Cleaning My Baseboards Is My Least Favorite Chore, but Here’s the Best Tool to Do It

I used two magic eraser sponges from Fogarty’s testing to clean my home baseboards. Both products were thoroughly wet, wrung out, and used on separate, equally dirty parts of my baseboards. When it became obvious that I had too much cat hair to use the sponges without an initial dusting, I vacuumed the rest of my baseboards thoroughly before using the sponges on scuff marks. Here’s what I learned.

Gentle rubbing is not going to cut it here. After wetting and wringing out the Moxie and Mr. Clean sponges, I very lightly swiped them over the scuffs on my baseboard. There was no change. After scrubbing more vigorously, the dark marks were mostly gone. A couple of seconds of extra scrubbing got rid of the little that was left. There weren’t any noticeable differences in results between the two sponges, but the Mr. Clean sponge did seem to start tearing as I used it (Fogarty noticed this in her own testing, too).

Both sponges really made my dingy baseboards look brand-new, but the hair was another problem entirely. Initially, I thought, “Let’s give them a shot at handling the hair and see how it goes,” but because of the amount of cat hair on the baseboards, the sponges very quickly became too covered in fur to use.

I rinsed them in the kitchen sink every time they became too covered in hair and then found myself picking hair out of the drain strainer long after I finished cleaning. If you have any pets at home that shed heavily or it’s been a particularly long time since the last time you dusted your baseboards, I recommend giving them an initial clean with a vacuum cleaner, duster, or broom.

There’s no getting around it—you have to get low and close to properly remove scuffs from baseboards. You can’t scrub at the scuffs from an arm’s length away. Hacks like using a Clorox ToiletWand with a sock over the end just don’t allow you to put enough pressure on the baseboards to really get them clean. 

Cleaning your baseboards is just a tedious chore that you have to get low on the ground to do once in a while. There’s no skipping bending over if you want to get rid of scuffs. Magic eraser sponges seem to be the best way to do it, but I recommend using the dusting attachment on your vacuum or a duster first so you don’t have to rinse the sponge every few minutes. If I find another hack that works better, I’ll report back, but for now, I’m sticking with these sponges next time I have to prep my baseboards for a close-up.