Vacuuming Your Sofa To Prolong Its Life
As you vacuum the floor and carpet, don’t leave out the sofa, chairs, or even the ottoman. Granted, vacuuming can feel like a never-ending chore, especially since everyone from upholstery manufacturers, cleaning blogs to health care personnel keeps insisting that you do it frequently. Once or twice a week suffices for the average household, while for those with kids and pets this will need to be more frequent. Vacuuming your sofa will aid in keeping it looking elegant, and enable it to last for longer due to the action or removing the dirt and grime that’s responsible for breaking down the fibres of the material.
It’s not just about the abrasive soiling that is in the furniture. Those food crumbs that are left behind from the snacks enjoyed while on the cosy cushions are a magnet for insects and rodents. With ants, cockroaches and even rats rummaging around the furniture, there will be more damage meted out of the unit. From the tiny creatures nibbling at the upholstery fibres, to the larger rodents ripping the material with their sharp claws and teeth – this is not a fate that you want for your elegant sofa. With regular vacuuming, the root of the problem – those food crumbs attracting the pests, are prevented from accumulating rapidly within the set, thus helping in warding off the unwanted guests.
As you pass the vacuum over the surface of the upholstery, remember to lift off the cushions from the set. Clean under the cushions, and also pay particular attention to the nooks around the frame. Remember to regularly rotate the cushions, in order to evenly distribute the fillings, and enable it to have uniform wear. Actually, the simple act of flipping the cushion can bring a different look and feel to the furniture. For the furniture with slipcovers or throws, these should be washed regularly – at least once a week.
While vacuuming is important, more is needed to keep your sofa in top condition. This is where deep cleaning comes in. The frequency with which this will be done will depend on the kind of traffic handled by the sofa. For the task itself, it is recommended that you hire professionals, to ensure that it is done appropriately.
Giving Your Sofa A Thorough Wash
Different factors come into play when the sofa cleaning needs to be carried out. For starters, the upholsteries vary from one set to the next. The cleaning processes required for natural fabric sofas like wool or silk are different form this used with the artificial units such as acrylic sofas. Leather sofas are in a whole other ballpark altogether, especially with their sensitivity to the pH levels of the cleaning agents used. As such, it is imperative that the appropriate cleaning products are used for your particular type of upholstery. You don’t want cases where the dye treatments get bleached out, the fibres get corroded, or even stains being made to set more permanently on the material.
Next is the level of soiling involved. How long was it since the sofas was last given a deep clean? Are there particularly troublesome stains to deal with? Heavily soiled sofas, those with stains like coffee, ink spots, or pet urine stains – these will call for more powerful cleaning processes to be used. It’s an intricate balancing act, where the goal is to ensure that the grime and stains are got rid of without posing a risk to the furniture.
What of the drying time? For the sofas where wet cleaning methods will be used, you want to be sure that the furniture will not take days to dry. The longer that the furniture remains wet, the higher the chances that mould or mildew will grow in it. The fungi growths lead to a whole set of problems. For starters they will produce spores, which increase the allergen concentration in the room, and reduce the indoor air quality. Some species of the fungi can also release mycotoxins into the environment, which affect the body in different ways, with effects on the liver and even the central nervous system. The
mould and mildew stians that result from the infestation are also unsightly, coming with a variant of colours that clash with the rest of the dyes and patterns on the sofa. Then there is the inconvenience that comes with having the sofa out of commission for days, since you will not be able to sit on a wet sofa. Such reasons are why the professional sofa cleaning companies add drying systems to their range of equipment. Here, powerful vacuums are used to extract the moisture from the upholstery, a process that can be so effective that the drying time of the sofa is reduced from days to as little as three hours. For the DIYers, this kind of equipment is usually expensive to rent or purchase, yet skipping it can put the sofa and the rest of the household members at risk. You can avoid the hustle involved and simply hire the professionals to carry out the sofa cleaning.
Get Expert Sofa Care
With the amount of money that you spent purchasing your sofa, you want to ensure that it receives proper care, lasts longer, and that you will be able to enjoy using it all through. You can get this by bringing in a professional sofa cleaning team. In addition to ensuring that the right products and processes are used for your furniture, there is also the welcome benefit of reduced disruption to your day-to-day activities. After all, with a well-resourced sofa cleaning company, the task can be accomplished in a fraction of the time that you would have taken had you decided to roll up your sleeves and take on the intense scrubbing job yourself. Given that this is their bread and butter, they come with powerful equipment that enables them to deliver a deep clean to your sofa, flushing out the grime quickly. After the drying processes have been carried out, the furniture can be ready to be used within the same afternoon that it has been worked on. Just be sure to check the credentials of the sofa cleaning company that you hire, to ascertain that it will deliver on its mandate.
