10 Hacks for Cleaning Up After Your Christmas Tree
Who doesn’t love admiring their Christmas tree, decked in ornaments with presents underneath it? Along with that fresh pine scent and the glimmer of twinkling lights, comes the constant task of cleaning up the pine needles that litter the floors and imbed themselves into carpets. If you would like to avoid picking up pine needles throughout the month of January, try these hacks for cleaning up after your Christmas tree.
1. Dress Your Tree in a Christmas Tree Skirt
A Christmas tree skirt will hide the base of the tree while catching pine needles once they drop. This will make cleaning up after your Christmas tree much easier by simply taking the skirt off and shaking it out.
2. Don’t Forget to Water Your Christmas Tree
You don’t have to be a botanist to know that a well-watered tree is a healthy tree. Regular watering will prevent pine needles from falling and greatly reduce the number of needles you will need to pick up after the holidays.
3. Save Your Christmas Tree Bag
Unless you are chopping down your own Christmas tree from the woods, ask the Christmas tree lot staff to give the tree a good shake and wrap in a plastic bag for transporting it home. Once you get home and are ready to start decorating, fold down the bag without removing it from the base of the tree. By simply hiding it under the Christmas tree skirt, you can easily pull the plastic up to rewrap the tree after the holidays. This cleaning hack will save you from a potential rainfall of pine needles as you are trying to remove the Christmas tree from your home.
4. Try a Rubber Broom
On hardwood floors, try to sweep up as many pine needles as possible and toss them outside. Rubber brooms in particular are especially handy at catching sappy pine needles, even on carpets. The flexibility of the rubber will help you pick up all those pine needles imbedded in your carpet.
5. Grab Lint Rollers and Duct Tape
Lint rollers will come in handy for removing Christmas tree pine needles that are stuck on furniture and within the fibers of your carpet. Lint rollers provide much easier cleaning with simple strokes, however, grabbing a roll of duct tape and making your own sticky mitts will also get the job done.
6. Wash Away Christmas Tree Sap from Skin
When cleaning up after your Christmas tree, you are bound to get some sap stuck to your hands. Try using rubbing alcohol, hand sanitizer or nail polish remover to wash away the sap from your skin.
7. If the Sap Gets on Your Clothing
If Christmas tree sap gets on your clothing, you can try removing the spot with rubbing alcohol or hand sanitizer. Pretreating and washing sap stains with laundry detergent should also remove the spot. Another hack is to put your stained clothing in the freezer until the sap dries completely. Take a knife or blunt edge and carefully scrape the frozen sap blotch off the fabric.
8. And When the Sap Gets on Your Furniture or Carpet
If the Christmas tree sap is tracked onto your carpet or furniture, use a small amount of laundry detergent with warm water and a hard bristled brush to comb the sap out. Blot away the soapy solution to continue loosening the sap stain and top off with clean water. You can use rubbing alcohol or nail polish remover too, or try to freeze the sap stain, as stated above, by using a bag of ice. For leather furniture, use a little bit of peanut butter to soften the sap stain. Rub the peanut butter into the leather and remove with a small amount of warm soapy water.
9. Conserve Your Vacuum
Christmas tree pine needles are bulky and can quickly clog your vacuum. Fallen ornament hooks and the sap from pine needles can potentially ruin a vacuum cleaner, so only use it after trying the aforementioned cleaning hacks.
10. Call Stanley Steemer for a Professional Clean
For a complete New Year clean, call the professionals at Stanley Steemer of South Florida so you can keep enjoying the holidays while the experts handle the carpet, hardwood and furniture cleaning chores for you. Cleaning up after your Christmas tree is easy with our certified asthma and allergy-friendly products, advanced cleaning techniques and state-of-the-art equipment. After a busy season of hosting holiday events, preparing meals and decorating your home, you deserve to take some stress off your shoulders. Visit our website for a free quote or call Stanley Steemer of South Florida at (888) 982-3553.