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Post by Arid on Sept 6, 2008 22:46:38 GMT -5
I second what Lion said: NEVER mix bleach with ammonia. Also, many dish washing liquids say not to mix them with bleach.
Furthermore, I was told by people in the floor covering business NEVER to use dishwashing soap (liquid or otherwise) on a floor. It will destroy the built-in shine of no-wax floor coverings.
For my nice, new tile floor in our re-modeled bathroom, the instructions were to use PLAIN WATER only! I'll admit that I have a bit of a problem with feeling that the floor is "clean" doing it this way; also, I have to "clean" the floor often or it will get too dirty for plain water to do the trick. Talk about motivation. . .
Arid
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spacemaker
New Member
Space (where I can see carpet), the final frontier
Joined: May 2008
Posts: 88
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Post by spacemaker on Sept 7, 2008 3:47:46 GMT -5
MY KITCHEN FLOOR FILTH IS TREMBLING IN MY PRESENCE!! I am God. ROFL! Pity the filth, its days are numbered, yea verily.
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Post by eagle on Sept 7, 2008 10:46:59 GMT -5
Zeeky, before we replaced our vinyl or lineleum (I'm not sure which it was, but it was one of the two) tile floor, I struggled with keeping it clean looking.
It was white with textured areas that collected a lot of dirt. The pattern was gray on white, but it looked like more black that gray, and way more black than white, for that matter. When we bought the house, I thought the tile pattern was black & white, with less emphasis on the white.
Over time, I realized that the black was really embedded dirt.
THE MOST EFFECTIVE method I used to get the embedded dirt out was this:
Oxyclean laundry additive added to warm water in a mop bucket (the size of the bucket is immaterial) and hard scrubbing with a scrub brush. I scrubbed on my hands and knees because that is the best way for me to SEE what I am scrubbing and to apply the most ELBOW GREASE (physical strength) when scrubbing. This is hard work and should be done in small sections so as to conserve one's energy, taking breaks as needed.
After each scrubbing session, I would thoroughly rinse with clear water. Oxyclean leaves a powdery residue if not rinsed off a floor. It works well on carpeting also, but again, rinsing is necessary.
Eventually, I did not have to do hands and knees scrubbing, once it was really clean and I maintained it that way. However, due to the damaged condition of that particular floor, we really wanted to replace it, and we now have a beautiful porcelain tile floor. No more hands and knees scrubbing.
Sometimes I sweep, but I will often vacuum the kitchen floor, especially since I have throw rugs to vacuum in the kitchen anyway. At least weekly and sometimes 2-3 times a week, I will also mop the floor. More often if there is spillage. Generally, if I cannot comfortably walk barefoot in my kitchen, I mop, using a swiffer-type wet mop. That is my maintenance method.
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Post by cando on Sept 7, 2008 12:41:43 GMT -5
My Mom puts a bit of Clorox softscrub or Mr. Clean or just about any cleaner on the floor. Plops a wet towel (dishtowel size) on the floor and uses her barefoot to scrub the floor and swipe it all around. She occasionally rinses the towel out in the sink. She often does this while talking on the phone or chatting with one of us kids. She's always had a spotless kitchen floor and great looking legs for a 72 year old lady. Glorianna--Thank you, thank you, thank you for your reply in Zeeky's wonderful thread. I was just thinking that I heard one time about a way of mopping the floor which involved kids and fun and almost like skating around the floor but cleaned it as it was done. I think that method involved using socks to clean the floor...hope someone will remember this method.
I get soo stressed out the rare times I have mopped the floor in my kitchen. I feel like a crazy, stupid person. My mother does things quick and easily but when I tried her way, it just wasn't so easy for me and didn't look clean at all.
I just love Glorianna's Mom's method. That sounds so quick and easy. I can't believe it sounds like she does it without even thinking about it while on the phone. I am going to try this method...even if I don't do the entire floor. Thank you, again, Glorianna for sharing this. And, to think I might have great legs by the time I'm age 72 if I get started today... .
Zeeky--I always feel like such a child or dimwitted person for not knowing how to do things that it seems everyone else does. Thank you for being so brave.
Good luck on your kitchen and the floor. Sounds like you are really getting lots done in your home.
Thank you, CD [/b]
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Post by neverstoplearning on Sept 7, 2008 13:20:30 GMT -5
This is for those with vinyl floors. I believe it also applies to linoleum (which is often confused with vinyl, but is actually a different material), but I'm not sure.
Several years ago, we had a new vinyl tile floor installed in our kitchen. It was shiny and beautiful. The first time I mopped it, I used 409 and it stripped the protective shine. I didn't know that 409 would do that. I was sick to my stomach that I had ruined my beautiful new floor. I lived with it being dull for many years before I discovered that I could apply floor polish and make it shiny again. Of course, by the time I did that, the floor had seen a lot of wear and tear and it never did look like new again, but it was still a whole lot better. Also, once I put new polish on, it worked as a protective sealant to make it much easier to clean and maintain. Theoretically, once you strip the floor and reapply polish, you are supposed to do it twice a year. I've done it once in the last four years, but hey, that's better than not at all!
So in terms of choosing a floor cleaning product, if your floor still has lots of shine, look for a product that says something to the effect of "won't strip floors." Ammonia is a powerful stripping agent, so definitely steer clear of anything ammonia based.
On the other hand, if the shine is already long gone, go ahead and clean it with whatever product you like that works, and then you can apply polish to make it shiny again and easier to maintain going forward. You can usually find polish wherever they sell floor cleaning products.
Remember, this is only for vinyl flooring. I'm not sure about clay or porcelain tile. If you can't tell which you have, the vinyl usually is a bit softer than true clay tile, and real tile will have some type of grout lines, whereas the vinyl may have fake grout lines, but you can tell pretty easily that they're not really grout.
Maybe somebody else can explain the difference better than me.
neverstoplearning
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Post by eagle on Sept 7, 2008 15:26:00 GMT -5
My Mom puts a bit of Clorox softscrub or Mr. Clean or just about any cleaner on the floor. Plops a wet towel (dishtowel size) on the floor and uses her barefoot to scrub the floor and swipe it all around. She occasionally rinses the towel out in the sink. She often does this while talking on the phone or chatting with one of us kids. She's always had a spotless kitchen floor and great looking legs for a 72 year old lady. Glorianna--Thank you, thank you, thank you for your reply in Zeeky's wonderful thread. I was just thinking that I heard one time about a way of mopping the floor which involved kids and fun and almost like skating around the floor but cleaned it as it was done. I think that method involved using socks to clean the floor...hope someone will remember this method. I used to do this with my sons when they were quite young. Only it was buffing the Johnson & Johnson paste wax on our hardwood floors. Yes, we skated around the living room in our socks. It was great fun.
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Post by woolybooger on Sept 8, 2008 2:08:47 GMT -5
I wont list my steps to mopping since they are pretty similiar to what is posted.
But some things I've learned are:
I use and ice scraper to scrape off stuck on crud off the floor
I sometimes pour the dirty mop bucket water into the yard or the toilet
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Post by eaglesflight on Sept 8, 2008 13:12:04 GMT -5
Dumping the used water in the toilet is much easier than dumping it in the sink and hoping the strainer catches all of the hairs and things that are in it. Since the toilet is porcelain the water actually does a nice job scrubbing it as it wooshes through. (Crumbs+cleaner=shiny porcelain. ) Also, I just find it plain disgusting to dump mop water that contains dirt from foot traffic into my kitchen sink (where I might later be rinsing some strawberries or deboning some chicken).
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Post by eagle on Sept 9, 2008 7:56:08 GMT -5
Don't laugh at me; I'm serious. ... really have NO IDEA how one goes about getting a tile floor clean ... especially one (like mine) that hasn't been cleaned for well over two years (though I have, on occasion, scooted a broom over it, or picked up some big chunks of stuff with my hands). I cook a lot, & I used to smoke, & my kitchen floor is really, really dirty. But I don't know how to clean it. .... <snip> ... but it makes it really, really hard to learn through secret observation all the ins & outs of a sponge mop & what the mop bucket is actually FOR, & how in the heck do you rinse the soap off, & what do you do with the water afterwards? siphon hose through the window? seven thousand rolls of paper towels? It's a mystery to me, I'm totally serious!! So, educate me, nice people. Please start at the beginning (i.e. tools & products) & proceed very slowly, using baby steps. I realize that different people will likely use different methods, & that's perfectly fine -- I don't require consistency. I just need to be able to grasp the process as a whole. Because right now, it seems like some sort of magic that I'm not privy to. THANKS SO MUCH!! zeeky I forgot to address some of the detail you asked for, plus I found a fun You Tube video (added at the end.) Tile: What kind of tile? Stone, clay or porcelain tile? Linoleum or vinyl tile? What I suggested before regarding the use of oxyclean in a bucket of warm water (dissolve the oxyclean powder before beginning to scrub) will work for all of them, by the way. If it's Granite tiles, however, do not use vinegar. Vinegar is a great product, but damages the surface of granite, I understand. The purpose of the mop bucket is to hold the cleaning solution and the rinse water. I used to use a two bucket system when doing the floors by hand. One bucket for the cleaning solution and one bucket for the rinse water. I think I already described the actual scrubbing process well enough, but basically, dip the scrub brush into the cleaning solution bucket & start scrubbing in a circular motion, putting lots of power behind the scrub. (Scrub hard.) As you loosen the dirt, use rags to soak it up & toss the rags into an empty container (anything will do, so long as it doesn't fall apart from the wetness of the rags.) Then rinse using the rinse water & a sponge or a clean rag or a towel or a sponge mop. The purpose of the rinsing is to get all the residue of the cleaning solution up. If you use a sponge, you'll need to rinse it out periodically to keep it clean enough. As the rinse water becomes colored with the dirtiness of the floor, pour it down the toilet and get fresh water. In some cases, a squeegy can be used when cleaning a floor. If you have a floor drain (wish I did sometimes) it works great to use a squeegy. At the least, you can squeegy the moisture into a central location and mop it up there. If you don't have a squeegy, you can use a stiff broom to sweep the moisture into a central location and mop it up from there. The above squeegy/sweeping method helps the floor to dry faster after you've mopped up the excess water. It is not a necessary step, but if you use a lot of water, it can speed up the drying process. I used to live in a house with a step down to the laundry room and another step down to the back yard. It was great to be able to sweep the water out the back door when I mopped or if the washing machine overflowed. Now just to be clear, unless you have a floor drain, don't toss a full bucket of water directly onto the floor. There may be a lot of water added to the floor as you clean, but only in the amounts that you can handle in the smaller sections you will be cleaning. You may have seen movies in which sailers toss full buckets of water on deck and then start mopping. But that's not really practical in a kitchen. On a lighter note..... hk.youtube.com/watch?v=7uSt1oZiBts
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Post by Platypus on Sept 9, 2008 9:12:13 GMT -5
1, Tear up old floor covering 2. Buy new floor covering 3. Pay someone to fit it.
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Post by CourageouslyLion SeeksSerenity on Dec 14, 2009 16:36:37 GMT -5
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This is a very OLD thread .... from September 2008 !!!
But ... somebody in chat just asked how to clean a kitchen floor.
So ... I'm bumping this up to the forefront.
As always ... more ideas welcome.
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Post by iprocrastinate on Dec 14, 2009 16:59:13 GMT -5
Thanks Lioness for the bump. I might not have found it.
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Post by sporadic on Dec 14, 2009 17:15:02 GMT -5
Thanks for bumping this thread. I followed the link to the bamboo flooring - it's GORGEOUS!
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Post by cando on Dec 14, 2009 18:49:41 GMT -5
Here's how I do it..... I watch my dh do it Okay, this struck me as hilarious!!! I actually laughed out loud when I read that! Thank you, Masmom. CD
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Post by yearning4order on Dec 14, 2009 20:36:07 GMT -5
It's been a long time since I've done a *tile* floor.
Moggy has generally got the idea of what I do, so I'll use that outline and adapt it.
Materials needed: Broom/vacuum, dust pan, bucket, mop, cleaning product, sink, plastic scraper (like the kind bakers use to cut dough or clean tables in a bakery), old rags or tshirts or towels or cloth diapers, bare clean feet, old tooth brush, floor scrubbing brush
1. Either sweep or vacuum up loose crumbs, fur, food bits, etc. Use plastic scraper to gently scrape off things. 2. Fill a bucket with HOT water cleaning product--I don't think it matters a whole lot which. On wood floors use warm water & Murphy's oil soap. 3. With a sponge mop or other mop, clean a smallish (maybe 3'x3' or 4'x4') area at a time. 4. Rinse out mop under running water in the sink, and then get excess water out of mop 5. Re-dip mop in bucket, squeeze, and repeat till you've done the whole floor. I tend to work toward the sink, regardless of where the doors are 4. Use old towels, rags, cloth diapers, etc to dry the floor so kids, pets etc won't muck it up
If there are stains:
Use scrub brush or tooth brush, plus small bottle of spray cleanser to clean up these spots
If there is stuck on goo or "stuff":
Use the dough cutting/table scraping plastic tool to scrape this off, being careful not to gouge anything
When I lived in Brazil, most apartments and homes had a drain right in the floor of the kitchen. People didn't have mops, instead they had a squeegee on a long mop/broom style handle, and they would use an old t-shirt on that squeegee to clean the surface of the floor. (In some cases, spraying water right on the floor, since there was a drain in the floor.) Then, when they were done cleaning, they would remove the old shirt and use the squeegee to clear up the floor and get it close to dry.
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