Cleaning Microfiber Couches: What everybody got wrong

Go ahead….

Search Google for “how to clean a microfiber couch.” Lot’s of results, right?

Go ahead…

Read some of them.

Are you overwhelmed yet?

I was.

The “consensus” was that cleaning with water is bad because it evaporates too slowly–creating more stains than it removes. The solution is to use alcohol. After hours of scrubbing, dabbing, rescrubbing, re-dabbing, and many curses–if you haven’t fainted from inhaling toxic fumes–you’ll transform the couch to like-new-ness.

Maybe. But that’s only if you can make it that far.

Which I never have.

I think I’ve tried about 63 times to use the alcohol method and never had the patience to finish.

I finally said, “screw that! I don’t care what the ‘experts’ on pinterest say. I’m busting out the steam vac!”

So I pulled out this beauty:

Cleaning microfiber with a steam cleanerI thought, “maybe I should used some specialized chemicals for upholstery or something….nah. I’m too impatient to get this baby clean.”

So I start soaking the crap out of that couch.cleaning microfiber couches with a steam vacuumAnd scrubbing. And sucking. And scrubbing. And sucking.

Here’s one cushion cleaned (left) and one uncleaned (right):cleaning microfiber couches with a steam vacuumHoly moly! Pinterest lied to me! Google lied to me!

Feeling quite good about my super fast and easy tactic, I tackled the whole couch, soaking the crap out of it and sucking up murky brown liquid.

cleaning microfiber couches with a steam vacuumAnd a half hour later (+ about 2 hours of drying time), here’s my transformed couch

cleaning microfiber couches with a steam vacuumA-mazing.

So where does this myth come from? I’m guessing it’s either the government or the pharmaceutical companies.

Leave a Reply