If You Would Clean Wood

I mentioned my longtime aversion to aerosol furniture polish in my previous post.

Spray polish is stinky and environmentally incorrect, but it is also the wrong cleaner for just about all surfaces (If there is a suitable application for Pledge, I am not aware of it.)  If you have ever melted or discolored the finish on a piece of furniture while trying to clean it, you know what I am talking about.

The only thing wood and wood-like surfaces need most of the time is dusting. And if you can't stand kicking up dust, a microfiber cloth or a rag dampened with plain water or a little mild soap water will do the trick.

But if your furniture is dirty, or if you can't stand the thought of cleaning without leaving some sort of "product" residue and smell behind, you need to know what kind of finish your furniture has before proceeding.

There are three main types of clear wood finishes: Hard varnish-type coatings, oil and wax. Furniture may also be painted or not finished at all.

Here is a handy FAQ sheet from a wood finishing site that includes a good explanation of how to tell what kind of finish you're dealing with.

"How can we tell if the wood has been waxed, oiled or varnished?
If a wooden surface looks like it already has been finished with a product it is always a good idea to find out what that finish is as it may affect which product you should apply to the wood. For example, you could not really apply an oil over a varnished floor, but an existing floor that has been oiled can be re-coated with an oil (once it has been cleaned of course!). Here's a few pointers to find out what your wood has been finished with:

• Waxed surfaces If it has wax on it you can scrape it lightly with your finger nail (once it has been cleaned). You may get a little wax under your nail. Also you can try buffing it with a cloth. Most surfaces will become shinier once buffed, but a waxed surface will substantially increase in shine.
• Oiled surfaces Generally speaking oiled surfaces are not that glossy. If you stand something on the surface of an oiled surface it will not have much of a reflection. Instead you are likely to see a fuzzy image reflected. You can also try putting a little white spirit on a small unnoticeable area and if it dissolves the surface coating then it is likely to be an oil, please note however that this may leave a white spot. White spirit will also dissolve most wax polishes so check the above advice (waxed surfaces) before trying this.
• Varnished Surfaces A varnished surface will be hard to the touch (it will make a clicking sound when you knock your nails on it) and will have a reflective surface. Even a matt varnish will reflect the light more than an oiled surface. If something is stood on the surface (with a window in view behind it) then the reflection is clearly visible. A satin or gloss varnish will have a very clear reflection of anything that is held up to the surface."

These yard sale items look like oiled, unfinished and painted wood. Of course there is no way to know for sure without seeing them in person. Except for the painted piece. Wood and wood finishes do not generally come in blue.

Cleaning


Ol' Doc Bronner's granddaughter put up this good explanation on her blog last spring, and it includes tips for identifying the type of finish you have and advice for how to clean each kind.

The short version is, mild soapy water is a good all-purpose go-to. She recommends two of her family company's soaps, though I have found that a little bit of any oil soap in water always does a good job. Especially since there is so much fake and painted wood out there.

One caveat, though. Furniture and flooring industry types say NEVER use oil soap (Like Dr. Bronner's and Murphy's) on polyurethane-coated wood.  Here is an open letter by a flooring company president that explains why.

Polyurethane is plastic, so you're cleaning plastic-coated wood. That means plain water, vinegar water or other window-type cleaners are going to be your best bet. Oily and soapy cleaners will leave a film just like they would if you tried to clean a mirror with them.

I believe polyurethane is even replacing real varnish on furniture these days, so it's probably a good idea to forego oil soap on all hard-finished wood. And this advice goes for Formica and other synthetic surfaces colored to look like wood. If it's plastic, oil's not good for it.

Oh, and if you're lucky enough to encounter particle board coated with wood-grain adhesive paper (very commonly used for cheap flat-pack furniture and inside even decent kitchen cabinets), be gentle and don't get it wet. That "finish" is nothing but a big sticker, and it scratches, bubbles and loses its design very easily. Use a similar approach to painted furniture, which can also be marred by too vigorous cleaning.

Polishing

I am personally not a fan of the big shiny-shiny. If I am coming to clean, I want to get the dirt up and be on my way. Polishing and shining is always a second step that has to be done after a surface is cleaned. Trying to polish dirty furniture invites streaks and scratches, even when you're using those all-in-one sprays that mix oil and solvents on the premise that you can somehow magically pick up dirt and put down polish at the same time. Polishing is not everyday cleaning, no matter what the chemical company marketers say.

Cleaning is a regular thing that can be done with a dry or damp cloth every week or so. Polishing is a separate, special thing that you want to do a few times a year at most to protect your furniture and keep it looking pretty. And, actually, when I say "polishing," what I really mean is "refinishing." You don't need to strip the old finish and start from scratch generally, but you are putting a new finish on your piece when you apply oil or wax. And if you're keeping it clean and doing that sparingly, you won't have to do that very often, and you're not going to find yourself fighting gooey product buildup.
 
Hard varnishes and lacquers: See previous. You don't polish hard-sealed furniture, you shine it.

Oils: If your furniture has a porous, lustrous sheen, it has an oil-based finish that can be renewed periodically. Natural-health types, including green cleaning bible writer Karen Logan say they use olive oil and make a cleaner-polish with vinegar and olive oil. I do not recommend that for two reasons: For one, olive oil is an expensive, nutritious food item that I refuse to demote to a cleaning supply. It also stays wet, and it can go rancid. I can't imagine what serious cleaners were thinking when they decided using olive oil as a polish was a good idea.  You want to polish with oil, try hard-drying ones like walnut, linseed and tung.

Waxes: A somewhat softer and shiny surface that, unlike varnishes, can be scratched with a dull instrument like a fingernail and noticeably wears away with time.. Just as you polish oil-finished furniture with oil, you polish wax-finished furniture with wax. And doing both right involves applying the oil or wax, letting it dry if applicable, and buffing it off to leave a nice hard shine. I have seen some DIY natural wax recipes, but there are lots of natural beeswax-based furniture pastes out there. Given the amount of kooky homemade cleaner advice out there, I am entirely comfortable with deferring to the pros on this one. Here is a wonderful info page written by a professional furniture restorer who has seen all the damage wrought by modern cleaning and "polishing" chemicals. He is pretty firm that waxing every few years is the only thing you need to do besides dusting when it comes to natural-finished wood. And, being as he and the guys in his field keep furniture looking good for decades, I am confident his advice is the best you're going to find. So much so, that I am going to dial way back on the furniture-washing and stick to dry and water-damp dusting unless you make a special appointment to have your stuff polished. And if you want it polished every week, you need to find yourself a Pledge-sprayer. I am not the lady for that job.

"I Don't Do ... ."

If you've taken a look at the FAQ on the Just Clean Web site, you might have noticed that my answer to the question "Come be my maid/clean my sparkling mansion/wash my clothes/run errands for me" was a simple "No."

I don't do those things. Except when I do.

• Take the "sparkling mansion" thing. Luckily, I haven't had any inquiries from big-house clean freaks. But I do have a couple clients who are very neat and just unable to clean as well as they would like. Big difference. If your house is clean but you're unable to keep up with it and living in fear of gathering dust bunnies, give me a call.
• Clothes washing, that's another thing I guess I kind of do now. If you're a regular client with a simple house or apartment, especially if you have mobility issues, of course I can throw some laundry in for you. Buyer beware though. My laundry expertise is limited to separating colors and whites and washing them with simple detergent and hot or warm water depending on how dirty they are. I am boning up a little on natural stain removal and the like, but I make no warranties on clothes washing.
• I still don't run errands, and I won't make a habit of it unless and until I invest in some deferred auto maintenance or the bicycle and trailer I would love to be using instead of my car. Still, no rarely means no. So if you want me to haul off some junk or drop by a store on the way to your appointment, I probably will. But if you need someone to cart you across town or do regular running around for you, JustClean is not a company that does that.
• Polishing furniture is another item on the longtime "don't do" list. I have been smuggling Murphy's and Liquid Gold wood washes onto the job since shortly after I started doing housekeeping-type cleaning for money in 2009. Aerosol polishes are nasty to breathe and aren't good for most wood surfaces. JustClean's go-to is a rag dampened with a little Castile soap and water. If your wood needs polishing, let me clean it first, and we can talk about scheduling the time and finding the right oil or wax for it.

 Above is by no means an exhaustive list of off- and anti-menu things JustClean has done. I do a pretty good job of organizing, but I generally will not do that while cleaning. Those two are best kept separate if you want either done efficiently. I've also done a little bit of pest and pet cleanup, though in the interest of keeping my equipment allergen-free, that's not the kind of work I'm going to go out of my way to solicit. At least not until I get a complete set of "stink" equipment, including a separate vacuum cleaner. In the past few months, I have also found myself picking hair out of drains, scrubbing ovens, cleaning out refrigerators (with and without flea infestations) and salvaging cast off odds and ends I have no idea how to resell. That last one, I hate to throw away useable stuff when a client is dejunking, but an American Picker I am not, so I think the rule is that I will get unwanted stuff donated or recycled.

Oh, and I do do windows. All. the time, as a matter of fact. Dirty entry doors, kitchen sink windows and other high-touch glass fixtures are part of a regular cleaning. Most places charge extra or make cleaning windows into a big special-service project, but me, I never could walk out of a clean house and leave the front door glass covered with dog slobber. I might need to schedule a separate appointment to get all your windows or do the outside ones, and I might draw the line at skylights and third-floor outside windows, but, those easy-to-reach windows that tend to get dirty, I am all over them.
 
The one thing I absolutely will not do is offer personal maid service. If you want a handmaid to use your materials and clean everything according to your specific directions, you need to hire an employee and pay Social Security and unemployment taxes on her. That's the law, and people who pay contractor wages for help they want to micromanage are breaking it. That exploits hard working people and depresses wages for everyone. You hire a contractor to get it done their way at their price. You hire an employee if you want to pay wages for a pair of hands at your beck and call.