How to clean and keep books in good condition

And it is that books accumulate dust like any other element that we have stacked or on the shelves at home. You may routinely dust those shelves, but it sure isn't often that you take the time to clean each and every one of your books. For this reason, we advise you to make room in your agenda and follow the following tips to remove the dust from the books and leave them as if they were just bought.

The first thing you have to keep in mind is that books cannot be cleaned with a damp cloth, since doing so will increase the chances of mold stains appearing. To avoid this tragedy, the ideal way to remove dust from books is by using an electrostatic cloth. With a single pass and lightly rubbing the cover, you will be able to get rid of most of the dirt.

For the pages we use a soft bristle toothbrush or even a small hairbrush instead, making strokes that follow the direction from the seam outwards. Of course, when doing it, keep the book closed since, if you clean the pages with the open copy, you will only get the dust to sneak between the pages and you can also bend the pages with the bristles of the brush.

How to keep the good condition of the books?

With these precautions we can remove the dust from our books without running the risk of ruining the cover or its interior. In any case, certain precautions must be taken to preserve books well, such as not having them on a shelf where they are exposed to a lot of sun, as they can end up deteriorating and, what is worse, the cover and pages turn yellow. .

Wet places and books don't get along very well either. Excessive humidity, in addition to producing mold, can alter the ink. This can cause the pages to become ugly and even make it impossible to read them.

But the heat is not good for books either since, if they are placed very close to a stove, for example, they can suffer from the opposite problem to the previous one: lack of humidity. Also, the leaves can become too dry and brittle.