Caring for furniture in modern conditions - This is a huge arsenal of special chemicals. But it will be useful for housewives to find out information on how to use simple and safe means. You can learn how to organize furniture care at home from the material provided.
Here are useful tips for caring for furniture using the most common products to remove dirt and stains. By following all these rules for caring for furniture, you can extend its service life and maintain an attractive appearance for many years.
Use simple tips for caring for furniture and this will help you organize comfort and order in your home without the threat of harm to the health of your household through the use of safe products. Instructions for cleaning upholstered and cabinet furniture can be used both at home and in the hotel business.
Instructions for caring for wooden cabinet furniture
Housewives have to do a thorough cleaning of their apartment twice a year. This labor-intensive event is usually carried out in spring and autumn, in the off-season. A lot of dust accumulates in hard-to-reach places, and it is sometimes impossible to completely get rid of it without moving the furniture. However, when moving furniture, it is easy to damage the surface of the floor, regardless of whether it is planked or covered with linoleum. Parquet floors coated with clear varnish are especially sensitive to damage. The proposed instructions for caring for furniture will greatly simplify the task.
To avoid scratches on your floor, you need to take certain precautions. I recommend placing pieces of soft thick fabric, felt, felt or foam rubber under the legs or stands of cabinets, bedside tables, tables, sofas.
It is best to glue pads made of soft material to the legs of chairs and stools, which will reliably protect the floor from scratches - after all, these pieces of furniture have to be moved several times a day, for example, when sitting down to have lunch or work at a desk.
It happens that the doors of cabinets or bedside tables are difficult to close. This usually happens if the floor is uneven. To correct this when caring for wooden furniture, you need to place a piece of thick cardboard or foam under one or two parallel legs.
If the drawers of a desk or sectional furniture no longer move freely inside, then when caring for cabinet furniture, you can rub their ends with a piece of soap or a paraffin candle.
Caring for polished, varnished and glossy furniture at home using simple means
Simple care of polished furniture at home will preserve its attractive appearance. You should not place anything hot on the polished surface of a table or bedside table: a cup of tea, coffee, a plate of steaming soup, etc. Polishing does not withstand exposure to high temperatures, and contact with hot objects can end sadly - both for the furniture and for you - whitish spots will appear, which are sometimes impossible to get rid of. Don’t be lazy once again to place special napkins or coasters under the hot plate. If you are dining at a polished table, you need to cover it with a thick tablecloth or oilcloth. Under a thin tablecloth, you can place a folded fabric (for example, flannel).
If you follow these rules, caring for polished furniture with home remedies will not require much time spent on cleaning.
If ink is spilled on polished furniture, you need to rub the stain with a rag soaked in beer and let the surface dry, then lubricate it with wax and clean it with a soft woolen rag.
Any furniture, both wooden and plastic, should not be installed in close proximity to heating appliances. The distance between the furniture and the central heating radiators must be at least 40-50 cm, otherwise the furniture may warp and the polish may fade and change color. Polished and colored plastic furniture quickly fades under the bright rays of the sun.
When caring for polished furniture, wipe off dust with a soft, clean cloth, always dry - exposure to water, especially hot water, will cause the polish to become dull, and white spots and stripes may appear on it. In order to protect the polish from drying out and small cracks appearing on the surface when caring for lacquered furniture at home, sometimes it needs to be wiped with a special cleaner for polished furniture.
A similar composition for caring for glossy furniture at home can be prepared at home. Mix vegetable oil and dry white wine in equal parts, add a few drops of ammonia - and the product is ready. This mixture is applied in a very thin, even layer to the surface of the furniture, from which the dust has previously been wiped with a dry soft cloth. After 15-20 minutes, when the mixture has dried, gently polish it with light circular movements using a cotton swab or cloth.
If the furniture is lined with bog oak veneer, it can be polished and refreshed using the following product. You need to take a wax candle stub and cut the wax very finely with a sharp knife. Then pour the resulting powder with dry white wine or beer (150-200 g) and add 1 tsp. ground coffee. Boil this mixture over low heat for 1-2 minutes and, after cooling slightly, apply it using a cotton swab in an even, thin layer on the surface. The composition should dry for 30-40 minutes, then the furniture should be rubbed until shiny with a soft, dry cloth.
You can try to remove white stains on polished furniture caused by contact with hot objects by rubbing the stain with wax, covering it with filter paper and pressing it lightly with a not too hot iron. After some time, wipe with a soft cloth.
To add shine to a light polish, furniture can be wiped with olive oil by lightly sprinkling it on a cotton swab or soft cloth. After this, the furniture should be thoroughly wiped with a dry, clean cloth.
A greasy stain on upholstered furniture will disappear if you put clay soaked in vinegar on the stain.
Stains from greenery, especially on light, polished furniture, can be easily removed with an ordinary eraser.
Fresh acid stains should be immediately moistened with ammonia and then rinsed with water. If ammonia is not available, it can be replaced with a solution of bicarbonate of soda (1 part soda to 5 parts water).
To add freshness to mahogany furniture polish, use the following composition: mix dry red wine and vegetable oil in equal parts and add a few drops of ammonia. The same product perfectly removes dirt from furniture that is difficult to wipe off with a dry cloth.
If polished furniture is infested with flies, you can wipe it with a cotton swab or a cloth soaked in a small amount of cold beer.
The varnish that covers the furniture will shine again if you treat the furniture with a swab dipped in kerosene and carefully polish it with a soft woolen cloth.
Filling loose joints with epoxy resin
If the joint pieces don't fit perfectly, epoxy resin can help! Unfortunately, none of the types of wood glue will help you - they all require a perfect connection. A piece of paper won't help fill this gap either. But epoxy resin is suitable for filling cracks of any size and will simplify furniture repair.
Epoxy resin does not adhere well to old glue, so first remove as much of the glue as possible using a file or coarse sandpaper. Most epoxies need to be applied within the first five minutes of mixing, but you can buy slow-curing epoxy if you need more time.
Caring for unpolished and matte furniture at home
When caring for unpolished furniture, it should be wiped with a dry soft cloth or treated with special attachments for a vacuum cleaner. In case of heavy contamination, you can remove dust and dirt from the furniture with a damp cloth, but be sure to wipe the surface of the furniture dry afterwards.
When caring for unpolished furniture at home, it can be renewed using a specially prepared composition. Place the finely planed wax in a glass jar and fill it 2/3 full with turpentine. Place the jar in a short metal bowl filled with very hot water. When the wax is completely melted, you need to mix the mass well.
Before treating with this composition, you should wipe the entire surface with a cloth soaked in warm soapy water, then with a clean damp cloth and wipe dry. Then apply a mixture of turpentine and wax, distributing the mixture evenly in a thin layer. The mixture should be left on the furniture for 24-36 hours, then thoroughly rubbed and polished with a woolen cloth or a piece of felt.
It happens that unpolished furniture lined with valuable wood develops swellings that spoil its appearance. This problem can be helped by caring for matte furniture, removing bubbles with a hot iron. This is done like this: apply 3-4 sheets of white thick paper to the surface of the furniture and iron the swollen area through the paper. If this does not work, you can carefully puncture the bubble with a sharp, thin instrument and pour a little glue into the resulting hole. After this, iron the damaged area of furniture again with a hot iron through several layers of paper.
However, this method is not suitable for polished furniture. If the polish is damaged, you should contact a furniture specialist to repair it.
We often use straw furniture to create the interior of balconies or loggias, and kitchen areas. However, in such rooms the most dust, soot, and fumes from a gas stove and various household appliances accumulate. Straw furniture gets dirty very quickly and requires cleaning. It can be cleaned quite well with a brush dipped in a strong solution of table salt. This returns it to its original light color.
If straw furniture begins to turn yellow over time, it can be bleached a little by wiping it with a cloth generously moistened with a not very strong solution of potassium permanganate (a few crystals of potassium permanganate per 1 glass of warm water). After cleaning, the furniture should be wiped with a clean damp cloth and dried thoroughly.
Heavily soiled straw furniture can be carefully washed with moderately hot water in which a small amount of washing powder or laundry soap is dissolved. Then the straw is washed with clean water using a rag and dried well.
We strengthen the hinges on the doors
If the door does not close all the way or leaves a gap, you can use a pad on one of its hinges to solve this annoying problem. The pad will raise the top or bottom half of the door, depending on which hinge you install it on.
The lining can be made from one or more playing cards. Remove the loop and then cut the card backing to fit perfectly. Place the pad in the recess and make holes for the fasteners using an awl or screwdriver. Then simply install the hinge in its original place, securing it with fasteners.
Rules for caring for upholstered furniture
Upholstered furniture also needs regular care. When caring for upholstered furniture upholstered in fleecy fabrics or tapestry, you can clean it with a vacuum cleaner or a not too hard brush specially designed for this purpose.
If furniture upholstered with synthetic fleecy fabrics is very dusty, you can clean it in this simple way. Soak a thin cotton cloth or gauze in a strong, warm solution of table salt, wring it out and wrap it around a brush with stiff bristles. After treating the furniture with such a brush, you need to clean the upholstery with a dry and softer brush.
Contaminated upholstered furniture can also be cleaned this way. Prepare a solution of warm water and table vinegar at the rate of 1 tbsp. l. for 1 liter of water. Dampen a large enough clean rag in this solution to cover the entire surface of the furniture. Cover the furniture with this rag and knock it out with soft blows of a special beater or a regular stick. As the rag becomes dirty, rinse it in clean water and, after moistening it in a vinegar solution, continue the process. Finally, clean the furniture with a soft, dry brush. These simple rules for caring for upholstered furniture will help maintain its beautiful appearance for many years.
The main causes of furniture contamination
During use, the appearance of the product inevitably changes for the worse. This happens for several reasons.
Modern furniture.
- Leftover food.
- Smoking, alcohol.
- Life activity of animals - scratching, etc.
- Accidental ingestion of dyes and cosmetics.
- Lack of regular cleaning.
- Stains of human fat, sweat, blood.
Remember! Even the most careful use of furniture does not keep it in perfect condition. Therefore, from time to time it is worth cleaning using special products.
Caring for leather furniture at home
Dust from upholstered furniture covered with leather should be wiped off with a damp soft cloth. From time to time, it is good to wipe such furniture with a cotton swab or sponge dipped in beaten egg white, after removing the dust with a dry soft cloth. Egg white gives the upholstery a shine and makes the furniture look like new.
Over time, the paint on such upholstery may peel in places, and the furniture appears worn out. To renew worn leather or faux leather upholstery, you can lightly touch up the damaged areas with a high-quality shoe polish in a matching shade. The cream should be applied to a clean and dry furniture surface and rubbed gently with a soft cloth. Caring for leather furniture at home includes washing, polishing and vacuuming.
You can buy special paint for leather of the required color. Applied to the surface of the product, it dries and leaves a thin protective film, hiding scuffs and stains on the upholstery.
Light-colored leatherette or leather upholstery can also be wiped with a soft cloth dipped in warm milk. This will protect against tarnishing and yellow spots, and will also thoroughly clean the surface from dust and dirt.
To protect the upholstery of upholstered furniture from excessive dirt and stains, various blankets and capes are often used. A ready-made set of bedspreads for a sofa and armchairs can be purchased in a store or sewn from dense fleecy or tapestry decorative fabric. Faux fur bedspreads look very good on furniture. Such “clothes” for armchairs and sofas should match the tone of the upholstery of the upholstered furniture and harmonize with the interior of the room.
Sometimes the walls of the room become damp, especially in the autumn-winter period. This can also have a negative impact on the wooden furniture that is in it. When exposed to excess moisture, the boards swell, and the shelves or drawers of sectional furniture are difficult to slide in and out. This can be avoided if you place the furniture not close to the walls, but at a short distance from them (at least 5-7 cm). If the room is very damp, you can cover the back walls of the furniture with wax paper, which absorbs moisture well.
If, on the contrary, the air in the room is too dry (this usually happens when central heating radiators are in operation), additional humidification is required. To increase air humidity, you can place ceramic vessels with water on the windowsills. In addition, well-chosen in shape, color and style, these ceramic vases can complement the interior.
VKontakte and Facebook
These social networks provide approximately the same opportunities for creating content. They have serious differences from Instagram. Firstly, they focus more on text rather than pictures. Secondly, there is the ability to upload long videos. Thirdly, these social networks make it possible to place active links to third-party sites.
How to design a page
VKontakte and Facebook, unlike Instagram, have a huge number of group design settings.
Possibility of creating a VKontakte group
Wiki menu. Each caption is clickable
I will not list all the possibilities for designing a VKontakte group - they are really very wide. I’ll just tell you what you need to use. First of all, there's the cover. It should have your logo and some picture that characterizes your activities. If you have only one store and not a chain, then indicate your address and telephone number.
A wiki menu is an analogue of a website page. It can be beautifully designed and the inscriptions can be turned into links leading to your website, but here you will have to choose: either the user, when entering the page, will see a text description of your company, or a menu. In my opinion the menu is better. The most important information can be succinctly indicated in the subtitle, contacts are in the picture. But nothing compares to the menu in terms of attracting attention.
Below are albums with photographs. VKontakte allows you to immediately turn them into goods with a price and the opportunity to leave your contact information to contact the manager.
Description of your services in an album with photographs
Missing all these opportunities means losing customers.
There are a huge number of applications for VKontakte that expand the capabilities of the social network. For example, the Applications application, which allows you to display a feedback form directly on the main page.
If you are interested, you can read a detailed guide to creating a VKontakte group.
Facebook's design options are a little more modest. It allows you to create only a cover, an avatar and an album with photos. But Facebook has the opportunity to create a video cover. In addition, there is the ability to change sections, add and remove buttons (for example, the “Contact us” button). This is done through the page editing menu.
Content
You can send the same content to Facebook and VKontakte as to Instagram. Additionally, they can be used to increase traffic to your website.
Write useful and interesting articles about furniture on your blog on the website, and post their announcements on social networks. Then interested users will go to the site, see advertisements and navigate through the pages of the catalog.
Communication with the audience
In addition to the tips given in the section about Instagram, there is also a special life hack for VKontakte. Create two communities: a public page and a group. The public page will be your main page. Content is published there and the main work is done; it is promoted for a fee through advertising.
In public, comments for users should be closed to avoid negative comments, other people's advertising and simply flooding.
But in the group, create discussions and leave comments open. In the “links” section of the public, provide a link to the group.
Here, in addition to the address of your website, you need to provide a link to the group for comments
This is done in order to distribute content and comments across different channels. This kills two birds with one stone: users have the opportunity to comment, but they do not spoil the impression of the content for potential clients with negative comments.
Hashtags
On Facebook and VKontakte, hashtags are not as popular as on Instagram. They are not suitable for promotion. It is best to use personal hashtags that will allow users to find your posts in a specific category. For example, #helpful_tips_name_of_your_store or #history_of_furniture_name_of_your_store.
Page promotion
Facebook and VKontakte also have mass following. And it is also not recommended to use it, because these social networks are banned much more actively for this.
There are two types of white promotion on VKontakte: advertising in communities and targeted advertising.
In the first case, you find a popular community and place an advertising post in it inviting people to subscribe to your page. It costs a little less than targeted advertising, but gives worse results. Firstly, it is difficult to predict the reach of an advertising post, and secondly, the audience in communities can be spread out, not segmented by gender and age.
In the second case, you publish an advertising post aimed at a specific audience, sorted by gender, age, interests, subscriptions to different groups and many other characteristics.
Advertising on VKontakte should contain the same elements as advertising on Instagram: a picture, interesting text and a mandatory call to action.
As a method of promotion on VKontakte, they sometimes use repost competitions like: “One random user who reposted this post to his page will receive a sofa for free.” This is a pretty pointless waste of sofa=money. After such competitions, the audience temporarily increases, but soon the decline begins again. It’s not interested users who come to the group, but freeloaders who will never buy anything from you.
On Facebook, advertising is set up in the same way as on Instagram.
Newsletters on VKontakte
To quickly engage new subscribers in a dialogue, install an automatic mailing application on your page, for example, the Gamayun application - it is multifunctional and free. When entering the page, the user will see an invitation to subscribe to the newsletter:
Invitation to subscribe to the newsletter in the Gamayun application group
When a user subscribes, he will begin to receive personalized messages from you, that is, ones in which you address him by name. You can write anything, it depends on your imagination. Just don't overdo it - you'll get a lot of complaints if you start sending several messages a day.
Promote your newsletters as actively as possible: promise discounts and gifts to those who subscribe, remind them about them often. Mailing is the only legal method to get into very close contact with the user.
Unfortunately, the newsletter can only be sent to those who have subscribed to it themselves.
You, of course, can collect the contacts of all those who have subscribed to the group and send a message to everyone, but for such things VKontakte will quickly ban you for spam.
