An Easy Way to Clean Pine Needles from the Floor
Pine needles are part of the deal that comes with bringing a real, living tree into your living room over the holidays – hell, even fake trees shed their tinsel. But that doesn’t make the resulting mess any less annoying to deal with, especially when the tree seems to be shedding everywhere.
Regular watering can help with how much your (real) tree sheds, but to save your sanity, you’ll still need a simple plan of action for how to clean up all the unavoidable pine needles from your floor. Here are our best bets:
For hardwoods, concrete or tile…
Use a lint roller!
Try a big lint roller, or something else sticky, like some masking or duct tape wrapped around your hand or the end of a Swiffer Sweeper-type thing. The sticky side is great for picking up pine needles from solid floors and the sides or tops of furniture.
For carpets and rugs…
A vacuum is the best bet.
If you have carpets or the tree is positioned over a rug, your best bet is still your trusty vacuum cleaner. Skip the brush attachment (the needles will get stuck in that, giving you another thing to clean), and just go for the hose.
Readers, do you have any tips for dealing with Christmas tree messes?
Re-edited from a post originally published 12.19.2015 – CM