Silk plants are a wonderful way to add colour to your home, especially if you don’t have the time to look after a garden and keep bringing fresh flowers into the house. But even silk flowers can start looking dusty and dull after a time. Cleaning them is easy and not something that you have to wait for the home cleaning service to come around to do it especially if you are having guests over. Dull flowers can affect the whole impact of your otherwise perfect decor.
Fortunately cleaning silk flowers is easy. There are two ways of going about it.
The Dry Method:
All you need for this is a brown paper bag and some ordinary kitchen salt. Pour about half a cup of the salt into the paper bag. Take one silk flower at a time and gently shake off excess dust (you can blow on it if you want, but make sure no spit touches the flowers Ð they must be completely dry). Place the flower in the bag and roll the top closed. Shake the bag vigorously but be careful not to damage the flower. The salt will remove the dust and polish the surface of the flower. Take out the flower and repeat the process for the next flower. The bag and salt can be kept away and reused until the salt becomes dirty. Just be careful to store the salt in a place where it cannot absorb moisture.
The Wet Method:
Fill two large bowls with cool water and add a small amount of gentle detergent to one of them and stir until the detergent begins to foam this is your cleaning bowl. Leave the other one with just plain water this is your rinsing bowl. Never use hot water; it could affect the glue which holds the flower together. Take one flower at a time and shake or blow off as much dust as you can. Now swish the flower around in the bowl with the mild detergent mix. If there are stubborn dirt spots on the flower, use soft gloves or a soft cloth to gently rub them off. Be careful too much pressure can fray the flowers or cause them to fall apart. Now rinse the flower in the other bowl and lay it aside to dry on a soft towel or paper. Once they are dry, you can replace them to the vases or arrangements you took them from.