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Even if you survive solely on takeout, it’s impossible to avoid spills, splatters, and foot traffic in the kitchen. In regular times, the floor can get nasty, fast. Now, with everyone at home 24/7—and spending a lot more time in the kitchen—your regular cleaning routine might not be cutting it. If you need to step up your mopping game, here are some tips and products to get you on the right track.
Pre-Clean
Before you can even think about mopping, you have to sweep up all the junk so you don’t end up pushing around a wet pile of dust and debris. For Brittany Null, a blogger and mother of three in Kansas City, a cordless vacuum is the perfect solution. “My entire house has hardwood floors, so something that works efficiently and quickly is a must,” she says. “I’m obsessed with my Dyson Stick and it has a hardwood attachment I use in the kitchen.”
Few cleaning products are truly life-changing, but if vacuuming is a daily drag or you can’t keep up with crumbs in the kitchen, the Dyson Stick will actually change your life. Yes, it’s pricey, but a variety of attachments make it easy to switch between flooring, rugs, and furniture. You can even use it on the counter!
All-Natural
Tamara Day, a designer and host of “Bargain Mansions” on HGTV, takes the DIY route when it comes to cleaning her kitchen floors. “My favorite solution is a mix of essential oils, white vinegar, and warm water,” she says. Day mixes two cups of vinegar with a gallon of warm water, then adds six drops each of a few different essential oils, and uses it with a microfiber mop.
Vinegar works on nearly every kitchen surface by breaking down grease and grime. Slightly more acidic than its plain white counterpart, this cleaning vinegar works even harder, so you don’t have to.
Essential oils are an ingredient in many commercial household cleaners, and not just because they smell nice. Some actually have antimicrobial, antifungal, or antibacterial properties. This little set brings together the best oils for cleaning, including lemon and tea tree.
Streamline your cleaning supplies and reduce waste with this lightweight multi-surface mop. The machine-washable microfiber pad can be used on wet or dry floors and easily attaches with velcro.
If you’re going to make your own cleaner, you need a place to do it. This bucket is big enough to fit any household mop, and because it’s on wheels you can roll it around as you clean, then use it to store the supplies when you’re done.
A Smell-Good Solution
Daniel Espinoza, a Chicago chef who’s cleaned his fair share of kitchen floors in restaurants and at home has a go-to product for both. “Fabuloso—the purple one,” which he dilutes in hot water and uses with an old-school sponge mop. “It smells amazing and brings me back to waking up Saturday mornings and my mom blasting the tunes of Juan Gabriel as she mopped the kitchen.”
The instant gratification that comes from cleaning is due in part to the fresh smell in the air when you’re done. With this grease-cutting cleanser, the scent lingers longer (up to 24 hours) and it’s safe for almost any surface.
No, this isn’t your mama’s sponge mop, but it’s probably exactly like it. There’s a reason this simple style is still around: It’s a breeze to use and the handle makes it easy to wring dry.
The Maintenance Clean
I couldn’t write a story about clean kitchen floors without talking to the person who has the cleanest kitchen floors I’ve ever seen: My stepmom, Pat. Her secret, she says, is the maintenance clean. In between her monthly deep cleans with an old-fashioned sponge mop and Mr. Clean, she maintains her kitchen floors with Swiffer wet pads.
If you could have only one floor cleaning device, the original Swiffer is the way to go. The dry cloths pick up dust and debris and the Wet Pads work like a mop. While these pre-soaked pads are best for smaller jobs, a scrubbing strip helps with hard-to-clean spots.
We live in the future now, so if you don’t have someone to follow you around with a Swiffer, the next best thing is a robot. Like the Roomba, you can schedule this iRobot mop to start at a certain time every day, but if you’d rather it clean on command, sync it with your smart home devices to enable voice activation. The best part? You can map it to clean only specified areas, and avoid others (rugs, pet bowls, etc.).
Sanitizing
With COVID-19 impacting nearly every aspect of our lives, many people are (rightly!) concerned with disinfecting every surface of the home, including the floors. Just keep in mind that cleaning doesn’t always mean disinfecting. To ensure your floors are coronavirus-clean, mop first, then go over the area with a product specifically designed to disinfect. Look for “Kills 99.9% of germs” on the label, or even better, check the EPA’s list of cleaning solutions approved for use against SARS-CoV-2. Household disinfectants known to kill the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 are hard to find online these days, but some industrial solutions are still readily available.
Because this sanitizer concentrate is intended for use in restaurants and bars, it’s perfect for the kitchen floor, as long as you closely follow the instructions on the bottle, wear gloves, and open the windows for ventilation.