Hardwood Floor Cleaner

My "Pinspiration"



With two kids under 5, it's extremely difficult to keep the house clean, most days (okay, it's partly my laziness, too...but it's nice to have a little bit of an excuse, right?) Each week, however, I like to do a proper clean, which includes dusting, cleaning bathrooms, vacuuming the carpets and washing the floors. Of course, 2 seconds after the house has it's thorough clean, it's back to its state of disarray (my kids have NO respect for my cleaning abilities...), but at least it's nice to know that underneath all of the toys and junk, there's a clean base. My preferred method of washing the floors has been the H2O Mop. My father (obsessed with infomercials) showed up one day and presented me with this mop and I've used it ever since (sometimes it pays to watch late night TV, I guess).

Anyway, when we moved to our "new" house a year ago, the hardwood was a darker shade than what I was used to, and my beloved H2O mop was leaving watermarks everywhere. So even after a clean, the floors just never looked right. And now that summer has rolled around, bare feet are rampant, and those bare feet pick up all kinds of goop, sand, dirt and oil and leave tracks all over my hardwood.

It's a little hard to see, but the floor is grimey...trust me.



I was just losing patience and obviously needed to find a new method to get my floors sparkling again. When I saw the pin above, I was certainly curious to see if this would work on my hardwood. When the kids were at the in-laws, I figured it was the perfect opportunity to give it a try.

The pin took me to a site that gave suggestions on how to clean all kinds of floors (vinyl, ceramic, etc.), but I was only interested in the hardwood instructions....So, I put all my ingredients together and started.

Doesn't look like much, and it really isn't. It's a bucket, a microfiber cloth, two teabags and a kettle of hot water. I just threw the boiling hot water into the bucket with the bags o' tea and let it steep for 5ish minutes. I actually let it steep for a little longer because I was still cleaning other parts of the house, but it couldn't have been much longer than 10 minutes. The water was still BOILING, so I mixed in some cool tap water (to make it bearable to put my hands in) and got to work. The unfortunate part of this exercise is actually getting down on your hands and knees to wash the floors (which is a pain in the ...knees, I guess), but it didn't take long. I waited until all the floors were dried, took a look and was quite pleased with the result.

Of course, as soon as the kids came home, the sand, oil and disgustingness all returned...but it looked good for a couple of hours anyway!

Shout Out:

DIY Network for all their tips on floor cleaning!