Jolie Kerr is a cleaning expert and advice columnist. She'll be here every week helping to answer your filthiest questions. Are you dirty? Email her. Are you still dirty? Subscribe to Ask a Clean Person: The Podcast on Acast, iTunes or Stitcher, and like Ask a Clean Person on Facebook.
I'm hoping you could help me with a problem I'm having: My boyfriend has taken up weightlifting and goes to the gym 3-4 times a week. He comes back really sweaty and likes to sit on the leather living room couch for a bit before he goes and showers.
Thanks to his sweat, the leather couch and his fabric car seats smell TERRIBLE. Short of making him carry around a clean towel and insisting that put the towel on any surface before he sits down what can we do? Is there a way to get his BO out of the couch and the car?
Make him carry the towel.
I'm completely serious, and I think you can be sweet about your request, but it's entirely fair to ask that he be responsible for the effect his choices are making on your shared surroundings. Here's a script for you to follow, "Baby, I love how much you've dedicated yourself to lifting. And I know you like your little unwinding routine, but the car and couch and me, for that matter, are suffering. Can you toss a towel down before you get in the car or settle into the couch? Love you, love your biceps!"
But in the meantime, we need to get your couch and car fixed up, so let's do that.
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Deodorizing and Cleaning Large Leather Items
You can totally wash a leather couch! You just need me to tell you how, and I'm gonna do that. I'm actually going to give you options because it's nice to have options in life, I think.
Vinegar Solution
The cleaning solution here is as simple as simple gets—mix equal parts white vinegar and water together—but the technique is important to get right to avoid damaging the leather.
So: Use a soft rag, like an old T-shirt or microfiber cloth, dipped into the vinegar solution and wrung out very well. It should be damp, not wet. ("Damp, not wet!" is an old saying of mine that serves as a good reminder of technique for a great number of cleaning tasks.) Then, working in sections, go over the leather with the vinegar solution, dipping and wringing frequently. As you work section-by-section, go over the area you've cleaned with a dry rag. You don't want the liquid lingering on the leather, as it can cause staining.
Then, after cleaning the entirety of the couch, give it a light coating with leather conditioner to restore moisture and prevent the hide from drying out.
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Saddle Soap
Saddle soap, which is exactly what it sounds like, soap designed for use on saddles, comes in a tin just like shoe polish. To use it, rub a damp cloth ("Damp, not wet!") onto the surface of the soap, creating a bit of lather. Then, working in a circular motion, rub the sudsy cloth on the leather. As you work, wipe away lather residue with a clean damp cloth. Allow the leather to dry, then buff with a soft cloth.
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Removing Smells from Leather Goods
Since we're here, let me detour quickly from the question at hand to address the removal of odors from other leather goods, like belts, leather jackets, or wallets.
Here's an easy and sort of odd but totally legit way to remove smells from leather, whether they be smoke smells, lingering odor from the tanning process, perfume, or BO: Wrap the leather goods in newspaper. Yup! That's all.
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Another method is to spritz leather goods with white vinegar. The drawback is that the acid in the vinegar can be drying to leather, which means that after using it, you'll want to give the hide a light coating with a leather conditioner like Cadillac. On the other hand, that's generally a good thing to do to your leather, so if the deodorizing serves as impetus to treat your leather accessories to a hit of conditioner, that's actually great.
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If you have a cat, you can press his (clean) litter into service by burying odoriferous leather goods in the stuff for 24-48 hours. Kitty litter is designed to neutralize smells! Makes sense, right?
What to Do About That Car Seat
The quick and easy answer to the problem of the smelling car seat is to hit it with some Lysol or Ozium. Those are spray odor eliminators, and I want you to opt for those over things like Febreze because they'll actually nuke the bacteria that's causing the smells to happen in the first place.
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But also, it's probably not a bad idea to give those seats a proper cleaning. A carpet and upholstery cleaning machine like the Bissell SpotClean Pro or Rug Doctor Portable Spot Cleaner are great for the job, or you can roll into a car wash to use their equipment or outsource the work.
Since this is a problem that doesn't sound like it's going away anytime soon, I want to close this out by suggesting you invest in a washable seat cover like the Seat Hoody. Post-gym car seat fouling is a common enough problem that products exist to address the problem, and there's no shame in availing yourself of them!
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