Cleaning your hardwood floors can become a nightmare if you don’t maintain them. Truth be told, if you want the finish on your hardwood floors to last, you need to keep up with all of the dirt, food, and water that makes it’s way onto the floor throughout the day. To help keep your maintenance to a minimum, I suggest you either enforce a “no shoe” rule in the house (except when you have company over) or in a less drastic measure place thick rug near ever entryway to the house. If everyone gives a couple of wipes on the rug before stepping onto the hardwood floor, there will be less debris on the bottom of their shoes that could end up on your floor.
Follow these tips to keep your hardwood floors looking great:
Clean up any spills immediately.
Using a swiffer or a vacuum do a quick pass over the floor every other day.
Always clear all debris from the floor prior to wet mopping.
When wet mopping, make sure to only use products recommended for use on finished wood floors.
Wet mopping tips:
If it’s your first time using a cleaning product, always test it out in a small area in a corner first.
A little bit of cleaner goes a long way. Don’t over do it with the cleaning product and follow the labels instructions. Murphy’s Oil Soap recommends diluting 1/4 cup to 1/2 a cup of Murphy’s Oil Soap in a gallon of warm water. If you use more than this, it’s likely you end up with slimely floors and have to mop it two or three times.
Do not use Pine-Sol, as it is not recommended for use on wood floors.
Depending on how dirty your floors are, you may need to use two or three fresh buckets of cleaning solution. If the water is black, chances are you’re just reapplying dirt and debris back onto your floor.
Always ring out your mop before applying it to the floor. You do not want to end up with puddles of water sitting on your floor.
Once you are done wet mopping, attach a microfiber cloth or even a terry cloth to a Swiffer and do a quick pass over the hardwood floor. This will help the floor dry faster, and help prevent streaking.
Do you have a great cleaning tip? Send it to tips at maids-express.com, or drop it in the comment section.
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If you’re a pet owner, chances are one of your biggest problems is dealing with pet hair all over your hardwood floors. If you aren’t fortunate enough to have a house cleaning service to take care of it for you, this task can be very time consuming. Ultimately, you might even just push the task to ever other week because cleaning isn’t one of your top priorities.
A great solution to this problem is the Swiffer Sweeper. It’s light weight, inexpensive, and it does an excellent job of picking up pet hair off of hardwood floors, baseboards, and walls. The initial Swiffer Sweeper kit comes with disposable cloths, but if you would like to make this an Earth friendly cleaning method, simply use a microfiber cloth or even an old terry cloth towel instead. This makes for a quick fix to keep pet hair from piling up, and if you add a wet mop with some Pine-Sol once a week, it will keep your floors shining and smelling fresh.
As a Maid Service in Boston, we run into countless floors that have been neglected for months (maybe even years) on end. Whether the floor is a tile surface or linoleum, they both seem to find a way to trap little bits of dirt and make it very difficult to return the floor to it’s previous glory.
In cases like the floor pictured in this post, a simple solution of Pine-Sol and water, or even concentrated Pine-Sol couldn’t do the trick. Instead, it was Softscrub with bleach that was able to extract most of the dirt from this floor. Simply mix 1/4 cup of Softscrub with bleach in a gallon of warm water and got to town with a mop. If this still does not work, then ditch the bucket and go with straight Softscrub and a deck brush.
If you’ve never realized that Softscrub could also be used as a floor cleaner, then you’re missing out on a great cleaning method! Below is a list of surfaces (via www.softscrub.com) that you can use softscrub on. (more…)
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