex. You can see the black ink is starting to disappear:

About 20 seconds later, the pen was completely gone.

The whole piece cleaned up beautiful (with almost no smell) in about five minutes.

It was wet for a couple hours, but the stains were totally gone after the cleaner dried.

I'm glad it cleaned up so well so we can keep using it until it's reupholstered. It really is one of my favorite little pieces of furniture. It's just the right scale for a kids room and is a perfect prop for impromptu photo shoots of sisters (that love each other a lot).

Do you readers have any tried and true upholstery/carpet cleaning tools or products to share with Kelly?

Spring Cleaning

The weather is not great this week (rainy), but in my gut I know that spring is finally here to stay in Boston. It's been a long winter and I've got the itch to do some serious spring cleaning.


I am in such a good mood when my house is really deep-down clean. With two toddlers in the house, I feel like I can barely keep it "tidy" most days, let alone scrubbed down and organized.


My husband and I were talking about this the other day - about how hard it can be sometimes to keep a really clean house with children. I feel like it's been especially hard since I've been working so much lately and Michael's in the middle of finals. There just aren't enough hours in the day.


And here's a dirty little secret: I actually hate cleaning. LOVE having a clean house, but don't especially love the act of cleaning a toilet or doing the dishes (there's no dishwasher in our super old house).


It's definitely not in the budget right now, but I get fliers all the time for cleaning services. I've been surprised at how cheap some of them are - only about $15 per hour. I'm sure a lot of good could be done in just a few hours a week or every other week.


So, what do you readers think about hiring a cleaning person? Do you do it? Would you do it if you could? Are you/would you be embarrassed about admitting it to friends, family and coworkers?