Are cleaning products ruining my furniture?

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Yes, your cleaning products could be ruining your furniture. While having a spotless home is important, many cleaning products are too harsh to be using regularly on your furniture. Have no fear. We’re here to break down the do’s and don’ts of cleaning your furniture and save you from the untimely death of your favourite table.

The Problem with Using Cleaning Products on Furniture

Well what’s the big deal?

The answer is there is no one big deal. Using standard cleaning products on furniture could be ruining your furniture, but that’s not the only consequence. It could also be the host of numerous other issues like environmental damage and health risks.

Cleaning Products are Damaging

The first issue is what worried you in the first place. Standard household cleaning products are damaging to your furniture. The ingredients are very harsh. They might be okay for the one-off cleaning. When your child covers the dining table with a sticky, gunky mess, and you wonder if it will ever not leave an icky residue on your hands, then it might be time to bring out the big guns. However, for daily cleaning, the big guns are far too powerful.

Strips Protective Layers

Your furniture comes coated in protective layers put in place by the maker to seal it and keep it like new. When you use harsh products on it all the time, it will eat away at those protective layers and leave your favourite furniture vulnerable to damage.

Shortening the Lifespan of Your Furniture

Now you know how cleaning products will damage your furniture, but what’s the effect of that? That effect is your furniture on the side of the road while you have to stress over finding a replacement. If you’re buying a desk that you plan on having for the next 10 years, and in two years cleaning products have damaged it, you’re cutting the lifespan of that desk by 8 years.

Money Down the Drain

What happens after you leave your 2 year old desk to go die on a garbage hill? You have to buy another. Keep damaging them with the same cleaning products and you’ll go through five desks in 10 years when you could have just had one. These costs add up and come out of your pocket. This isn’t to say that you shouldn’t be spending on furniture, just that the methods you use to clean that furniture matter.

Cleaning Products are Toxic

You spend your life living on your furniture. When you’re touching it daily, you’re bound to carry over traces of what’s on it. People are normally afraid of the bacteria they digest, but there is something far scarier to be worried about. That monster is poisonous ingredients in your cleaning products.

When you clean your furniture, you leave residue of the product you’re cleaning it with. If you wouldn’t drink it, why would you covering everything you touch with it? These chemicals can mess with your hormone balance, your stomach, and even give you cancer.

Bad for the Environment

The chemicals found in everyday cleaning products are harmful for your body and also harmful for Mother Nature. As a result, the products you use get washed down the drain and end up in our rivers, lakes, and crops. Not to mention the plastic waste that accumulates through overuse, and the furniture that ends up in a landfill after being damaged!

10 Harmful Ingredients in Cleaning Products

If you wanted to put a name to the villain, here are some of the harmful ingredients found in your everyday cleaning products:

  1. Chlorine
  2. Ammonia
  3. Sodium Hydroxide
  4. 2-Butoxyethanol
  5. Triclosan
  6. Quarternary Ammonium Compounds
  7. Perchloroethylene
  8. Pthalates
  9. Phenois
  10. Nonylphenol ethoxylates

What You Should be Cleaning Your Furniture With

Most of the time, dusting is what you want to be doing with the majority of your furniture. Your wardrobe isn’t going to get that dirty, now is it? A microfiber cloth is a great material that will trap all that dust that accumulates. Just use it dry, and it will do the trick.

For the trickier messes, warm water is enough to clean most surfaces. Warm water provides great traction, swipe, and wipe away power to keep your furniture spick and span.

Some people like to make safe and natural cleaning mixes for the heavier duty messes. Vinegar and tea tree oil act as great cleaning agents to tackle those sticky messes that need an extra kick.

Cheap, but Effective Cleaning Product

When it comes to cleaning your furniture, standard cleaning products are far too harsh to be using every day. Switching to a microfibre cloth for dusting and warm water for other messes are a good way to keep your home clean without damaging your lovely furniture.

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