I love using realistic looking artificial flowers throughout my home. I’ve also placed a number of silk flowers and natural looking greenery in outdoor pots, especially in places that don’t get enough sun for real plants to thrive. The problem though, is eventually they start looking dingy.
Artificial flowers have come a long way in their ability to mimic the real thing, and the materials use stand up well to UV light and water exposure. Over time, the fabric tends to collect dust, and tiny spider webs and filaments mar the appearance.
I recently discovered a method of cleaning my silk plants and artificial flowers that is simple & inexpensive, so I wanted to share it with you! The ‘magic ingredient’ is SALT …
My Artificial Flower Project Inspiration
I was redesigning an area in my office, and this cute cabinet with a stack of drawers found a home in a corner near the door. It looked pretty bare though, so I decided it needed a tall vase next to the cabinet.
This antique filigree vase was the right size – and I added some dried tree branches. I decided it needed some tall and realistic looking artificial flowers. Something brighter to balance all the brown tones …
If you are familiar with my Thrift Store Junkie set of articles, you’ll know that I source a large amount of my home decor items from secondhand shops. It wasn’t long before the perfect artificial flowers showed up.
This peony plant came complete with the terra cotta pot with moss dripping over the side. It was so realistic that I actually smelled one of the blooms! Then I realized, up close, that they were artificial flowers and THEY WERE FILTHY!
I thought that these would be the perfect artificial flowers that I could use to show all my readers this great salt trick for cleaning! They also are going to look great in my home decor project.
How to Clean Artificial Flowers with Salt
All you need for this project is:
- Dusty/Dingy Artificial flowers. This also works on whole plant arrangements that are sturdy (attached well to their base). Silk flowers, paper flowers, and even sturdy dried flowers can work as long as they will hold up to being shaken.
- Salt: plain old white Table Salt works best.
- A bag big enough to put the artificial flowers in. Clear plastic bags work best, but you can use a big paper bag or even a garbage bag if you need to.
For my project, I cut the Peony stems off from the clay pot base as close to the bottom of the stem as possible. I also cut off some broken side stems where leaves or flower heads were missing.
I put about 3 Tablespoons of salt in the bag (lower left corner) and one of the peony stems. My bag was not long enough for the entire stem, so I zipped up the bag, blew some air into it to puff up the bag, then held it closed at the base of the stem. Now shake like crazy!
I recommend doing this outside over the pavement in case your bag has a hole in it or you lose your grip on the bottom of the bag while you are shaking it.
After cleaning the five stems I was able to salvage from the thrift store peony pot, I saved the salt I used for cleaning so you could see how much dirt and debris that was removed from my artificial flowers.
While each of the pink blooms looked fresher and cleaner, the place I really noticed improvement was for all of the leaves on my artificial flower stems. Each leaf was brighter and greener looking after the salt cleaning, and all I had to do was shake.
See My Finished Project with Clean Artificial Flowers
All done! This corner of my office now looks bright & beautiful. My entire project came in at under $10.
Whether you are working with artificial flowers from a thrift store or consignment store (other people’s dirt) or have some tired looking faux plants or flowers around your home that need some attention (locally acquired dirt), be sure to try out my salt trick for cleaning your stems and restoring your arrangements to new looking condition!
Silk Flowers and Sustainability
Artificial flowers and replica plants can be a great way to promote sustainability. After working on this project to “rescue” these silk peonies, I got to thinking about how silk flowers can actually be a better choice (in some situations) for sustainable living. I found a great article that points out that in especially corporate or hospitality settings, that artificial flowers & plants are the better choice: Silk Flowers — More Sustainable than the Real Thing. Reasons include:
- Fresh flowers rarely get composted properly (about 4%), so they contribute to landfills
- Fresh flowers and live plants must have special transportation, including expensive refrigeration while in route
- Live plants often need to be replaced because they don’t grow well or grow too well
My daughter, who works with architectural firms as a commercial lighting designer pointed out that any plant or flower installations more than 10 feet from the floor are almost always artificial due to the difficulty of watering and providing the proper light level for the plants. This includes those wonderful looking ‘planted wall’ installations that include succulents.
So use this information as permission to increase the use of low maintenance and highly sustainable artificial plants throughout your home and garden! You get ‘bonus points’ if you source your artificial flowers from thrift sources. Read about the iron brackets for the plant wall below in Thrift Store Junkie: Explore Glenwood Springs, CO. All of the flowers in these pots are fake and came from local thrift stores.
