New Sofa's Advice needed!

I bought myself a pair of second hand sofa's and although they are really nice and worth every penny, they arrived covered in cat hair!

I am incredibly allergic to cats and any advice on how to de-cat these would be very useful.

I have washed the cushion covers, vac'd the sofas and have used fabreze on them but they are still quite hairy. My poor eyes, nose and chest are really suffering and i have only been out of costa just over a week due to infection and dont really want a trip back.!!

Any advice???????

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I know this maybe a tedious task, but how about using one on those lint rollers. It will take a while, but should take most of the hairs off and then rewash the covers. Just an idea.

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2 points is it just the cats that are a problem? Could be the old foe HDM's. In which case there are 2 things you can do one get your hands on or preferably get someone in to steam clean the sofa (that will deal with the HDM;s and cat problem). If you have someone with a big chest freezer put the cushions into a black bin bag one at a time seal the bag and bung in deep freeze for 48 hours. When I do that for my sofas it takes over a week cos I can only get one cushion into the freezer at a time and I have a freezer you could hide a body in You need to wait until all the all the cushions are done before putting them back on or you might cross contaminate them.

On the subject of cats it is not the hair its the dander that lives on the cat and attaches itself to the hair as well as landing on its own and its tiny. So a lint roller should get it off but it will be tedious in the extreme and some will fall between the weave cracks. I am not sure deep freezing will deal with the cat dander problem

By the time you have de-catted and and de-hdm'd the sofas it is probably cheaper to buy new ones I am afraid

My next mission is to replace my sofa with leather ones, I don't like them I think they are cold and un-welcoming. I spent a small fortune on my sofa's (pre-asthma) I love them so much the are huge ones you can really burrow into them but my lovely sofa's are the last refuge for HDM's we have. Right now we have someone in to steam clean them every 6 months but it costs £150 a time and they only do the bases I deep freeze the cushions if they did the cushions it would be double the cost.

One last thought, have you seen have removable covers you get for mattresses. You could buy some make them to fit your cushions, then wash your covers and put them over the top of your newly covered cushions. Of course you will have to hoover and lint roll the base but I suspect the action of sitting on the sofa cushions is sending up a ""cloud"" of HDM (well actually its their poo) and cat dander the cover solution should stop that.

Phew....

Bex

Bex

ps hmmm I think that mattress cover idea is a good one I might just to that and see if I can pro-long my enjoyment of my lovely sofas a bit longer

[KateMoss]

Helly Kymii!

Ooops!

I bought a small Leather couch (IKEA of course!) to keep down the HDMs etc though the two back cusions have feathers in them. I solved this by taking the covers off, unzipped, using an old torn matress anti dust mite cover, made covers for the cushion inners, vacuumed the inside of the cushion covers to remove feather bits, had no problems at all.

It would be good if we could buy anti dust mite cover material off the roll.

Apart from vacuuming like mad, I have no other suggestions. (I am quite good at vacuuming at the mo to evict my little squatters! )

I use washable throws and fleccy blankets on my sofa (Couch)

Kate

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Hi Kymiii,

I was told by allergy experts that it can take up to seven years for all traces of cat dander to be evicted from home and that would include all surfaces. Common sense tells me that nano sized cat dander will sink into textiles and stay there unless regularly hoovered out. Your cat hair covered sofas may not have been regularly hoovered?

We used to have cats, but they were fostered out after near miss attack of asthma, and although cats aren’t my only big (life threatening) trigger they were, at that time, the ‘pushing over the edge’ biggest trigger. Took a while for me to get round to accepting this because I love cats.

My cats used to love sleeping on raspberry pink velvet sofa surfaces not to mention sleeping on the bed.

Replacing my bed and sofas hasn’t cured worsening asthma problems. What it has done though is to remove one very big big trigger, which I know makes a difference because of my most recent experience of staying – lasted three hours – with friend and adopted extremely cute stray kitten, which resulted in my having to attend unknown hospital for emergency treatment. All very annoying because my asthma was under control beforehand and with a reduction in pred. (Assumed I would be OK staying with her because of pred ‘protection’)

I’ve got leather sofas now and yes they aren’t as comfy as the soft squishy squashy old sofas but, on the other hand they are very low maintenance and good for posture!

You could always resell the sofas on ebay!

Mia

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Thanks very much for all the advice. I have a steam cleaner and have done that ans also i have the inspector gadget of all mum's so she was up with all her potions and lint rolls etc. They are a lot better now and almost hair free but yeh the effort of doing it all was much to be desired!!

Bex - I am going to try the anti allergy mattress cover thingys on my cushions too as that will prob help and as my son has asthma too it will prob help him too.

Thanks again.

xXx