If you notice that you have some leather that could use some attention, but don’t happen to have the right product on hand, just head to the fruit bowl in the kitchen! This banana peel leather polish trick works wonders on leather of all kinds!
When I first heard about this trick, I thought it sounded crazy enough that it was probably true. I mean, who would ever come up with the idea of rubbing a banana peel all over their leather furniture if there wasn’t some merit to it, right? I took a chance and tested it out on a pair of leather boots as well as the leather seats of the chairs on my great-grandmother’s dining room set and I was pretty impressed, actually.
How the Banana Peel Leather Polish Trick Works
The banana peel leather polish works by conditioning, protecting, and shining any leather surface. The key is that the banana contains potassium, which also happens to be an active ingredient in shoe polish! Of course, the banana peel doesn’t have any color to it, but you’ll be so impressed by how well this works even without it.
My main concern was that this method would create a sticky layer on top of my leather than I would need to clean off, but it really didn’t at all! The banana peel does leave a bit of invisible residue, a bit like any other leather polishing or cleaning product would, but it dried fully within seconds.
How to Use a Banana Peel to Polish Leather
The first thing you’ll need to do, of course, is to remove a banana from its peel. I just used the peel from half of a banana that I had leftover after slicing the other half onto my cereal earlier in the morning. 🙂
Open the peel up and place it down with the inside of the peel making contact with the surface of the leather.
All you need to do at that point is polish away!
If you have any small scuffs or marks on your leather, the moisture in the peel will be enough to clean them away and you’ll also notice your leather looking refreshed and shiny almost immediately.
Once you’ve polished all of your leather, leave it to dry for a few minutes. You can polish it with a soft cloth as well, after the leather is dry, but I found that this step wasn’t really necessary.
If you’re doing a large set of leather furniture, you made need a couple of bananas, so make your kids a snack first. 🙂
This method works great on all different kinds of leather furniture, as well as on shoes, purses and other leather items that sometimes need to be touched up right at the moment when you can’t seem to remember where you put what you usually use for cleaning these items.
So now you know, just grab a banana and you’ll be back in business!
Have you ever tried the banana peel leather polish trick? What did you use it for?
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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.