I’ll be honest… my second least favorite household chore is mopping floors (ironing is #1!!). For the longest time I used a spray mop with the disposable scrubbing pads (brand will remain nameless). After cleaning with natural products for every other part of my house, the chemical-y smell was awful to me. And, the residue it left was pretty sticky. So recently I began a quest to find a hard surface floor cleaner I could make at home. Almost all of my internet research led me back to the same recipe. So I tried it.
Here it is:
1/4 cup of dish soap
2 cups of vinegar
1 cup of lemon juice
2 cups of water
First, let me say… it smelled awful. But I’m confident that it was the type of dish soap I used. If you use an all natural, unscented dish soap it should be just fine. And any scent dissipates pretty quickly anyway.
Here are a few things I would suggest. Spray it, don’t dump it. I used a bucket to mix mine and just poured a little on the floor at a time. A spray bottle or a spray mop that allows you to add your own cleaner would be perfect. Someone can buy me this one for my birthday! Having too much on the floor results in a little extra soapiness. Second, add the soap to the water, not the water to the soap. Also keeps the suds down. After I got a little too much on the floor, I just took a damp cloth to it to get the remainder back up. But, if used properly, this solutions doesn’t have to be rinsed.
This floor cleaner worked really well on our vinyl floors. I didn’t get to finish cleaning downstairs and could see exactly where I left off. Not sure if that says how well it works or how dirty my floors were.
What do you use to clean your hard surface floors?
