Anybody with a home knows just how easily and quickly everything can get mucked up; if children, pets, and frequent visitors are thrown into a home lineup, then the possibilities for things getting dirty grow exponentially. While cleaning off simple, uniform surfaces such as walls and floors can be relatively straightforward and easy, it's a whole different story when it comes time to clean the furniture. Many items of furniture are difficult to clean not only because of the turns and folds that they present, but furthermore because of the fabrics/materials that they are covered with. No item of furniture is usually tougher to clean than the big-old living room sofa: big and bulky as they always are, sofas are the traditional nightmare of anybody charged with cleaning up the home.



Yet giving your furniture in general, and your sofa in particular a good cleaning is not quite as hard as it may seem, and the first step in the right direction comes with clever preventive measures. That's right: protecting sofas is the best way to avoid having to perform taxing and time-consuming cleaning jobs, though at some point or another these will become inevitable (later rather than sooner, though).

Exactly how you protect your sofa will depend on what it's made of, as well as how comfortable you are with hiding its original material. Leather sofas can be protected with a variety of liquid protectants, often provided by the manufacturer itself; fabric sofas of all sorts can be protected with vinyl or other layers that are draped on top. In addition to these protective measures, it's wise to move sofas away from windows where they will be struck by direct sunlight, as this will cause cracking and/or fading with time.

Moving on to the actual cleaning of sofas, again, the methods vary depending on what kind of sofa you have at hand. Leather sofas are notoriously simple to clean: a light once-over with the vacuum cleaner and then a firm wipe-down with a barely damp cloth pretty much does it; to polish it up a bit, try rubbing a mixture of two parts linseed oil with one part vinegar on the leather (though try this on a not visible part, for safety's sake).

Fabric couches also demand a good vacuuming, perhaps a bit more vigorously than with a leather couch as the fabric has more capacity to become impregnated with dust and grime. Ideally your sofa cover will be removable, in which case you simply have to take it off and give it a go through the washing machine, though sometimes this is impossible as the covers are fixed. In this case, use a significantly diluted mixture of soap and hot water and apply on noticeably dirty areas with vigorous motions with a rag. Do not get the fabric too wet, and make sure it dries as quickly as is possible—either using fans, open windows, or—yes—even a hair dryer to do so. Lastly, allow different pieces you've removed (pillow covers, sofa covers) to dry independently before reassembling the entire sofa again.