my mother has always cleaned her houseplants with a cotton ball and...wait for it: MILK. leaves (pun intended) a beautiful shine.

My dad also cleans all his plants with milk. His plants are all healthy and beautiful unlike mine.

Milk is ok for leaves with a natural oil coating, but nor for the rest.

I worked at a flower shop for a few years, and to keep our stock of plants pretty, aside from removing yellow leaves and stray roots, we used leafshine spray. Pokon was one of the brands, and it was basically aerated vegetable oil that we'd spray on like hair spray once a week. The oil would keep dust from settling as well as make them super duper shiny.

This is good information. And if anyone has tips on how to clean a large cactus without resorting to fire retardant gloves and tweezers I'd be interested in hearing them.

I used to have two tall houseplant trees - one given to me back in college when it was a small plant, not yet a tree, when a friend moved back to where she grew up, the other already a tree that was given to me by a friend moving out of the country. I loved having first one, and then two, trees in my front windows, in many apartments. They often substituted for curtains in my living room, a green screen between me and the outside world. One I had for over twenty years, the other just a few years. The demise of both was one move, where they only moved a few blocks in Brooklyn, and were only on the moving truck a few minutes - it being a cold winter day, they were the last items loaded and the first unloaded. They seemed to survive the move just fine, but apparently they caught scale (little white bugs in the air that attack plants.) Despite my laborious application of a natural pesticide made from some flower, and more frequent cleaning, they gradually sickened and died. Scale is supposed to be killable, but there's a limit to what pesticides I'll expose myself to in my home. (I was probably foolish to get my hands, arms and shirt covered with the non-synthetic one I applied.) I missed them in my brownstone bay windows after they were gone, though my next place had no room for them in front of the windows. Now that I've moved to a place that has windows that would be perfect for some trees (I still have the big pots and saucers, I've hauled them around with me, though to start with absolutely no fungus, maybe I should toss them and start with new pots), I'm thinking about getting some new trees (though I love that the others both started out as small plants and only grew to trees over decades)...but what gives me pause is the cleaning of them (even before they got scale.) I don't miss that. The norfolk island pine was simple to spray and didn't need dusting when healthy, the schefflera was a pain to clean always. Perhaps if I do get some, I'll get a plant person to clean them, as I am thinking about getting a cleaner to clean my apartment now. I love puttering around my plants caring for them, repotting them, but that tree cleaning was a chore. Perhaps I'll stick to smaller plants instead of trees, and enjoy the greenery outside when the trees out there have leaves. They are very bare - beautiful, but bare - out there right now.

One of those pump-up-the-pressure spray bottles might speed up the process. They cost more than a couple of bucks (15 or 20 bucks, as I recall), but they do come in handy, especially should you ever wish to apply insecticidal soap, for instance.

For my orchid, I rub the inside of a banana skin on the leaves. It makes them shiny.

I read that rubbing the leaves with a little mayo on towel will keep the leaves nice and shiny. I tried it and it worked!

I (used to) have a potted cactus that was the size of a side table, and about 4ft. high (I used to put in outside in the summer, and then one year... Winter came. Wayyy early. Bye-bye cactus! I am sorry for what I done! :-( ). I have a Dyson vacuum cleaner-- bagless is important here-- that worked beautifully for cleaning the cactus. I had an extra soft brush attachment (is that the drapery/upholstery attachment? I can never remember the right names for them) that was the exclusive attachment of plant vacuuming, so I didn't have to worry about stray needles hitching a ride onto the furnishings. As long as you kept it out of the inside of the pot, at the base of the plant, this was THE solution.
It worked pretty well on some of my more sturdy tropical plants,too, though it did tend to pull the leaves off my Brugmansia. Cactus loved a good hoovering though. I think it was lonely...it was the only contact it got, poor thing.

My ficus tree has 459,258 dusty leaves. I can only clean 8 leaves.

I used to do this when I had ficus trees. Extra tip: As with all cleaning, start at the top when possible. No point in scattering dust onto the just-cleaned leaves.

"Cut any arial roots or other unwanted growth." Be careful, though -- the arial roots looks almost identical to the helvetica roots.

Ha, B for B! I gasped when I read your warning, thinking, "Oh no! Are there some unruly roots I shouldn't be cutting?" Then I calmed down and got your joke... Thanks for finding my typo - I'm going to correct it right now.

I also use the banana skin method, but like the idea of milk - will it work on orchids too ?

I'm an interior horticulturist - a professional plant person. Professionals clean plants by dusting them at every service, which is once a week, or every other week. Use a big feather duster, or some sort of soft fluffy duster, like a Swiffer.. For larger plants, use a soft cloth or paper towel, support the leaf with one hand under it, and polish it with the cloth - many plants have a natural shine. Milk, mayo, and plant shines are a big no-no, because they gum up the leaf pores, they spoil, and attract bugs and disease. Visit my blog http://theficuswrangler.blogspot.com/ for tips on plant care, or to ask me a question.