Looking for an easy way to clean blinds? You have come to the right place. This post will address two different solutions for cleaning blinds in your home. First, we’ll cover the best way to clean mini blinds, then we’ll look at how to clean wood blinds.
Blinds collect dust just like every other surface in our homes, but unlike dusting dressers and nightstands, blinds take a little added effort; especially those plastic mini blinds.
How to Clean Mini Blinds in the Bathtub
While it would be nice to grab a dusting mitt to clean mini blinds, it just doesn’t work. Plastic mini blinds have small slats that are quite flimsy, which makes dusting slat-by-slat a very tedious task. Instead of trying to clean one slat at a time, I have found cleaning mini blinds in the tub works best.
What You Need to Clean Mini Blinds
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- Dish Soap or Sal Suds– While I used to use dish soap when cleaning our mini blinds, I later discover Sal Suds, which is an amazing cleaner with a much better rating from the EWG. Sal Suds receives an A, while Dawn dish soap gets a D.
- Sponge
Easy Way to Clean Mini Blinds
Start by filling a bathtub about 1/3 of the way full with warm water and a couple squirts of dish soap (or Sal Suds). While the tub is filling, go ahead and take down your mini blinds. This should be fairly easy as there is typically a latch to to release the blinds. Once removed, place the mini blinds into the tub filled with warm soapy water.
Swish the blinds around in the tub to loosen the grime and then allow them to soak for 15-30 minutes. After they have soaked, use a sponge and run it along the slats to really get them clean.
Once thoroughly washed, remove the mini blinds from the tub and allow them to dry. I dried our mini blinds outside by placing towels over our deck railing and then draping the blinds over them. If you are doing this process when the weather isn’t conducive to an outside drying session, you can place towels down on the floor and lay the mini blinds on the towels to dry.
Once the mini blinds are dry, hang them back up in the room.
Here’s the before and after… always nice to see results!
How to Clean Wood Blinds
Wood blinds tend to have large, smooth slats which makes them fairly easy to clean… much easier than mini blinds.
What You Need to Clean Wood Blinds
- Microfiber Dusting Glove– I have seen people use a sock placed over their hand, however, I’m a big fan of microfiber as it picks up dust better than cotton. Not only that, it is easier to dust both sides of the wood slat at the same time with a glove.
How to Clean Wood Blinds
The directions for cleaning wood blinds could not be easier.
Simply slip on the dusting glove and grasp one slat at a time between your thumb and fingers (this way you’re dusting the top and bottom of the slat at the same time). Run your hand along each slat working from top to bottom. (You don’t want to work from bottom to top or the dust from the top slats will fall onto the slats you’ve already dusted.)
Check out how much dust this glove got off our blinds!
Please dust your blinds more often than I do!
Want More Dusting Hacks?
Check out this post full of my favorite dusting hacks for everything from ceiling fans to lampshades!
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OMG, My grandmother was doing this in the ‘60’s! That is saying something as I am in my late 70’s.
If you have dust buildup on your blinds you can always use old Bounce sheets from the dryer to wipe the dust off first before using a wet cleaner. Otherwise you just smear the gunk in & around & it takes longer to clean your blinds. I always save all my used fabric sheets from the dryer to dust everything around the house & you’ll be amazed how well they clean up your dust!
Using new ones you can clean stains in your bathtub …
I have metal mini blinds. I lay them out on the patio and hose them off and clean with a soapy bucket of Dawn then rinse off with the hose. Hang them on the fence to dry!
Next time try Murphy’s oil soap to wash blinds in the bathtub, especially for ones that are in the kitchen – it removes any grease easily.
There sure is a difference! BUT….my blinds are wood….and have NOT been cleaned in YEARS…!!! This is because I can NOT find a way to clean them. I am pretty sure the previous owners did NOT clean them. When I tried..all I did was make a bigger mess of things. There is SO much grime on the blinds…it does NOT just wipe off. Then I tried a solution of such; that just ‘smeared’ the grime. I am at a loss as to “How to tackle them now?”. Any suggestions? I thank you in advance.
Your before blinds look really gross. I wonder if that is how my blinds look if I was to look at them compared to clean ones. I think the only time I have cleaned my blinds is when I moved in.
Seriously. They were SO gross! We moved into our house about 6 years ago and I had never done anything with those plastic blinds, so it was at least 6 years worth of grime built up on there… and who knows if the previous owners ever dusted either. The bathtub worked wonders and they look SO much better now.
Great tips, Erin! Cleaning the blinds is on my spring cleaning to-do list. We have 500 windows in our house (so maybe not 500, but it’s a LOT) and I always put off cleaning the blinds. I’m intrigued by that dusting glove and might have to get one. I bet I could even get my kids to help if I got them a glove too :).
I hate cleaning blinds and always put it off. The dusting glove really does make it easier, and if you can get your kids to do it… even better!
My blinds are plastic, they are just over nine ft in width and almost the same in length. I used baby wipes and what a great job they did.I also managed to get them cleaned a lot quicker using this method.