Keeping My Floors Acceptably Clean

True stories:

1. A couple months ago, my mom watched the kid for a couple hours. In awesome Mom fashion, I returned home to a freshly mopped floor. I said, “Thanks for mopping the floor, Mom. I know it looks really nasty, like I haven’t cleaned it in weeks. I mopped it yesterday.”

2. Last week, my husband got up one morning and started sweeping the kitchen floor, which was covered in bite-sized pieces of food, centered around the high chair. I had already been up with the kid for a couple hours, and he seemed a little confused that I hadn’t already swept the spaghetti off the floor from the last evening’s dinner. Except…I had. And I had mopped the floor. And it was covered in food again. By 9 am.

My general principle of letting the kid feed herself as much as possible, which she loves and give me time to work in the kitchen without tripping over her, has a downside–there is food all over our kitchen floor, all the time. Here are a couple tricks I have implemented to keep the floor somewhat clean and prevent us from tracking all that food onto the carpet.

Keep the broom and dustpan handy. The coat closet right next to our kitchen is a handy place to keep our broom, but every kitchen is a little different. If it’s hard to find the broom, or it’s stuck behind something and is hard to get out of the closet, it won’t get used.

Give yourself permission to do a half job sometimes. Sometimes, it is important to get to the corners and behind the trash can. Sometimes, though, it’s enough to get the chunks of food off the middle of the floor. Let go of the perfectionism that says you need to move all the chairs if you’re going to bother with the broom. A little cleaning is usually better than no cleaning.

Get a handy mop. We have a Libman Freedom Spray Mop that I am really liking. I’ve been using it for a couple months, and it’s good for quick mop jobs. The bits of food that spend time on the floor leave a sticky layer, and this mop swipes them up quickly. Just put a little water and some sort of cleaning liquid in the bottle attached to the handle, and it’ll spray on the floor in front of the mop. I’m planning to get a refill, so I can run the pad through the laundry. I think I bought the thing for about $20 at Target, and the spare pad will cost me about $4. I pondered getting a Swiffer, but I thought that I would quickly get tired of buying the refills.

Sweep or mop regularly. This used to mean maybe once a week for me, now it means at least once a day. Once I start ignoring the floor, I get used to crunching as I walk very quickly. Pretty soon, my kid is eating yesterday’s roast beef off the floor.

Wear shoes. Okay, this is a cheater idea. While wearing shoes, you can feel the crunch of Cheerios, but there’s no accompanying discomfort. That floor won’t drive you nuts while you finish breakfast.

 

Okay, I realize that most people don’t have the extreme floor problems that we have, but I really like my new mop. I leave it out all the time, since the wet pad would mess up the wooden floor of the closet where I keep the broom.

What are your tips for keeping your floors clean? Share below!