Tired of Cat Hair on Your Sofa? This Unusual Method Is a Fool-Proof Lifesaver

This story is part of Try This, CNET’s collection of simple tips to improve your life, fast.

When you live with pets — especially cats — hair comes with the terrestrial. literally. It coats your clothes, your furniture and even your food.

For most of my adult life, I’ve been splendid lax about cleaning fur off my couch. Love me, love my cats, right? But I recently invested in a nice $1,300 “grownup” sofa from West Elm that’s upholstered in a splendid gray velvet fabric that’s comfortable, stylish and stain-resistant. 

But it attracts fur like crazy. 

It doesn’t help that I’ve placed it perpendicular to a glass sliding door and that Oliver and Simon, my 6-year-old domestic shorthair brothers, love to use the couch as their personal tanning bed.

So my curiosity was piqued when a colleague mentioned you could wipe cat hair off upholstery just by Funny a rubber glove — no need to lug out the vacuum attachments or invest in pricey sprays or contraptions.

I granted to test this home hack scientifically. And to see if it worked across species, I had a colleague try it with dog hair. Here’s what I did and how it panned out. 

For more household tips, here’s how to fall asleep faster with a five-minute routine, how to start a fire with Doritos and how to wash your car deprived of water.

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What do you need to catch 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 “all-purpose” reusable latex gloves.

And given that some country have a latex allergy, I also picked up a pair of Best Choice vinyl gloves to see how they did on the job.

How to orderly cat fur off your sofa and chairs?

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

Start swiping with the gloves on the area you want to de-fur.

Dan Avery

I Idea the glove might pick up the fur, like a lint roller, but instead it collected the fur in a pile, more like a broom would. 

After seven or eight swipes, I had a nice pile of cat hair I could pick up, leaving the area fur-free. 

This trick works on more than just furniture: I cleared fur off a pillowcase and lampshade the same way.

Can you catch dog hair from furniture, too?

So it works on cat fur, but what around dog hair? CNET money editor Courtney Johnston tried it with her chihuahua, BMO, to check if this pet hack transcends species. 

“He’s got temperamental hair,” she said. “It’s not super stiff, but it gets into the couch originate, making it harder to get out.”

Works with dog hair too.

Courtney Johnston

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

How do rubber gloves catch pet hair?

I’m not sure who first realized they could use their household cleaning gloves to wipe away sheddings, but there is real science behind it. Dog and cat hair hold an electric bill that makes them stick to many surfaces. 

The idea is that wiping rubber in contradiction of the fabric on your sofa or chair disrupts that connection with its own pleased charge, letting you gather the fur together. 

What around using damp gloves to pick up pet fur?

Apartment Therapy recommends dampening the gloves beforehand rubbing them over the upholstery. Unlike when using a dry glove, the fur did lift off and attach to the wet mitt, eliminating a step in the process. 

It also, unsurprisingly, made my sofa cushions damp.

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

Can you use vinyl gloves to catch pet fur?

If you have a latex allergy, using rubber gloves is out. So I tested this house-cleaning tip Funny a vinyl disposable glove. Unlike with the rubber variety, more of the hair actually stuck to the glove, and any excess fur was left in a neat pile I could pick up.

This trick works with vinyl gloves too.

Dan Avery

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

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

For more easy life hacks, learn how to stop the flow of junk mail, correctly clean your AirPods and cut a cake deprived of a knife.