I have a love/hate relationship with my two cats. They are fun and affectionate and really don’t care what I look like, or how off-key I sing or if my socks match, as long as I feed them. (I have a couple of friends like that too). But their hair gets everywhere, and although I have hardwood floors, it can be a real pain to keep the furniture clean.
My pet spongeworks pretty well, but has seen better days and I was at a loss when a friend asked if she could stay at my place for a couple of days while she was traveling.
Of course, she’s allergicto cats.
Sigh.
Manny
So I trolled the web for all kinds of do-dads and devices that I could run out and buy real quick to give the sofabed (that she would subsequently be sleeping on) a thorough cleaning. One of the things I found was a $30 rolling device that claimed to pick up pet hair at an amazingly efficient rate, plus it could be rinsed off as opposed to those glorified-masking-tape-sticky-roller-thingys that you have to keep peeling off and throwing away. With a little research, I found out that the reusable roller was made from silicone, latex and rubber.
The same material that my yellow kitchen rubber gloves are made out of.
Houdini
Huh.
So I ran to the kitchen, opened the cabinet under the sink, grabbed the bucket, dug out the gloves, ran back to the living room and proceeded to rub my gloved hands
vigorously and toroughly all over the microfiber couch like a cheap date. (Needless to say, my cats were alarmed). This is what happened:
Are you SEEING this?
I used a hand vac to suck up the hair as I gathered it up. The great thing about the gloves is that I could get in all the little crevices and places that the [pet sponge] normally couldn’t reach. (Coincidentally, the pet sponge is made out of the same material).
I hopped back on the web and found out that tons of people clean their furniture with rubber gloves like this, even wetting them a bit makes the hair come off even faster.
WHY WAS I NOT INFORMED?
Anyway, I tried this on microfiber, denim, and cotton and it work well. The microfiber worked the best though.
So for a really cheap easy way to clean up pet hair off of fabric surfaces, pick up a pair of good old fashioned rubber dishwashing gloves like these and clean away.
- How do you clean up pet hair?