Despite having worked in two gas station jobs where cleaning was the order of the day and routinely having to do it as a chore when I was still living at home, there are still a couple things about mopping that seem to elude me. So, I’ve got a vinyl floor in the bathroom and the kitchen. I currently use one of those self-wringing mops with the fabric head (I’d love a real wringer bucket and mop, but I don’t have the space) and that Armstrong floor cleaner for no-wax floors. I tend to hit two problems: corners with lint and cat litter. I’ve taken to running a vacuum in all the corners and along the edges (and on the floor itself for that matter) after I’m done sweeping it and that kind of helps. However, the big problem is the cat litter. I’m lazy and use the scoopable stuff, which eventually gets on the floor and, it being a bathroom, sometimes gets wet and sticks to the floor before I can sweep it up. At this point, it becomes impossible to mop up and just sticks to the floor even more. Sometimes I can chip it off with a vacuum attachment after it dries but sometimes I feel like I should get out a chisel.
Is there some basic technique I’m missing here? Or should I just give up and either a. hire a maid or b. finally find someone willing to be with me AND willing to clean my floors?
I used to have to mop flour up, that had spilled onto a wet spot on the floor much earlier in the night. The trick was to use the hottest water possilbe (we even boiled enough to fill the mop bucket sometimes), and use WAY more water than you think you need. Get it real wet on the first pass, and use two more passes to dry it up. If it worked for flour, it’s sure to work for kitty litter!
FYI hot water will take the wax off the floor. Always use lukewarm water on a floor with a finish (and if you’re really anal, pH balanced cleaner)
Mops arn’t really made to pick up the big stuff. I’d suggest dealing with the kitty litter with a broom or vacuum. I mean if you feel the need to chip it off, well then a mops not gonna do much good.
How about something preventative, maybe newspaper under the litter box, or a towel maybe. If worse comes to worse, you may find it neccesary to get dust buster and just pick up the loose litter as you notice it.
Former cleanup person of a firehouse bingo hall. Sweep first. Mopping is for the water soluble soil. Hard to describe, but it’s something of a slow dance, you’re backing away from the mop, shifting your weight from one leg to the other while swinging your skinny partner across the floor. You’ll cover ~12-15 feet width in one pass.
My favorite gadget for cleaning corners is this thing: the Scuncci steamer. It blasts dirt out of corners and crevices. I plug it in and let it heat up while I’m mopping the rest of the floor. When it’s ready, take a rag in one hand and use it to wipe up whatever the steamer blasts out.
I’ll second the steamer and cloth idea for the corners. You really can’t get into corners, and by baseboards with a mop, so a steamer, or a cloth or sponge soaked in really hot water works better.
I can’t mop this way anymore (bad hip) but when I could, I got the best results on my hands and knees, with a bucket of soapy water, a bucket of rinse water, and some rags.
I’ve never met a mop that did a decent job in corners and along baseboards. With a rag, you can pick away at grungy build-up that you might not even see if you’re five feet away at the end of a mop handle.
That’s right, sweep first. You’ll never mop it clean if you don’t sweep first. Before you do the rest of your mopping, “frame the room,” that is, mop a stripe around the edges, so you don’t build up a dirty border over time.
You may be able to do the bathroom without a wringout, but don’t that in the kitchen. You are leaving a film of what’s on your mop, so you want that to be clean.
That’s what I was going to say. The only thorough way of doing the floors is to do them by hand. That way you can get into the corners and do the baseboards and underneath the edges of cabinets and the refrigerator.
The way I learned to mop, at McDonald’s, was to use a string mop, wring it out, and scrub forward and back, leaning your weight onto the mop as you go forward. Rinse often. The side-to-side thing is good for getting the floor wet, but not good for scrubbing up spills and grunge.
As far as the cat litter goes, I would absolutely get that up entirely with a broom and dustpan, or vacuum cleaner, before getting water anywhere near it. It sounds like a dreadful chemical adhesive thing.
One housekeeping book advocated a four step system: eliminate, saturate, absorb, clean.
Eliminate is wiping the table with a dry cloth, or sweeping the floor. Saturate is swiping the whole surface down with your cleaning solution. Absorb is letting the solution work for a couple of minutes…this means that you scrub on part while the rest of the area is getting soaked with the solution. In other words, don’t put the solution down in a tiny bit, and then expect to wipe up the crud immediately. Clean is where you wipe up the softened crud, scrubbing as necessary. I usually give an additional rinse with a fresh bucket of clean water.
In your case, I’d advise keeping a small whisk broom and dustpan in the bathroom, to take care of kitty litter crumbs immediately. It’s bound to be easier than trying to chisel the hardened stuff off of the floor.
Current cleanup person for a firehouse hall. Yes, sweeping must be done first. If you’re trying to mop and there’s crumbs of food and bits of trash everywhere, you’re going to just end up with a bigger mess than you started out with.
I have to respectfully disagree with the idea of using lots and lots of near-boiling hot water. A little more than ‘damp’ should work just fine.
I also second the notion of sweeping first, mopping second. However, if there’s stuff stuck to the floor I use a razor scraper - this might help with your cat litter problem.
Speaking of microfiber pads… this steam mop now offers microfiber pads, in addition to terrycloth, and requires no cleaning chemicals. It heats up water quickly that steams away any and all food gunk on the floor. Also the floor requires no rinsing afterwards (just toss the pad in the wash) and the floor dries quickly too.