Home Made Floor Cleaner

The kitchen floor. It is foul.

We have a very small, open floor plan on the first floor of our house. It's just a little L, made of the living room and kitchen. The floors are hard wood, but are taking pretty hard use with the kids doing...what kids do. I usually sweep every day, and mop once a week.

Sadly, I missed doing this last weekend.

The kitchen floor. It is foul.

There are jelly smears, mud from shoes, salt from last week's snow, ketchup, scary bits I can't identify, etc, ad nauseum. (Actual nauseum).


Sweet God. This is going to be a job.




Okay. We are blessed to have a full bathroom downstairs, so usually I run the bath about a third of the way, pour in a crap ton of Pinesol, then shoo the kids out while I mop. Since hubby is allergic to pine, I then run a clean tub and use my mop to rinse the floor. Not bad. Gets up a lot of gunk.

So, I ran some water, went to the laundry room and found that we were TOTALLY OUT OF PINESOL. (Oh, thaaaat's why I didn't mop last weekend! I remember now!).

Well, I have two sick kids here, so getting out is not an option - at least not a remotely sane option. I'm going to try my old standby: SPRAY CLEANER.

I sprayed a layer over the worst area of my floor, walked away for a few minutes, then attacked it with a dampened sponge mop. CAME UP LIKE A DREAM. (Seriously?! Why have I been buying Pinesol?)

Oooo. Sparkly. (I don't remember exactly where the before pics were taken, but the whole floor pretty much looks like this now. Use your imagination.)

Anyway, I did a few more sections like that until I got tired of spraying the solution on. Then I just opened the bottle and splashed some around. This upset the toddler (who cannot stand messes unless he's making them), but did a really good job.

After it dried, there was a little bit of a film that I wasn't prepared for (probably because the sponge on my sponge mop has seen better days and needs replacing). I decided to break out the steam mop.

As an aside: I've had this steam mop for a long time, but rarely use it as it is a pain in the...hiney. It's a Shark, and I've never had much luck with their products working like they do in commercials. Well, any port in a storm.

Here's the pad before:


And after:



Ew. Maybe I should break this thing out more often. And what's fascinating is that the steam mop took up lines that I previously thought were part of the grain of the wood. This leads me to ask, WHAT THE HECK WAS ON MY FLOOR, AND HOW LONG WAS IT LIVING THERE?!

But I digress. Here's my nice, sparkly floor now.


WHAT? This is beautiful! And I don't have to buy anything, and there's no waste! (The Shark pads are re-usable).

Done. I think I found a new mopping routine: spot clean the heavier stuff with spray cleaner, then follow up with the steam mop.

This took about the same amount of time that my previous routine did (since it had to dry TWICE before), and I didn't have to shoo the kids out as everything I used was safe for them to come into contact with.

I'm sold.