Homemade Furniture Cleaner

It’s a little early for Halloween, but I wanted to show you what’s happened to my furniture. The rain finally quit, but the extreme humidity left a moldy, green haze on everything. Pretty gross.

It got me thinking about furniture cleaners/polish, and how I hate the petroleum smell of store-bought. It lingers and doesn’t do anything good for indoor air quality.

Reading about how museums clean their prized possessions provides some good ideas. Most of the advice–regular dry dusting in combination with maintaining optimal humidity and protecting from weather extremes of heat and light, comes too late for me in view of the picture above.

Looking over homemade cleaner recipes, I searched for a cleaner/polish with a minimum of water-based ingredients like lemon juice or vinegar, but with some of their cleaning power.

Homemade Furniture Cleaner/Polish

1/2 cup olive oil

2 T. lemon juice or vinegar

several drops essential oil(s) of choice (totally optional)

Combine in a jar or bottle with a tight-fitting lid. Shake well before each use. Pour a little on a dry, soft, cotton rag and rub into wood. Buff gently with a clean, dry cloth to remove excess polish (too much left on the finish will attract dust).

A small dowel sharpened in a pencil sharpener and wrapped in a cleaning cloth can help get the grunge out of intricate carvings. All the experts seem to agree that dry dusting is the best, safest way to do your regular cleaning, but a dry rag wasn’t going to faze the green mold.

Here’s the after pic:

Much less scary.

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