Cleaning Floors

The Swiffer Vac!!!! Love it!!! And, you sound just like me.... I rarely actually "clean" the floors but use the Swiffer vac almost every day. :) It won't clean up the sticky stuff, but dust and crumbs.

I have wood in my family room and kitchen. I find that the vacuum/Swiffer/spot clean route only goes so far. Sometimes they need the hands & knees treatment with a bucket of hot water, a soft rag & Murphy's Oil Soap.
My mother always says, "Doing your floors on your hands & knees is good for the soul"!
Not sure I completely agree with that, but it IS necessary every so often, I find.

I bought a steaming mop, kinda like a swifter, but with steam and water.... Works awesome!! It's all I use anymore!

Baking soda and vinegar. One cup per gallon of vinegar and half a cup of baking soda. The mix is volatile at first. You don't have to rinse afterward. My kitchen floor is large and has 12 inch squares of black and white tiles laid out checker board fashion. I use 3 gallons of water in the pail and a good quality sponge mop I bought at Bed Bath and Beyond.

I believe that the quickest way to keep up with the floors is to make sweeping a high priority and learn to get down on your hands and knees after every meal. When I see spills I clean them. When I sweep, I watch for spots. I get the kids to help too. Clean floors are very important to me. I won't have my kids going home with dirty knees.

If you take a damp mop, and run it across the floors with plain water in it, you'll pick up all kinds of lint and dust that comes up from the registers this time of the year. That cuts down on dust all over your home. I love my wood floors, even though they are scratched and stained. There's little I can do since it would take moving out to be able to re-finish them. But over all, I find that old wood floors are still much preferable to carpet.

I mop to loosen things up and then clean up the film with my steam mop. It doesn't take me any longer than when I mopped the heck out of them.

I use Shaklee products. Once you get them clean with Shaklee then just wipe it down on a weekly basis and they stay looking nice. Shaklee is toxic free (check the ingredients on swiffer and then the side effects of the chemicals they use) and extremely inexpensive to the point of hundreds of dollars less expensive. Also, you might try a steam cleaner because that has no toxic chemicals that you are working with (just water) and it cleans great. I got mine at Wal-Mart for around $50 or so. Can't remember the exact amount. Mine, I think, was on sale.I put one drop of Basic H2 in my steam cleaner and the floors look awesome. I have lived in my house almost 20 years and my floors look new.

If interested there is a website you can go to: http://nontoxiccleaners.myshaklee.com

N.

I don't vaccuum. I use a broom, then a refillable swiffer knockoff with washable microfiber head. I fill the tank with straight white vinegar.

My neighbor installs flooring and he says that Murphy's is one of the WORST things you can use on laminate. He recommends cleaners sepcially formulated for laminate - and no, he doesn't sell them. He pointed them out to me in the cleaning aisle at the supermarket. The only reason I don't use them is that I don't like the smell.

There isn't a fast easy way to do it, you have to buckle down and use an OLD FASHIONED mop and broom. Sweep often at least once a day and sometimes after meal preparation is necessary and mop your floor when ever it gets a little dirty. I would start with a good scrubbing on your hands and knees with a wash rag and a bucket of hot water and white vinegar and a scrub brush. After your floor is clean again maintain it with regular sweeping and some white vinegar and a mop.

Floors suck but there isn't a quick fix.

We just put in Laminate (Shaw brand) last year into a addition and I use the wand and hard floor setting on my vac to get the big stuff up and also use a microfiber cloth but with laminate (which is a pressed board with a wood pattern on top) you need to use a laminate floor cleaner which you can find at Home Depot or Lowes,etc. Water is the enemy with laminate so if you get water on it, dry it quickly. If water gets on it for a lenght of time, it swells up and you have to pull out the whole floor from the edges to replace the damaged pieces (has a friend who had this happen).We choose Laminate over hardwood because we were told by many people it is better with kids and I must say,it is a pain to keep up with little kids. I use Bruce brand cleaner and just lightly spray on the floor and mop with a microfiber broom which has a washable cloth on it. I am no expert but I am frugal and talked to many contractors, dealers, etc on how to care for it.. Hope it helps. I hate cleaning floors also but this is the best cleaning method I can find to make it last.

Best of luck!

I too hate dragging out the mop .. and I need to on occasion, but most of the time I just fold over two or three paper towels, wet them with warm water and add white vinegar or some other natural cleanser and put the towels cleanser side down on the floor. Then I put my bare foot on top of the paper towels and just move my foot around to scrub the spots on the floor that are dirty. I do this while talking on the phone a lot (makes me feel more productive) and it works pretty well for me. Then when I'm done talking with my friend or whatever the floor is nice and clean and I don't have to clean out the mop. I have also used the automated floor scrubber called scooba (by the makers of roomba vacuum) that rolls around your kitchen mopping for you and it does a great job ... but scooba has to be prepped every time you use it and you have to vacuum first so it's not completely work free. Good luck!