Cleaning Outdoor Furniture

How do you clean outside furniture? Especially the cushions with mildew.

Jennifer from Dallas, GA

Answers:

Cleaning Outdoor Furniture

If vinyl weave fabric cushions and colorfast, you might do as I do and wearing long dish gloves, strongly spray cushions top to bottom with hot bleach/water/Dawn, (1 cup bleach, 1/4 cup Dawn, 1 gallon hot water mixture), on both sides, scrub with a stiff nylon brush, set cushions in sun for 1 hour, turn for another hour, then rinse with lots of warm water, and let dry in sun.

If cotton like fabric and colorfast, reduce sun time to 30 minutes each side and rinse longer with more water. Apply Scotchgard all over (outdoors) after last step, if you can, when totally dry to retard additional mildew attaching from the "spores" blowing in from other areas/things. Hang to drip dry once rinsed, turning after one side is dry. Try to keep them dry and in a sunny area, under a patio umbrella when precipitation is falling.

This is all I do for mine and they are fine. Most are stuffed with poly, which will never be completely nor "perfectly" clean, but what you do will certainly help a great deal and keep the mildew growth to a minimum, and you will likely have to do it each year.

Good luck, and God bless you. (01/25/2007)

By Lynda