Cleaning your Silks

For some time now, Gloria at Happy To Be has been asking me to do a post about cleaning our faux flowers/greens.  Honestly, I have been waiting for the weather to warm up because there are a couple of ways you can do this task.

 

I didn’t want to drag it outside but if you have a tall ficus or other sort of faux tree that is causing your nose to run from all the dust (!) the easiest way to clean this is to take it out to the yard.  You can fill a bucket with soapy water to start off with.  Any sort of mild soap will do.  Do not go crazy with the soap, just a squirt.  Oh, and do not squirt the cat or she will no longer be your best friend!    :-) 

 

Another way to clean the really tall trees (I carry them up to 9’ tall) or the smaller one like I have pictured is to take a spray bottle and fill it with soapy water.  You will spray sections at a time of the soapy mixture or just take your prepared bucket and with a sponge wipe off the leaves.  The sponge method works better on a smaller plant such as the one I have pictured.  After you have wet it down with the soapy mixture, take your garden hose and gently rinse off all the leaves of soap.  Use your thumb to defuse the water pressure. You might want to put a nozzle on to control the pressure.  We are gently cleaning here, not using car wash pressure, ok?

If you have loose greenery up above your kitchen cabinets or even those stuck in baskets or containers, the easiest way to clean these is to run a few inches of water in your bathtub.  Add just a bit of whatever bubble bath happens to be sitting there.  Please do not use bath oil for obvious reasons!!  Oil and dirt do yucky things together!  Now after you have swished them around just a bit in the water, run your bath faucet and rinse them off.  You will want to dry them quickly so they don’t water spot.

  You may use your hair dryer OR you might want to take them outside in the sun to dry.  The way our winds blow around here, the greens will be dry in seconds.  Watch so they don’t end up in the neighbor’s yard!

There is a product I sell called Silk ‘n Splendor that is excellent for cleaning your fauxs.  You just spray it on and the dirt literally drips off. You don’t even have to rinse.  If you are doing this inside with a large tree, it is best to have a drop cloth beneath or place the tree in your bathtub because this method can get messy but works beautifully.  It is so easy and they will look new again.

 

 

 

 

 

You may be very surprised ~ but I doubt it~ today’s silks are really not silk but actually a blend of poly/cotton.  You may also use the above cleaning techniques for your faux flowers as well.  A little disclaimer here ~~ not everything you own or those you may have had from two decades ago will clean up with 100% success.  I sell the quality stuff and I know my cleaning methods work on those.  Cheaper fauxs from the dime store may “bleed”.  You may want to do a little area at a time to make sure they don’t turn a really pale green! 

 

I hope this post has helped.  Please feel free to ask if you have any other questions I didn’t go over.  Oh!  If you have a dusty dried arrangement, I suggest pitching it in the trash.  They are not attractive filled with dust and I have found no way to clean them.

 

Let me just say Thank You so much for your very nice comments from Monday’s post.  I really wasn’t fishing for compliments!  I just know that I sometimes don’t post as often as I would like, so at times I just feel you give up on me keeping up with my blog.  Occasionally I thinking of pulling the whole thing down, but I just enjoy it too much.

 

Now for a picture of yesterday’s project:

Until next time  ~~~~~~~