I’ve got a confession to make. James isn’t the only one suckered by floor-care products commercials. In fact, he probably inherited this trait from me.
I have a graveyard of cheap, gimmicky mops that I only used for about a month because none of them lived up to the commercials. Instead of a few easy swipes to a sparkling floor, I’d have to spray a lot of the toxic chemicals that come with the cheap mop and scrub really hard, which isn’t very satisfying.
So now that I’ve given up on my fantasy that cleaning floors isn’t work, I’ve decided to take an all-natural approach to floor care. In place of chemicals, I make up a solution of 1 cup white vinegar to 2 gallons of water and mop up the floor with old, cut-up t-shirts. I have a small kitchen and family room, so I find kneeling to wipe up the floor to be the quickest method. Then I toss the rags in the washing machine to be used again.
So my Thrifty Green Thursday tip is week is save those old t-shirts for your floor care needs. Click here for more tips.
I have a graveyard of cheap, gimmicky mops that I only used for about a month because none of them lived up to the commercials. Instead of a few easy swipes to a sparkling floor, I’d have to spray a lot of the toxic chemicals that come with the cheap mop and scrub really hard, which isn’t very satisfying.
So now that I’ve given up on my fantasy that cleaning floors isn’t work, I’ve decided to take an all-natural approach to floor care. In place of chemicals, I make up a solution of 1 cup white vinegar to 2 gallons of water and mop up the floor with old, cut-up t-shirts. I have a small kitchen and family room, so I find kneeling to wipe up the floor to be the quickest method. Then I toss the rags in the washing machine to be used again.
So my Thrifty Green Thursday tip is week is save those old t-shirts for your floor care needs. Click here for more tips.
13 comments:
I'll use my husband's t-shirts, but not mine. I like mine too much.
And is there anything vinegar can't do? I love the stuff - especially in the wash to get rid of skunky smells, like when your kids leave wet clothes from falling in the creek hidden somewhere in their room and I find them by tracking down the smell.
This is what we do, too; although, we have tile in our kitchen that needs a good scrubbing with a bristle brush to get our grout lines clean. Truth be told, it doesn't get done nearly as much as it should.
In fact, it needs to be mopped right now. Maybe this afternoon...
I have a confession ...
My husband swore that if I bought him a commercial mop and one of those big squeezer buckets (yeah, the same thing they use at rest stops and schools) he would mop the kitchen and dining room floors once a week. I honestly didn't believe him, since he also told me he would take care of the vacuuming if we bought a Dyson and that thing hasn't seen action in months! But, I couldn't resist. I bought the mop & bucket combo, and he cleans the floors at least every other weekend. We do lots of dry sweeping in between (like, 2x/day) but the mopping has been a huge bonus.
:) We use vinegar, too. Cheapest clean around.
we are a huge t-shirt fan in our house. oh and cloth diapers, they work like a charm!
thanks for the tip. I'm in the process of changing all the cleaning product in my house. Are you loving this 70 degrees lately....you have to love colorado
Great tip! I'd say my floor cleaning method is not cleaning (honestly, I'm lazy and HATE cleaning the floors), but when I do get off my butt, I like to use vinegar too. Mostly because my son crawls and I hate thinking of chemicals getting on his hands, which then end up in his mouth.
i'm so bad about mopping my kitchen! it's one of those floors that never LOOKS clean even if i just washed it...which only leads me to lazily not clean it much. so that means i've had the same bottle of generic chemical pine-sol for-ev-er...but i'm totally going to follow your lead when that stuff runs out...someday!
I've given up until we better flooring in here. Take it from me...never, EVER get a textured GREY vinyl flooring. The stuff never, EVER looks clean, even when you get down on your hands and knees and scrub. I use BioKleen all-purpose cleaner and it does as good of a job as it can on that POS flooring. ;)
i hate mopping! I agree those fancy mops never do what they're supposed to. Frustrating!
i don't use a mop either. just get down with a rag and try to make it clean!
I wash my floors with vinegar, too! But really I just don't mop too much. With wooden floors, it's best just to sweep them often. At least that's what I tell myself.
Thanks for the Thrifty Green Thursday tip!
I totally agree with the vinegar and water tip! We have solid wood floors in several rooms of our house and find that after doing the hands and knees wipe down with vinegar and water, they are so silky clean. Of course, now that our son isn't eating stuff off the floor, I have to admit that the frequency of our floor cleaning has definitely decreased! Thanks for joining us this week for Thrifty Green Thursday!
Hi, Cathy! Thanks so much for commenting on my blog. I'm glad to have found you--it looks like your blog has lots of great things to read. (And I'm still using a Swiffer--is that bad?)
Wendi Aarons
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