In this article, we’ll talk about how to clean used furniture that you want to bring home from the thrift store to use in your house or turn into something beautiful.
Buying gently used furniture at consignment stores, resale furniture stores, and thrift stores like Goodwill, is a great way to find quality furniture for your home. Not only does thrift-shop furniture save you a lot of money compared to paying the retail price, it’s also very environmentally friendly, especially when you’re looking for large furniture pieces like dressers or dining-room furnishings. As well, thrift-shop furniture shopping often leads to beautiful vintage furniture finds, antiques, and other special treasures that add so much character to your home. While furniture shopping is the fun part, there’s sometimes a bit of work to do to get these one-of-a-kind pieces ready to use in your home. Today I’m going to share how I like to clean old wood furniture pieces like the used furniture found at thrift stores.
See also: What to Buy at the Habitat for Humanity ReStore
Here’s another piece of wood furniture from the thrift store that I’ve had for many years. This little dresser sits in our dining room and has been painted a few different times.
Supplies to Clean Thrift Store Furniture
The process to clean furniture pieces that have seen better days can seem daunting at first, but if you take it step-by-step, you’ll be rewarded as you see the layers of grime, germs, and residue melt away, revealing a beautiful new piece that could be in your family for generations to come.
Here’s what I typically use in terms of cleaners for the furniture cleaning and deodorizing process:
- A vacuum (a shop vac is great to have nearby for things like this when you’re working in the garage)
- Basic white vinegar
- Lemon essential oil
- Dish soap or other mild detergent
- Baking soda
- Soft cloth
- Sunshine
If your furniture piece is really in rough shape or has a really stubborn old furniture smell to it here are some other helpful supplies to use:
See also: 8 Amazingly Simple Baking Soda Cleaning Hacks That Work
How to Prepare Wood Furniture for Cleaning
The very first thing I like to do is to give the piece of furniture a good vacuuming to remove any spiderwebs, bugs, dust, etc. Remove any drawers if your piece of furniture has them, and make sure you really get into all of the nooks and crannies so you can avoid any surprises later.
If it’s a nice, sunny day, I like to leave the drawers out or all of the cabinet doors open in the sun for a few hours to help air the piece out. Old wooden furniture almost always has a bit of a musty smell when you first bring it home, so the sunshine really works well as an odor remover and even for stain-removal a lot of the time. You can also sprinkle a little baking soda into any drawers or cabinets during this time to help with deodorizing.
See also: How to Naturally and Easily Clean Really Tarnished Silver
The Best Homemade Cleaning Solution
After my furniture piece has been thoroughly sunned, it’s time to give it a good wipe-down with a damp microfiber cloth after I vacuum out all of the baking soda. I like to make my own homemade cleaning solution for this that really helps with de-griming the piece and also with deodorizing.
To about 4 cups of warm water, I add:
- 1/2 cup of vinegar
- about 1/2 teaspoon of regular dish soap
- about 10 drops of lemon essential oil
Use the soft cloth to rinse the entire piece down with this solution inside and out and let it dry completely. You can also dispense a bit of the solution into a spray bottle and apply it that way before giving it a gentle scrub.
See also: 10 Best Washable Rugs for 2023
How to Clean Thrift Store Furniture That Still Stinks
After all of that sun, baking soda, and lemon essential oil, your furniture piece should be smelling really fresh and should be all set for any refinishing or painting that you’d like to do with it. If, for some reason, a musty smell still lingers, try washing the piece with a mold control spray. The piece may have been sitting in high humidity for a long time and may have developed some mold or mildew. It can also be helpful to leave the piece sitting next to a powerful dehumidifier in your basement or garage for a little while to help suck any lingering moisture out of the wood. This is especially helpful if the weather is rainy or snowy and you don’t have access to some good hot sunshine.
See also: How to Easily Remove Pills From Upholstery
If all else fails, you can always paint your piece with an odor and stain-blocking primer that will seal all the stink in. Of course, you’ll have to paint your piece after this step, and having a natural wood finish won’t be an option, but it will definitely help with the smell! And then you’ll be ready to decorate your home with your thrift store finds.
So that’s what I do when I need to clean thrift store furniture or anything that I’ve found at a second-hand shop. Do you have any other additional tricks you’ve learned that work really well? I’d love to try them out on my next thrift store find!
MORE FROM THE CREEK LINE HOUSE
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Courtenay Hartford is the author of creeklinehouse.com, a blog based on her adventures renovating a 120-year-old farmhouse in rural Ontario, Canada. On her blog, Courtenay shares interior design tips based on her own farmhouse and her work as founder and stylist of the interior photography firm Art & Spaces. She also writes about her farmhouse garden, plant-based recipes, family travel, and homekeeping best practices. Courtenay is the author of the book The Cleaning Ninja and has been featured in numerous magazines including Country Sampler Farmhouse Style, Better Homes and Gardens, Parents Magazine, Real Simple, and Our Homes.