We Tried The Scrub Daddy Hack To Banish Pet Hair From Tricky Spots On Our Furniture

Pet hair is one of the most irritating (and trickiest to clean) substances in your home. If you own furry friends, chances are you have various resources and ways to pull up their hair and dander when you tidy, but some of these might still leave behind strands of hair and fur that never seem to shift, especially on furniture. You may recognize the brand Scrub Daddy, featured on Shark Tank Season 4, which began popping up in home goods stores like Target for the general public to purchase. It's a heavy duty yet surprisingly gentle sponge that scrubs grease and food without damaging plates and pots and pans, featuring a tough but pliable build made of thermoplastics. 

One social media user, @thezcattledogs on Instagram, took their Scrub Mommy (of the same brand) to their furniture instead of their dishes to pull up pet hair from between the crevices and off of fabrics and other materials in a clever cleaning method. The Scrub Mommy's porous design seemed to pick up the fur and hold onto it, essentially providing the same results as it does on dishes by leaving no detritus behind. The sturdy but flexible material seems like it makes for a great pet hair trap, hence why the social media post has over 4,000 likes. Naturally, this trick needed to be tested, which is what I did. I decided to use a Scrub Daddy to test if it would work the same as the Scrub Mommy or better, since @thezcattledogs only used the harder side of the sponge.

The thought process behind using this to remove pet hair could be that the extremely porous (and hard) sponge can grab onto fur and even thin strands of hair, holding it as you wipe, so that all the hair comes up off of furniture. More often than not, pet hair gets stuck in the different crevices of my furniture, and it's tricky to pull out. Even with a vacuum, stuck hair can remain embedded in cushions or edging. The Scrub Daddy's sharper edges should allow me to get a more hands-on clean in these areas and on various materials.

I decided to put the sponge under hot water to make it more pliable before wiping down my furniture. It is usually quite hard when dry because it is made of polymers that cause it to soften as it heats up and harden as it cools. I let it absorb the water for 10 seconds, wringing out the majority of the moisture once it was squishy.

I tried the hack on a fabric chair, using the Scrub Daddy to work along the seams and inner cushion edges. The results were impressive, the sponge pulling up large amounts of fur and leaving barely any behind on the fabric. The chair was upholstered in a velvet/velour material, and I tried several areas to make sure the results were the same. Tons of pet hair came off with each swipe, and the recliner was left almost fur-free.

I also used the Scrub Daddy on a suede couch, which had an accumulation of hair behind one of the pillows. Suede is a tricky material to clean in general, with rubber gloves being a top suggestion on how to remove fur and hair. I wiped the Scrub Daddy along the inner edges and corners of the suede to try and grab as much pet fur as I could. The result was average, with a few strands sticking to the coarse sponge but most of it remaining behind.

Some couches, like the suede one I tried, have a cambric dust cover behind the cushions. Its main purpose is to hold on to dust and keep it from sinking into the furniture it protects, which could be why it's harder to pull hair off of it. It seems the most effective way to really remove pet fur from this material is by vacuum. When I tried the sponge on the cambric cover, not a lot came loose, either.

It seems the Scrub Daddy sponge works with some materials, like the velvet fabric, and not as well with others. It could be that the static pull between thick velvet material and the polymers was stronger, creating a suction that allowed the Scrub Daddy to pull up more hair. For people with these types of fabric upholstery, this trick is great and makes it easy to remove pet fur. It should also work on pillows with a thicker, more piled material, or even carpeting and rugs. The Scrub Daddy did help gather the hair, but it still needs to be pulled up by hand on suede.  

The sponge doesn't need to be soaked, but adding warm water to make it pliable helps to maneuver it through the cracks and crevices of your couches, chairs, etc. Overall, this is a great trick for upholstered pieces that come in velvet or even wool — fuller materials that will create a little static. Smoother upholsteries won't get as much friction, so might not let go of as much fur every time. While I didn't try it on leather, I can only assume the same would happen with that material. For these, using a Swifter pad makes removing pet hair from furniture simple.