Your Floors are so Fabuloso!

Sweeping and moping are my favorite chores because they don’t take much time and I like to walk on a floor that isn’t sticky or laced with crumbs. This job is simple yet important because it reduces the visitation/invasion of unwanted guests like mice, ants and cockroaches and makes it easier to slide around and practice those sweet dance moves you learned.

The kitchen and bathroom floors should be cleaned weekly, and even daily, depending on your lifestyle. The key to effective and efficient floor cleaning is meticulous preparation.

Preparation

1. Move as much off the floor as possible. This includes: garbage cans, rugs, chairs, even your table if you can.

2. Sweep the floor thoroughly with a broom. If you don’t sweep, mopping will just make those crumbs from yesterday’s peanut butter and jelly sandwich soggy. Start in the far corner of the floor and work back out. Don’t forget to sweep behind the door, under the heating element, and in the corners. Sweep debris into the dust pan and discard.

3. Prepare a cleaning mixture. For most mopping, I use ¼ cup of Fabuloso Multi-Use Cleaner (I like the name and its smell) in one gallon of hot water.

Mopping

3. Spot clean the corners and extra grimy areas with a little cleaner and cleaning brush or sponge.

4. Get the mop wet with the cleaning mixture and ring it out. (This will be done frequently to keep the mop clean.) Then thoroughly clean the whole floor in the same pattern as you swept.

5. After a few minutes mopping, rinse out the mop in the sink or tub (if you don’t do this, you begin to spread the dirty mop water solution across the whole floor).

6. Repeat steps 4 and 5 until you have covered the whole floor twice.

Note: The tile on our bathroom floor has very deep grout lines that get quite dirty and discolored.

Periodically I use ¼ cup of bleach per gallon of water. I do the same routine, but I don’t ring out the mop before passing it over the floor. This leaves the floor quite wet. I let the bleach water sit on the floor for an hour (or more), and then I finish the mopping as usual.