Cleaning the floors feels like something simple, but to be honest, it might be more challenging than you think. As we use the floor every day, multiple times a day, we should take excellent care of it. Whether you have got a hardwood floor, carpet, laminated, or tile floor, you should be very careful with what you use when you clean them. Chemicals can damage beyond repair. Therefore, if this means that if happens, you will have to buy and lay a new floor. The best way to avoid this, of course, is to dismiss all chemical cleaners and use only natural cleaning products from now on. We tell you which ones they are and how to use them…
Clean Carpets with Vinegar & Baking Soda
If you are lucky enough to have carpet in your home, which means you always have warm and soft feet, it is also important to clean it regularly. Of course, I don’t have to explain to you that you do this with the vacuum cleaner. But what should you do if the carpet has stains because you spilled some wine or chocolate? Vinegar can help you get rid of these annoying stains. Mix a bit of this natural cleaning product with a few spoons of baking soda and pour it on the stain.
Let it soak for an hour and then dab all the moisture up with a clean sponge or tea towel. You can repeat the process until the stain is gone. This works for all kinds of stains, but for some – like blood and red wine – you should work faster than for others. Does the carpet have a funny smell? Sprinkle some baking soda on the carpet, let it do its job for a few hours – or overnight – and vacuum the carpet the next day. I bet you don’t smell a thing!
Clean Hardwood Floors with Vinegar
We all adore some beautiful (hard)wooden floors in our homes. It looks pretty and classic and whether you’re walking barefoot or walking with shoes, wooden floors walk very comfortable and warm – compared to tile flooring. The downside of having a wooden floor is that it can easily look dull and dirty. But which product should you use to clean it? Your own floor cleaner, made of vinegar, because this product will help you get rid of those ugly-looking stains on your beautiful floor.
This is what you should do, mix a gallon of water with 1 cup of vinegar and mix this very well. Once you’re done, you can put it in a spray bottle and check your floors for stains, but you can also use it when you clean your floors the old-fashioned way, with a mop and a mop bucket.
Clean Floors with Vinegar, Dish Soap
We all know that our floors can get very grimy and greasy if we skip mopping floors for too long. Thankfully, dish soap, also known as detergent, is a great way to let them shine again. To transform a bucket of warm water into a helpful floor cleaner, just add one to two tablespoons of dish soap and half a cup of vinegar. Mob the ground as usual, and it’ll be clean in no time!
Make sure you stick with a few drops of dish soap, if you use too much, the floor can get slippery and you or one of your family members can slip and fall. Dish soap is a very effective floor cleaner for linoleum, vinyl, and tile flooring. For the best result, add rubbing alcohol to the mix, this will help avoid floor streaks and helps both disinfect and grease the floor. To keep it natural: make sure you buy natural – or chemical-free – products.
Clean Wooden Floors with Vinegar & Vegetable Oil
Cleaning a wooden floor might be the hardest cleaning because you don’t want to damage the floorboards. Cleaning a wood floor is perhaps the most difficult of all. Of course, you don’t want to damage the floorboards. Therefore, it is extremely important that you work as much as possible with natural products, such as white vinegar. Next time you have to mop the floors, add a cup of white vinegar and a teaspoon of vegetable oil – like olive oil – to a cup of water (or if you are going to do the whole floor, stick to this ratio). Don’t add more vegetable oil to the mix, as the floors can get slippery, and you might fall and hurt yourself.
Squeaky Floor Repair
Besides the fact that you need to keep your floor clean, you also want it to stay beautiful for as long as possible. This means that you also have to maintain your floor. It can sometimes happen that your floor suddenly starts to squeak in certain places. This can cost quite a lot of money when a professional company has to fix this. But there is an easier solution you can try yourself first.
Believe me or not, baby powder might be the answer for a squeaky floor. This is what you should do: look for the floorboard that is squeaking and fill it with baby powder. You can help fill in the gaps with a small brush, like a make-up brush. Gently brush the baby powder between the squeaky sections of the floorboards and the sound will disappear. To avoid leaving white streaks, you can clean them with a cloth or sponge.