An unexpected way to clean your pet’s fur from your couch

This story is part of Try this oneCNET’s collection of simple tips to quickly improve your life.

I have had cats all my life. Longer, actually: There were two cats in the house when my parents brought me from the hospital. When you live with pets – especially cats – hair comes with the territory … literally. It covers your clothes, furniture, countertops and even food.

If you’re like me, the amount of effort you put into cleaning your pet’s hair varies. For most of my adult life, I’ve been pretty relaxed. But I recently invested in a nice $ 1,300 “grown up” sofa from West Elm, upholstered in a gorgeous gray velvet fabric that is comfortable, stylish and stain resistant.

But it attracts fur like crazy.

It doesn’t help that I put it perpendicular to the glass sliding door on my deck, and Oliver and Simon, my 6-year-old short-haired house brothers, love to use the couch as a tanning bed.

So my curiosity was piqued when a colleague mentioned that you can wipe cat hair off the upholstery with just a rubber glove – no need to remove vacuum attachments or invest in expensive sprays or fabrications.

I decided to test this homemade hack scientifically. And to see if it works with different types, I made a colleague try it with dog hair. Here’s what I did and how it turned out. For more, here how to fall asleep with this five minute night routinehow to light a fire with Doritos and how to wash your car without water.

What do you need to remove cat hair from furniture?

For this hack, all you need is a pair of dishwashing gloves. I bought a brand new pair of bright yellow Libman reusable latex gloves.

And given that some people are allergic to latex, I also took a pair The best choice vinyl gloves to see how they did at work.

How to clean cat hair from your sofa and chairs?

The technique is simple enough: Put on a glove and then brush your hand on the fabric.

I thought the glove could take over the fur like a moss roller, but instead it piled up the fur, more like a broom.

After seven or eight strokes, I had a nice pile of cat hair that I could pick up, leaving the area hairless.

This trick works not only on furniture: I cleaned the fur from the pillowcase and lampshade in the same way.

Can you remove dog hair from furniture as well?

So it works on cat hair, but what about dog hair? CNET money editor Courtney Johnston tested it with his Chihuahua, BMO, to see if this pet hack went beyond species.

“He has short hair,” she said. “It’s not super hard, but it gets into the fabric of the couch, which makes it harder to get out.”

But the glove trick worked just as well, gathering all of BMO’s fur on Courtney’s couch into a clean pile that was easy to collect.

How do rubber gloves remove pet hair?

I’m not sure who first realized that they could use their household cleaning gloves to wipe the laziness, but that’s the real science. The hair of dogs and cats has an electric charge that makes them stick to many surfaces.

The idea is that wiping the rubber in the fabric of your sofa or chair breaks this connection with its own static charge, allowing you to gather the fur together.

How about using wet gloves to pick up pet fur?

Apartment therapy recommends moistening the gloves before rubbing them on the upholstery. Unlike using a dry glove, the coat is lifted and attached to the wet glove, eliminating a step in the process.

Besides, not surprisingly, he wet my pillows on the couch.

Whether you wet them or keep them dry, you should wear gloves specifically for this task. You don’t want the same pair that rubbed the toilet seat, delicately removing Garfield’s fur from your Chesterfield.

Can you use vinyl gloves to remove pet hair?

If you are allergic to latex, the use of rubber gloves is excluded. So I tested this house cleaning nozzle with a disposable vinyl glove. Unlike the rubber version, more of the hair actually stuck to the glove, and any excess fur was left in the neat pile I could collect.

One drawback is the cornstarch used in many vinyl gloves, which created a bit of a powdery mess.

If you want a powder-free version, you can find latex-free and dust-free gloves Clorox.

For easier life hacks, learn how to stop the flow of junk mail, clean your Air Pods the right way and cut the cake with dental floss.