Homemade Garden Furniture Cleaner For Wood
by Silvia Marks
(London)
Your garden can be the ideal spot for relaxation if you take proper care of it and pay attention to the patio furniture. At the beginning of Spring, everyone who has a neat and beautiful garden starts thinking about placing the furniture outside so they can enjoy the beautiful weather and breathe the pleasant blossom scents. If you are one of those people who love sitting around the garden table together with your friends and family, you need to prepare it for usage (i.e. remodeling, repainting). Rather than buying new furniture, repair what you have instead. If you do it right, you can enjoy the beauty of your garden furniture for the years to come.
As far as the wooden tables and stools are concerned, they require some special attention throughout the year. Under no circumstances should you leave them outside exposed to a pouring rain or freezing temperatures and snow. These factors have an extremely negative impact on the condition of wooden furniture. Put them in a dry, safe place and once you take them out of the basement at the beginning of Spring, equip yourself with the right tools to make them look like brand new.
Apart from painting and repairing the furniture, you have do to some cleaning as well. You can find a wide variety of wooden cleaners on the shelf at the supermarket but spending a fortune on a cleaners of doubtful quality is, by all means, unnecessary. You can make your own detergent that would do even a better job than the commercial ones.
Here are the easiest mixtures intended to make any wooden garden furniture ideally clean and perfectly polished in the blink of an eye.
The golden rule here is “Never use a multipurpose cleaner.” Otherwise you risk damaging the wooden surface for good.
In general the wood should be treated with care and precision so prior to cleaning, do some dusting with natural materials like feathers or a cotton rug. When it comes to dusting, you can rely on the help of a homemade cleaner as well: take a few drops of lemon oil and mix them with the juice you squeeze out of one lemon, add ten drops of olive oil and apply with a microfiber cloth.
Cleaning is the next step, which takes the most time – consuming one as well. Although pure water is not among the ingredients recommended for wood cleaning, the sticky areas might need some treatment that includes warm water and dissolved mild soap. Apply to the wood with a soft, slightly damp cloth.
One of the homemade, eco-friendly cleaning detergents contain equal parts of the following ingredients: olive oil, kind of a weak alcohol, turpentine and the irreplaceable lemon juice, known to every housewife and to professional cleaners like Sparkling Carpets for its excellent cleaning features. Apply the mixture to the furniture, let it stay for a couple of minutes and remove with a soft cloth. This recipe is suitable for removing stubborn dirt and polishing the wood as well.
Another easy recipe that serves as an incredible polisher to your outdoor furniture contains equal parts of vinegar, boiled linseed oil and turpentine. It is important to note that the mixture must be immediately applied to the wooden surfaces because it gets unusable too quickly.
If you compare a neglected garden table to a perfectly maintained and polished one, you will see the great difference so don't waste any more time and polish your furniture by using a few drops of vinegar, mixed with half a cup of oil. Apply to the wood and let it get dry for approximately half an hour or so. Then remove the oily traces with a dry, soft rug.
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