How to Easily Clean Fake Plants

Are you deep into the spring cleaning schedule? Have you gotten to all that fake greenery yet? Well I shared this tip on how to easily clean fake plants with the readers over at Or So She Says last month and thought I would share it with you too! This is seriously the easiest trick to cleaning all those green plants with their hundreds of leaves.

I don’t know if you are like me and use fake plants as some of your decor around your home. Usually mine are up on top of a shelf, a cabinet or tall piece of furniture. They sit up there collecting dust and unless I really look closely at them, I don’t ever bother to take them down to clean them.

When we moved over the summer that is the first time I really saw just how dusty my fake plants had become. Being that we live in the desert, we get a LOT of dust here. I knew that I couldn’t put them back up in my decor until I cleaned them really well. My mom shared with me the best trick ever to easily clean fake plants. It’s super simple… 409 cleaner.

I did this outside, but you could put your plant in the sink or tub and simply spray the entire plant with 409. Let it sit for 2 or 3 minutes and then rinse with water. That is it!

The plants are clean and ready to be put back up in my decorating! I loved that I didn’t have to wipe each one of those tiny leaves individually. That would’ve taken forever!

Here are some helpful tips when it comes to this cleaning trick. When it comes to rinsing with water, you can rinse the plant right under the faucet, just be careful of the base of the plant. It won’t ruin the foam core of your plant the first couple times you clean your plant with this method, but over time, it could break down the foam at the base of the plant. If you can hold it under the water and keep the foam base out of the water as you rinse, that would be best. Or you can use a spray bottle of water and spray the plant just enough to rinse off the 409 cleaner.

Let the plant dry completely before putting it back into your decor.