Dear LPG, 

I feel sure that there is no one in the country who will have missed that we have had a couple of nice days recently and, arguably, for the first time in a couple of years we can probably agree that it has felt safe enough for even the most reluctant of us to really get out.

I have been getting out for a while now and I think going out and then coming home again often wakes us up to the fact that our homes could do with a bit of attention.  I did just that recently and worked out that there are always a few little bits that are needed for your spring-cleaning kit when you feel the need to give the whole place a good clean from bottom up. But when you look at the shelves of cleaning agents in supermarkets these days, have you noticed how the whole cleaning industry has been taken over by a one-word phrase lately?  

It is natural isn’t it, that the urge to get the dusters and brushes out comes with the springing of spring, while getting the car clean is a year-round challenge for those men who don’t even trust the job to the local hand car wash specialist. 

I know that they have been around for a while but over the past couple of years the word microfiber seems to have become synonymous with the need to clean anything that needs to be wiped in some way.  

You get one with the special fluid they give you when you get a new television or computer, spectacle cleaning kits boast this quality in the cloths that they give out, they are a quality that is pointed out even when you are looking for a new dish washing or drying up cloth and adverts for floor cleaning even mention the quality in their floor mops. 

So, what is so special about them?  This was the question that I thought worth a little research the other morning and the answer was a bit of a learning curve.

No one really knows who invented them, but it happened somewhere in the 1990s and apparently the idea is that these cloths are made of small loops of two different manmade materials, polyester and nylon, each with a different function.  One reaches the smallest of particles while the other’s job is to keep them trapped in the cloth and it is to be noted the best ones can hold up to 7 times their own weight of moisture.

They keep the dust away for longer, pick up all those droplets of water that other cloths might just leave behind and are very kind to all surfaces because of the thinness of the fibres in its make-up.  Now that I have found all this stuff out I thought it a good idea to pass it on.

In my ignorance, my idea of a good duster has always been a washed cut-off from an old bit of sheeting, but I think this year it might be time for a change…

ND, Mottingham

ND shares what she has found…

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… and LPG found some facts worth noting (although you will have to ignore the adverts that are intermingled with the information) … 

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