Furniture Cleaning Tips for Pet Owners

Our pets are integral members of the family that bring joy, laughter, and love to our lives. Unfortunately, with that affection and happiness, they also tend to bring a lot of mess. Anyone with pets knows that dirty paws on the sofa and fur shedding are inevitable. 

Try out these tips for keeping your furniture in great shape while still allowing your dog or cat free reign of the house! 

Remove Pet Hair

You may love your pet’s fur when they’re cuddled up against you at night, but you probably don’t love it when you lie down on the couch and inhale it through your nostrils. Pet hair and dandruff can cause intense allergies and irritation. To reduce the amount of pet hair left on your furniture, dampen a pair of rubber gloves or a sponge and glide your hands across your sofa. The hair will clump together, making it come up with minimal effort. Classic lint rollers and hair magnet brushes can also be great at helping to pick up your pet’s pesky fur from your sofa.

Bonus Tip: Rather than vacuuming your furniture to get rid of dog hair, run your vacuum cleaner’s upholstery attachment over your pet. You’re cutting out the middleman and sending all that loose hair straight into the vacuum cleaner bag or cylinder! Some dogs love to be vacuumed, and others are uncomfortable with it, so be sure to perform a test run. Practice vacuuming your pup with the vacuum off so they get used to you brushing them with the vacuum attachment. Then try and turn the vacuum on and monitor their reaction. You don’t want to keep trying to vacuum a stressed-out dog, as stress can lead to even more shedding. 

Work Out Stains

There are a few different ways to best approach a pet stain on your carpet or upholstery, depending on how quickly you spot it.

Soak up a fresh stain with newspaper or paper towels to expel excess fluid. Once you’ve absorbed as much of the mess as possible, rinse it with cool water or an appropriate cleaning solution and blot it dry. Dust it over with baking soda to prevent any odour from setting in.

Dried stains present a little more of a challenge. For these, you’ll want to use a carpet or upholstery cleaner—they do make ones specific for pet damage—and a pet odour neutralizer. If you can still see the stain once it’s dried after a thorough scrubbing, another round with a regular carpet stain remover should do the trick!

Eliminate Odour

The nose of a pet owner usually grows immune to the aromas of their animal, so you may not notice them until they get worse or are pointed out to you. Your best option for tackling pet odour is prevention. Furnish your home with pet-friendly materials like microfiber and leather and use an air purifier. The purifier will strip the air of your dog or cat’s smell and prevent it from clinging to the furniture.

If the odour is particularly bad, you’ll want to steam clean your furniture or have it treated professionally. A quick DIY option is to remove all linens and cushion covers and wash them in a mixture of powerful detergent with a quarter cup of apple cider vinegar. For furniture and upholstery, sprinkle baking soda on the surface, rub it in, leave it overnight, and vacuum it up in the morning!

These tips are great for keeping furniture destruction at bay, but sometimes our couches and sofas are beyond repair. If you are looking for a new, durable piece of pet-friendly furniture to last you years to come, Conway Furniture has you covered. We have a wide range of leather and microfiber living room furniture pieces that are perfect for reducing extreme wear and tearing from your furry friends.

Contact us today at (519)291-3820 or stop by in-store, and our experts will be happy to help you find the perfect furniture to fit the needs of both you and your four-legged friends!