A Success...and a Failure

With two tiny men running around the house constantly eating and drinking, and engineered hardwoods throughout most of our first floor, I have to sweep my floor at least once a day, if not several times. I cannot STAND to walk on floors that have junk on them, and since I walk around barefoot 99% of the time my floors sometimes push me to my edge. (Granted I live on that edge most of the time, but I digress...) No matter how much I sweep, however, I still have the sticky spots, smudges of unidentifiable stuff, and other marks. I have been searching during the four plus years that we have been living in this house for the perfect way to clean my floors, with very little success. I have tried many many cleaning solutions, Swiffer wet jet, a steam mop, you name it. My current solution is Spic N Span with a microfiber cloth wrapped around my dry Swiffer sweeper. It's not perfect but it gets the job done. However, my quest for the Holy Grail of Floor Cleaning continues. (Does that make me the Indiana Jones of cleaning? A better question is do I get to wear a stylish hat when I do it?) While feeding my addiction to Pinterest I found two ideas that I thought just might end my quest. First, there was a method for removing the cap from the Swiffer wet jet bottle so that the supposedly disposable bottle can be reused, and the second was for the BEST FLOOR CLEANER IN THE WORLD. You can see where I am going with this. I decided to take my empty bottle, pry off the top, and fill it with this miracle solution, clean my floors and then bask in the praise heaped upon me by the Love of my Life...okay, maybe not that last part, but I was determined to have beautiful squeaky clean floors. The first part is pretty easy. Bring about an inch of water to a boil, and then hold the cap of the bottle in the water for about 30 seconds or so. Pull it out and twist off the cap. Be sure to use a towel, because it will be HOT! It isn't easy to unscrew it, but with my powerful girl arms (HA!) I managed just fine.I took the advice that I saw one person post that they used nail clippers to snip off the little tabs on the inside of the cap that make it "non-removable". That was not difficult, but it was definitely tedious. I was feeling pretty good about this project at this point. I pulled up the recipe for the cleaning solution and got started. (source) It is pretty basic:

• one part water
• one part vinegar
• one part rubbing alcohol
• a few drops of dishwashing detergent

Just look at them. They think they're so cool, shunning my Swiffer bottle. Well, we shall see, cool kids. We shall see.

I used a cup of each of the first three ingredients. I wrapped my microfiber cloth around the Swiffer Wet Jet and got to work. The theory is that the alcohol will help the solution evaporate more quickly, leaving your floor shiny and streak-free. I did not get these results. The solution seemed way too wet; there was water left behind that was going to streak. I went over it a couple of times to get up the excess moisture, but then it just seemed...dull. I stood back and took it in, and decided after an area of about 10 square feet that it was not worth the effort to finish the rest of my floor.

So, my quest continues. During my search for clean floor solutions I did see several people saying they really liked the Method brand floor cleaner. I will have to search for some Method brand coupons because as anyone who knows me will tell you, I am cheap with a capital C. I will be sure to let you know how that works, but in the meantime, I am back to my Spic N Span.