RomanceClass.com Forums Romance Organizing and Cleaning What Household Cleaners do you Use?

Lisa, I also love the steam cleaners for carpet. But I was talking about a steam cleaner for FLOORS. They are amazing. My boss paid around $90 for it, but the way it cleans is great. You do not use any cleansers because the HOT steam cleans and sanitizes by itself. The only time I have to use a cleanser is if there is grease marks on there. Like, one time somebody kept their motorcycle in the dining room! And scuff marks of course.
For those I use the trusty green scrubber and Mr. Clean.

We have a lot of apartments with the stained concrete and they are hard to clean. Plus a lot of people don't do any cleaning from lease to lease ending! The steam cleaner s wonders on them. Then I slap a coat of Mop and Glow on there and it looks brand new.

Right now there is a bit of a carpet in the livingroom. It's the last carpet in this house - we found good old reliable linoleum under all the other rooms. But under the livingroom there is just plywood.

So I am pricing some wood-looking and stone-looking linoleum to see if the landlord would be willing to work with me on some kind of upgrade.

Anyway, yeah, steam cleaners rock. I like uprights for large work and the Little Bissel Green Machine for small jobs and upholstery. I will need to keep a lookout for a used upright steamer for my floors once I have this wretched carpet out.

I also have a wonderful little shop vac with a TON of tiny attachments, for when i want to get all detaily.

I have lots of microfiber towels for cleaning things, and use a Murphy's Oil Soap for cleaning wood. YUM!

BLR, very good point about using water and elbow grease. I think we tend to overlook just plain water as an excellent, environmentally friendly cleaning agent!

Hmmm the only non-carpet floors we have are in the kitchen and bathrooms (we have the cheap rolled linoleum stuff) and it never occurred to me to try steam cleaning them. You think it would bring up dirt? I suppose I could try and see!

Yes, you can get all sorts of things up from floors with a steamer. Linoleum can get nasty after a few years, no matter how much it is mopped.

You know I've really wanted to try this and still haven't gotten around to it! OK I will try it today - it's on my list!

I have to admit I use those little disposable wipes. I love them. I was using washable microfiber cloths for a long time, but no longer have a clothes washer. So i go through the cloths too fast to keep up with now.

Too bad I can't make some kind of wipes out of junk mail paper fibers.

I think you helped to hook me on the microfibers and I do adore them - but I agree you need to have an in-home washer for it to work out well. I do occasionally use paper towels but not at the rate we used to.

I tried the steam cleaner on the bathroom upstairs after we used our regular floor washing thing. It did bring up a little dirt but not much - not like when you use it on a carpet you think is clean. So it was fun to try, but at least in our house it didn't seem to be a bit impact. Maybe that bathroom - with only two of us in the house - just doesn't get that dirty. We take off our shoes at the main house door so the only things touching the floor in there are our bare feet or our socks.

True, you two are not tracking in much. Not small kids, no muddy dogs, and you take off your shoes. So congrats on a super clean floor environment.

I actually really am thinking about trying to make some kind of cleansing cloth out of junk mail paper. After all, newspapers are used to clean windows.

I just have to play around with soaking the fibers and felting them together somehow.

I suppose it's all relative, I am always surprised at how much dirt comes out of the downstairs carpet but I'm sure it could be far, far worse. I need to count my blessings.

I would work on reducing junk mail as much as possible - contact them all and tell them to stop sending. We do that. But some still gets through, I concur, and for those - how about origami?

I'm not sure how well they'd work for cleaning things.