Cleaning and Stain Removal - cleaning my new wood table-help!

Hello~

We bought our very first *nice* solid wood dining set a couple of months ago, and I'm having a hard time figuring out how to keep it clean. All the information I can find talks about dusting, which is easy enough, but what I'm trying to deal with is food spills and splashes (we have 2 and 4 year old daughters).

Everything I read seems to say not to ever use water to clean it (I always used a damp washcloth with our old junky table and let it air-dry) but the only other products I can find are polishes, which make the surface sticky and smeary and finger-print prone, even when I use a dry cloth to wipe off the excess. I use plastic placemats under where the girls eat, which catches most of their mess, but still when they get overly enthusiastic with their cereal and milk seeps under the mats onto the wood, or someone knocks a piece of food off a plate and it skitters across the surface of the table, how am I supposed to clean that up? I can't stand having a table that's either dirty with food messes or smeary and yucky from the polishes-so I'm about to just go back to using a clean, damp washcloth to wipe up food soils and just dry it right away with a second, dry washcloth. Is this going to ruin the finish, or can I get away with the water to clean as long as I use sparingly and always dry right away?

Thanks so much :)

Contrary to popular belief, the amount of water used to clean wood is not going to hurt it. It is standing water or continued dampness that will hurt wood.

Wooden tables meant for dining are sealed in such a way that it would take a great deal of moisture to hurt it at all. I am sitting at a wood table right now that is more than 25 years old. We bought it when our four children were little. They are now grown. The table top still looks great. We have used various things to clean it, usually just the dishcloth that we were doing dishes with, therefore it was mostly cleaned with water and dishwashing liquid. We have also used window cleaner and just general all purpose cleaners on it.

We seldom used any furniture polish on it, maybe never. I do not like to use furniture polish on a table that people will be eating off of. Especially if those people are children. I did not like the idea of someone possibly picking up food that had been on the bare table top and eating it, and possibly ingesting furniture polish along with it.

Unless your table is of a poor quality, using a damp washcloth followed by a dry one will not hurt your table at all.

Sandra Fann
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A clean, damp cloth followed by a dry one should have no ill effects on the table's finish. When it comes to cleaning problems, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. A vinyl table cloth can be used to cover and protect the table during meals. The vinyl can be easily wiped off or tossed in the washer.

Thanks so much-that makes a lot of sense. I was also uncomfortable using polishes or chemicals for food safety reasons (forgot to mention that in my original post), and when I thought about it it wouldn't make any sense from the manufacturers' point of view to produce a product meant for eating from that couldn't be kept clean without ruining it. I have to think that a dining table--as opposed to a bookshelf or accent table--would have to have a more durable finish that could stand up to gentle but thorough cleaning.

Thanks for your replies, both of you!

Oh, and I was using a vinyl tablecloth for a little while to protect the table from my girls, but I took it off yesterday both because I didn't want to cover the wood with plastic (I wanted it to breathe) and because I got tired of looking at an icky vinyl tablecloth when we had just spent a lot of money on a beautiful wood table--I wanted to look at that instead :)

Vinyl table cloths are flannel backed for protection of the table. After using, the table cloth and be wiped with damp cloth and wiped dry, folded, and put away until the next meal. Vinyl table cloth adds additional protection for table when used beneath a fabric table cloth. Removing tablecloth allows you the opportunity to restore table decorations to the table when not in use and enjoy the beauty of your table.