As they are a part of your indoor décor, you’ll be interested in keeping houseplants clean. Cleaning houseplants is an important step in keeping them healthy and provides an opportunity to check for pests. Keeping houseplants clean makes them more attractive too.

Learning how to clean houseplants is not difficult. There are several methods of keeping houseplants clean. You may wonder what to use for cleaning houseplant leaves.

What to Use for Cleaning Houseplant Leaves

 

You don’t need to purchase an expensive houseplant cleaner; you likely already have the ingredients to make your own. Commercial houseplant cleaner that promises to polish plant leaves can actually clog the plant’s stomata (pores) and decrease the transpiration that allows houseplants to clean indoor air.

Keeping houseplants clean can result from dusting them or rubbing the leaves with cheesecloth or a damp paper towel, if needed. An effective houseplant cleaner is your dishwashing liquid, diluted and used in a spray bottle.

You can even put your plants in the shower occasionally or a sink with a sprayer. The mist from the shower or the sprayer gets rid of some common houseplant pests and offers humidity needed by indoor plants. Houseplant cleaner for plants with furry leaves should be limited to dusting and misting with water.

Insecticidal soap on a feather duster is another means of keeping houseplants clean and treating for pests at the same time.

How to Clean Houseplants

Cleaning houseplants includes caring for the underside of the foliage and paying attention to stems, stalks and soil.

Never leave dead foliage that has dropped to the soil; this provides a breeding place for pests and disease.

Immediately shake water gently from plants with pubescent leaves and don’t put them in the sun until they’re dry. Some plants with fuzzy leaves experience damage from water standing on the leaves for too long.

Now that you’ve learned how to clean houseplants, you can put these suggestions to work. Additionally, while keeping houseplants clean, examine them for signs of small bugs or damage from disease. This may appear first on the underside of the leaves. Scale may first appear on stems and can be treated with alcohol on a cotton swab. Many houseplant pests can be treated with neem oil as well.