Cleaning Plastic After Smoke Damage

Video Transcript

"HI, I'm Rachel Yatuzis and I'm going to teach you about cleaning plastic after smoke damage. If you had a small fire in your house or maybe you were barbecuing outside and some plastic got damaged; plastic is a really porous material and it can really hold soot and things like that in it; you know, for a long time. So what you want to do is just get some mild soap, like mild dish detergent like this and water and make a mixture. You might want to put gloves on if your hands are sensitive; you know, 'cause this is going to dry them out a little bit; but, I'm pretty tough so I think I can handle it. You want to get a toothbrush if you have little small areas of damage or a sponge. You can use this kind of sponge that's soft or the one that has the rough scrubby side, those works well too. But all you're going to do is use the soap and water mixture to scrub the plastic. The secret to scrubbing plastic is this; don't do it really fast and really hard like that. You want to be really gentle and slow when you're scrubbing plastic; just like this 'cause it can scratch easily and you really want this soap and water mixture to penetrate the pores in the plastic and help grab onto that soot and pull it to the surface. You may have to do this for a little while but eventually it will come out. If you have white plastic, I suggest using bleach as this will speed up the process and make your job a lot easier. But as with anything, it takes a little bit of time and a little bit of elbow grease to clean any plastic that's been damaged by smoke. And that's it; it may take a little while but you can get it clean. I'm Rachel Yatuzis and that is how you clean plastic after smoke damage."