Microfiber Cloths
Welcome to my first review of the year. I'm starting a new experiment this year called Omar's Finds. As I discover neat products, collect news articles and purchase stuff I'm going to post to a new section of this website. This past week I had 3 posts. You can chose to follow via Twitter, or Email. Posts are very lightweight but not always newsletter or blog worthy.
I'm in love with microfiber cloths. I have lots and lots of them for various tasks. These days microfiber is cheap, comes in bulk, and for lots of different jobs. Kitchen towels, cleaning, and for this post, keeping electronics clean and smudge free. You can read about How Microfiber works and why water is all you need to clean with Microfiber.
“If you use a microfiber cloth, there’s no detergent involved whatsoever, so how is the dirt removed? Instead of detergent, we rely on millions more fibers (shown here as blue lines) that can sweep dirt away. The fibers are made of plastic and many of them attach themselves to each dirt speck with van van der Waals forces. Working as a team, many fibers apply powerful enough forces to dislodge the dirt (loosened with a small amount of water) and carry it away, leaving the surface naturally dirt-free. This is new-fangled cleaning with physics using nothing but the adhesive power of forces—cleaning mechanically and without chemicals. The dirt stays locked inside the cloth’s fibers until you wash it in hot water, which makes the fibers uncurl slightly and release their dirty content.”
There are two major kinds of micro fiber for electronics cleaning. The thin smooth kind of cloth and the thicker kind with the textured surface. I have both, and each has it's strengths.
Magic Fiber
Magic Fiber cloths come in two sizes: small (pictures above) and giant.
I probably have 20 of the small and 4 of the large. I keep them everywhere I need to use them. 2 in every camera bag, 1 for my iMac, 1 at work, 1 for every kid device, 1 in every work bag, 1 in my eye glasses case and so on.
They are pretty cheap, easy to clean, and my favorite feature - no lint or harming the glass product. This is especially important for camera lenses.
★★★★★
Exceptional. A spectacular product.
Other Microfiber products I'm using
Sinland Microfiber Kitchen towels - 5 stars - these are high quality, plush towels for the kitchen and come in a number of colors. I have 9 of these and we just rotate them frequently in the wash and we always have a drawer of them on hand for big cleanups. I like blue (or red) as they don't show stains.
Vibrawipe Microfiber Cloth - 5 star - these are great cheap cleaning cloths for the home. We have a dozen that are used as "rags" around the house. I like "green" for cleaning.
e-cloth Window Cleaning Pack - 4 star - e-cloth makes lots of specialized Microfiber. This glass cleaning cloth is incredible. Spray some water on glass and use this cloth and you'll get streak free clean without any chemicals. There is a thicker cloth for clean up and then a polishing cloth for a streak free finish.
e-cloth Kitchen Cloth - 4 star - this is our daily "counter scrubbing cloth" that we use to mop up messes and so on. Replaced all paper towel usage in our house. It has a small scrubbing pad in the corner for tough spots like honey and crusted food. We just use plain tap water to help with cleaning.
e-cloth Cleaning Pad - 5 stars - for big messes and spills this is a giant sponge that we bring in to clean up.
Griot's Garage Microfiber - for your car, they make a half dozen different products I've written about.
Other interesting products
AmazonBasics has a line of Microfiber now. Cool eh?
Caring for Microfiber
Only wash Microfiber cloths together without any kind of other cotton product. You can use this additive to your wash to give some life back to your cloths.