The Care and Cleaning of Plastic Window Blinds

It's easy to forget to clean window blinds, especially when they're made of plastic. I forgot to clean my window blinds when I should have and the result of my forgetfulness was a lot of hard work. In my defense, however, is the fact that I never had to clean the blinds in my previous home (except once, as I'll explain).

Window Blinds in Phoenix, Arizona, USA

I and my family lived in our house in Phoenix for 12 years. We only had to clean the vertical and Venetian blinds one time and it was right before selling the house. It was piece of cake.

Our house was closed off from the elements for the most part. With the modern air conditioning and heating system setup, we rarely even had to dust anything. The intake filters took care of 99 percent of the dust. Our vacuum cleaner took care of the rest, in the wall-to-wall carpeting.

We never had to clean the blinds. Even when we did the cleaning prior to selling, it was nothing more than a dusting job. I used a "foxtail" hand brush and took care of it in a day.

Window Blinds in the Olongapo City, Philippines

My wife insisted on having the same kind of blinds in the house we now live in, the house we had built. Because blinds come in standard sizes and most of our windows aren't a standard size, most of the windows require two sets of blinds, side-by-side.

Because I don't have air conditioning in the house, the windows stay open most of the time, with only bug screens to keep the pests and dust out. Guess what? They don't keep the dust out.

I have two female in-laws that clean the downstairs rooms and the upstairs hallway on a regular basis. Those parts of the house, minus the blinds, were always dust-free. After our last cleaning ordeal, they now clean the blinds on a regular basis as well.

We had to clean the blinds with soap and water, that's how bad they were after the first two years. The high humidity here causes the dust to stick to the blinds. Cleaning with a brush, which I tried to do at first, had almost zero effect.

A Plan to Replace the Blinds

While the kinds of window blinds we have keep out light and provide privacy, that's about all they're good for. I'm discussing suitable replacements with the wife on almost a daily basis now. I would like to replace them with the roll-up style of window blinds and preferably bamboo blinds.

Wood blinds, even here, can be cleaned with table polishes like "Pledge". I think they would make the rooms easier to clean overall and more attractive. I've been doing some virtual window shopping for various kinds of wood blinds (even faux wood blinds) because I really hate cleaning blinds, regardless of how easy it may be. Are you tired of cleaning your blinds too? Buying new ones may be a better solution.

The hard part for me about buying new blinds is convincing the wife that roll-up blinds would be a better idea. She's an Americanized Filipina (not my fault) and wants our house to be as much like a house would be in the US as possible. I, on the other hand, really just want a roof over my head that doesn't require me to spend too much time thinking about it.

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This article is published as: The Care and Cleaning of Plastic Window Blinds