Pledge Fabric Sweeper for Pet Hair Review

We have two cats and therefore have cat hair everywhere. We picked up a Pledge Fabric Sweeper to see if it could beat back some of the cat hair and it works like a charm. However, it has a near-fatal flaw for which there is a slightly awkward work-around. We paid around $5 with a coupon.

What it is

The Pledge Fabric Sweeper consists of a couple of lint rollers mounted in a handheld container. You put the rollers on the dirty surface and move the Sweeper from side to side, just a few inches. You don't make big sweeping movements with the Pledge Fabric Sweeper -- just short strokes of a couple inches at a time.

The rollers pick up pet hair and lint, and deposit them inside the container that holds the rollers. Since this container is made from thin clear plastic, you can see when the container is filled. The whole thing is very lightweight and easy to hold.

When the Pledge Fabric Sweeper is full, the instructions say to throw it out. Nope, that's a dumb instruction and this brings up the main design flaw of the Pledge Fabric Sweeper: It's not built so that it can be easily cleaned. This is a foolish design flaw.

Using it

As I mentioned above, the Pledge Fabric Sweeper is easy to hold and use. It picks up cat fur from throw rugs amazingly well, leaving the rug's surface looking practically new. Take a look at my pictures on the right for an example.

However, cleaing a single 2 x 3-foot rug with the Pledge Fabric Sweeper is enough to completely fill the cleaner, and there's no way I'm going to throw this out after cleaning one small rug. Therefore, I pushed the rollers apart until I could get a vacuum crevice tool to suck out the fuzzy contents of the Sweeper. This worked well and it has now allowed me to use a single Sweeper on several dirty surfaces. The Pledge Fabric Sweeper continues to work very well, once cleaned.

Some people say that they pop the rollers out but it feels like mine will break if I force them that far. Since I can clean my Pledge Fabric Sweeper with a vacuum cleaner, this is not a big problem.

Summary

I give Pledge a big pat on the back for this terrific cleaning product. However, then I give Pledge a swift kick in the pants for not creating an easy method of cleaning it. Who is going to spend $5 for a cleaning product that you have to dispose after cleaning a 2 x 3-foot throw rug? That is boneheaded design.

The Pledge Fabric Sweeper is otherwise a very good product and it is excellent for picking up cat hair.