Cleaning And Maintaining Your Home's New Painted Plantation Shutters

The wide slats that are used in plantation-style shutters makes them a popular choice for matching many different types of interior design styles. Plantation shutters that are painted with a high-gloss white paint will make your windows pop and will bring a fresh look into your home. In addition, with some simple cleaning, your painted wood shutters will look wonderful for years to come.

Follow this easy procedure to keep your new plantation shutters looking new and fresh:

Weekly Dirt and Dust Removal

Unfortunately, no matter where you live or how clean your home is on a day-to-day basis, dust will inevitably build up on your window coverings and will continue to be an ongoing problem. The best cleaning tool made to remove dust in your home is a tacky cloth. Tacky clothes are inexpensive, reusable, and can be purchased anywhere you buy household cleaning products. Tacky clothes use static electricity to hold the dust particles on the cloth, and they work much better than cotton or synthetic fiber rags.

To keep visible dust off of your plantation shutters, once each week, wrap two of your fingers with the tacky cloth and rub them along each slat. Start at the top, so the dust from the slats above will not land on previously cleaned areas. Take the extra time to go around each of the strings and other working mechanisms on the shutters so that it does not build up over time and lead to a larger cleaning job.

Seasonal Deep Cleaning, Maintenance, and Dust Repellent

Every spring and fall season when you are performing your deep cleaning regimen, you need to check each slat on your plantation shutters for damage or paint loss. Damage should be repaired by a professional blind contractor, and any spots of paint loss you can touch up with paint from your local hardware store.

As you dust, inspect, and fix any problems with your shutters each season, you can help to repel future dust by wiping down the shutters with a dryer fabric sheet. Rub an unused fabric softener sheet along both sides of each slat on the shutters and along all of their frames and working parts.

It is common knowledge that fabric softener sheets contain charged particles that help to repel dust from painted wood surfaces. In fact, once your blinds have been cleaned and protected against future dust, then you can rub the same fabric softener sheet on the baseboards to help them repel dust there as well.

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