Seeking Advice on Ceramic Tile Floor Care

K. -

Minus the pet hair, I also have a yard-loving hubby and very adventurous 7 month old baby boy who seem to be constantly in and out of the house. We have hardwoods throughout most of our house and I have a Hoover Floormate. It has five seperate brushes and has a dry vac button so you can sweep up the pet hair before you go to mop the floors. I have heard that it can do wonders especially for ceramic floors. I purchased mine from Home Depot. The only downside is that it does require a specific cleaner.

Congrats on the new home!

K.,
We were told never to use anything but ammonia or water to clean it. However, because of our daughters sever alergies we recently apent a good sum of money or a vapor cleaner. We absolutely love it and wonder why we did not do this in our other homes. It heats distilled water up to over 220 degrees and essentially serilizes the surfaces. It turned our grout just about back to its original color (ABOUT 3 SHADES LIGHTER)
We use it on the carpets, the car rugs. They say you can even clean an oven with it but we have not tried that yet. Best of all it closely resembles a tiny power washer and so my husband ACTUALLY CLEANS with it. Its about the size of a small cannister vacuum. They are not cheap but it has been the best thing we have ever used.

Hi K.,

My carpet cleaning man told me to never use a Swiffer type floor mop in tile. He said it just pushes the dirt into the grout. He said to just vacuum it and use a very wet mop to clean it (Mr. Clean or similar cleaner). This is a pain because it takes a while to dry. We have 3 pugs, and they shed like crazy!!

We have ceramic and porcelain tile throughout a majority of our house, and I just recently bought a Hoover Steam Mop. I use that in conjunction with my rubber-headed EuroShine broom, and it works well. I was advised by a personal friend of mine against getting the Shark, which is also a steam mop, so I ordered the Hoover one through Wal-Mart and picked it up on site as most stores I went to didn't carry it. She told me that she had two Sharks that broke within just a few months of each other. The Hoover mop has gotten mostly positive reviews.

It cleans with steamed water and no chemicals, so it's incredibly safe to use. I do want to order a couple of other microfiber mop heads as mine get dirty very quickly with two rambunctious dogs and a 13-month old!