5 Tips for Cleaning Patio Furniture

It’s that time of year again. The time when people tend to spend as much time outside as they do in (if not more). This means that the patio furniture on the front porch and back deck has to be impeccably clean and presentable.
If you have some patio furniture and you’d like a few ideas on how you can keep it clean during the spring and summer seasons, we have five tips that will keep your pieces looking great during the sunshine, rain and everything in between.

Plastic furniture. If your patio furniture happens to be made of classic, the main thing to keep in mind is while it may be durable, without cleaning it on a weekly basis, it can start to look a bit dingy. Usually, all you need to do is get a bucket of warm soap and water, wash the pieces down with a sponge and then rinse them off with a hose. However, if your furniture happens to be white, it’s a good idea to add a bit of bleach or hydrogen peroxide and let it sit for about 15-20 minutes before the final rinse.

Aluminum furniture. This kind of furniture can handle soap and water too. The only other thing that we suggest is that once the furniture is dry, apply a thin coat of high quality car wax in order to protect it until it’s time for you to wash it again.

Wooden furniture. Although the general concept for cleaning plastic furniture is the same for wood, one thing that we do advise is that you wear some rubber gloves (to protect your hands from possible splinters) and that you go with a kind of soap that’s specifically made to clean wood like perhaps Murphy’s Oil Soap. A denture brush is pretty effective for hard to reach crevices. Also, make sure that after you rinse the furniture that you use a soft rag to dry the furniture off.

Wicker furniture. Wicker is one of the most beautiful kinds of patio furniture, but if you try and clean it with soap and water, it can prove to be pretty frustrating. Our suggestion is that you put a small attachment on your vacuum cleaner and then vacuum the furniture to get the dirt and twigs off of it. You can then follow that up with wiping the pieces down with a damp cloth.

Upholstery, glass tabletops and patio umbrellas. When it comes to your patio furniture’s “accessories”, we have a few suggestions. For your cushions and pillows, if they are made of vinyl rather than fabric, mix a teaspoon of dishwashing detergent and Borax into a quart of warm water and put the cushions into the solution for 5-10 minutes before rinsing them off and letting them air dry. For glass tabletops, you can use regular window cleaner although if some candle wax has hardened on them, you can loosen it up by blowing warm air from your blow dryer on it for a couple of minutes and then applying some rubbing alcohol to remove any residue. For patio umbrellas, if you’ve noticed any mildew, to remove it mix ¾ of bleach to a gallon of water and then wipe it down with a rag. That should do the trick.