5 Tips for Cleaning Up Pet Hair

Cover the surfaces your pet uses frequently with blankets and area rugs. More hair on washing machine friendly surfaces like slipcovers and mats will mean less hair in your carpeting and furniture -- and less wear and tear on your vacuum cleaner, too. Consider it a decorating challenge. Interior designers are doing great things with washable slipcovers and accent rugs these days. You can add some seasonal flare to your décor while putting down makeshift fur traps. Hey, this could be an excuse to redecorate!

Here's a washing tip: Throw hair laden cover ups in your clothes dryer with a fabric softener sheet for 10 minutes before washing. The tumble cycle and softener will loosen lots of hair you can later empty from the lint trap. Adding liquid water softener to the wash cycle will release more stubborn hairs into your wash water, too.

If you want pets but are determined to keep your home a pet hair-free zone, try outfitting your rooms with furnishings that are naturally hair resistant. As you might guess, this includes products made with slick or anti-static materials. Hair just slides off to be vacuumed up later. Here are some examples:

You might also try camouflaging pet hair until you can tidy up. Think furnishings in muted tones or prints that blend with your pet's coloration. This might sound silly, but if you love Fido (Max or Sasha), and are in the market for a new couch, it's something to think about.

Diligent housekeepers have come up with lots of ways to gather up wayward pet hair. Some are more effective than others, though. Here are a few you might want to try:

If you have pets, you're no stranger to the wonders of vacuum cleaning. Some vacuums are more durable and better at removing pet hair than others, though. Suction is important, but so are factors like ease of use, belt endurance and agitator brush effectiveness. Before you buy a new vacuum, take a look at what some of the independent testing labs like Consumer Reports have to say about the newest vacuum cleaners on the market. Effectiveness at picking up pet hair is included in most vacuum cleaner rating summaries. You'll also discover that some manufacturers offer models specifically designed to tackle pet hair. We admit this sounds pretty promising, but it may be more hype than anything else, so do your homework before you buy.

To get the best performance from your current vacuum cleaner, change the bag often. In most conventional vacuums, the bag acts as the onboard filter. The unit functions less effectively when the bag is full. Keep the wand or agitator brushes clean, too. Pet hair can get tangled in the cleaning brushes of your vacuum, especially if your pet has long hair.

The way you clean can also have an impact on how well your vacuum handles pet hair removal. Some experts recommend going over each area of your carpet three times in alternating directions to loosen and eliminate embedded hair. It's a good idea to overlap your strokes slightly as you work, too.

If pet hair is piling up in drifts along your baseboards or swirling through your rooms like dust every time the air conditioner kicks on, then performing a little after-the-fact hair cleanup may not be enough to solve your pet hair problems. This is especially true when the seasons change and your pet's undercoat is adapting to warmer or cooler conditions. Your pet may be dropping hair like a nor'easter drops snow, and there's a good chance there's plenty more where that came from.

Dead coat is hair that's still in your pet's soft undercoat but not attached to his skin. When your pet is a big shedder, there's probably quite a bit of "dead coat" ready to drop onto your floors and furniture every time your pet turns around, sits down or -- breathes. Think of it as tomorrow's vacuuming project in the making. There's good news and bad news here: The bad news is that some pets can shed copious amounts of undercoat hair in spring and fall (but you probably already know that). The good news is that regular grooming can liberate dead coat pretty easily before it becomes a housecleaning nightmare.

These tips will help: