Multi-tasking with Microfiber May 31, 2008

Meet the microfiber towel – your new best friend.

If you haven’t got a microfiber towel or two around your house, then I’m surprised you’ve lived this long. No home should be without at least two microfiber towels, because they make cleaning ridiculously easy and simple. They can do so many different tasks, and make them all so quick you’ll wonder how you ever lived without a microfiber towel.

So what can these wonders do?

Actually, we’re going to divide this into two sections: what a microfiber towel can do, and what it can do better than a Swiffer cloth. You read that right – when you have a microfiber cloth, you will no longer have any use for a dry Swiffer cloth. You can stop wasting your money and filling up the landfills.

I know you’re curious now, so we’ll start with all the things a microfiber cloth does better than a Swiffer:

• Dust furniture or anything else holding still without furniture polish. I was never particularly impressed with the Swiffer’s dusting capabilities. Not even the fringe-y ones that were supposed to replace the feather duster. A microfiber cloth, however, will blow your mind. It’s great for dusting electronics, and for furniture, it can’t be beat. When you don’t have to spray furniture polish, or go back over the surfaces Swiffer left dusty, you’ll find that dusting takes much less time. You’ll also find more money in your pocket, when you’re not spending it on furniture polish and Swiffers.
• Clean ceiling fans and blinds. A microfiber cloth will make short work of cleaning both blinds and ceiling fan blades. And, to make this task even easier and quicker, you can now find these nifty little microfiber mitts in the big box store or even dollar-type store of your choice. The best part about this is, you can actually clean a ceiling fan without a shower of dust bunnies raining down in your hair and eyes. And you know that’s good.
• Dust the tops of refrigerators, cabinets, or anything else that’s taller than you are. I’m sure you already have the stick for a dry Swiffer in your home. I’d be surprised if you didn’t. Just wrap a microfiber cloth around the Swiffer stick and get to dusting the things you can’t reach. All without, once again, raining a shower of dust bunnies on your head.
• Dust/sweep hardwood/tile floors. I first fell prey to the Swiffer when I moved into a house that had tile floors. The broom didn’t always pick up the dust bunnies or the hairies, as I like to call those little wads of people and cat hair that one often finds alongside dust bunnies. However, the Swiffer didn’t always pick these up, either. A microfiber towel used on the Swiffer stick will do it, people. In fact, I’d challenge you to first use a Swiffer on your floor, then go over it again with a microfiber towel, and prepare to be horrified. Best of all, if you have a large room, you don’t have to go through several Swiffers or microfiber towels – just flip the microfiber towel over when it gets dirty.

And now, for the other miracles the microfiber towel can perform:

• Cleaning windows without streaks. Self-explanatory.
• Dusting lampshades. You may wonder why this one wasn’t included with the Swiffer ideas. That’s because I could never use a Swiffer on a lamp shade without leaving a downy dusting of Swiffer-bunnies behind.
• Drying dishes quickly. Unlike a regular towel that quickly becomes soaked, the thirsty microfiber cloth will dry many, many dishes before becoming so wet it’s unusable. Unless I’m in a big hurry, I don’t use the heat-dry feature on my dishwasher – if the dishes aren’t dry by the time I’m ready to get them out, I give them a quick swipe with a microfiber cloth.
• Drying car windows. I rarely towel dry an entire car, but I will usually dry the windows to keep them from spotting. One microfiber towel will typically dry all the windows on my Jeep Grand Cherokee.
• Drying my hair. Yep, you read that right. I found this idea on Makeup Alley , a wonderful site for learning more than you ever wanted or needed to know about beauty products.  Now, they recommended a towel just for this purpose from Bed, Bath and Beyond or some such place, but since the nearest store like that is oh, 200 miles from here, I just bought a large microfiber towel in the automotive section at Wal-Mart, and was delighted to find that it worked very well.  I have long, thick, curly hair that has a lot in common with a sponge in that it soaks up water and refuses to let it go.  The microfiber towel makes blow-drying my hair much quicker.

So now, to recap: the microfiber towel is amazing.  A regular workhorse, it can perform many, many duties around the house.  It will save you beaucoup bucks in time while also decreasing the amount of trash you produce by eliminating the need for Swiffers and the paper towels you may use for some of these other tasks.  Furthermore, it makes you more energy efficient by allowing you to stop using the heat-dry option on your dishwasher, decreasing the amount of time you need to blow-dry your hair, and decreasing the amount of time you keep the lights turned on up into the wee hours of the night cleaning house.  Wonderful.  Of course, to me, the best thing about microfiber towels is that they make cleaning so much quicker that I have more time to read books and do my nails.  That’s productivity.

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