Holiday Cleaning

This post isn't your typical craft-related Tutorial Tuesday post...but considering the time of year I think it's a good idea!

For the time being we (myself, my husband, our girls) are living with my parents....In the house that I grew up in. Sometimes it's great, sometimes it's not. It's hard being an adult with a family and moving back home. But you do what you have to so that your future, and your children's future will be as good as possible. What does this have to do with holiday cleaning? Welllllll.....

If your house is like my parents house you have tile. And lots of it. Tile is GREAT for many things. You can scrub crayon off of it. Mop up spills easily. Peel dried glue off of it....And so on. But it has to be swept practically every day. Actually, I sweep probably every 3ish days. And mopped all the time. I try to steam mop AT LEAST once a week. And I use the mop that uses cleaner solution at least once a month. These floors get cleaned VERY regularly! But that doesn't stop the grout from looking gross. Even after I JUST cleaned the floors. It's pretty irritating. And holidays means that we have extra feet walking through. And more eyes looking at the floors. And while I know the floors are perfectly clean, it might not look that way if you're judging by the discolored grout.

I'm not too sure why my parents chose to use light colored grout. Especially in the high traffic areas... but they did. A solution to cleaning the grout? Grout cleaner and a grout brush! Oh and a TON of elbow grease ......yaaaaaayyyy...... Or not. Another solution? Hydrogen peroxide, a grout brush or tooth brush, and some towels. This version only takes a little bit of elbow grease. Oh, and older children are GREAT for this kind of work. Really, they are!!

You could either use the H2O2 out of the bottle like this, or put it in a clean dark plastic squirt bottle. It's entirely up to you. But if you do put it in a squirt bottle do make sure it's dark plastic. Light exposure over time will break down the H2O2 (hydrogen peroxide) into H2O (water) and O2 (oxygen gas). (For those of you wanting to see the chemical equation:  2 H2O2  -->  2 H2O  +  O2   . Trust me. It's true! And yes, I do love chemistry.)

Long story short, hydrogen peroxide is great for cleaning and cuts down on elbow grease needed, but water doesn't do much help unless you add soap and a lot of elbow grease! So keep that stuff in darkness! ;-D

Floor has been swept, but not mopped.

First sweep your floors so that they are free of debris. Then just pour a little bit along your grout lines in about a 3-4 ft area. It really doesn't take much. You don't need it to be slopping all over the place, just enough to cover the grout lines themselves.

This would be an example of "OOPS! spilled too much!"

Once you've got the hydrogen peroxide covering the grout lines in your 3-4 ft work area go back to the place where you first poured. Start scrubbing there. It really won't take much elbow grease, or time, for you to see the grime come off. The hydrogen peroxide does most of the work for you! You just have to help it along.

See the grossness on the sides of the groutline? Yep! That used to be IN the grout line! eeewww.

Scrub about a 1ft section of your 3-4 ft area you are working on, then mop up the icky mess you just made with your towel. Continue on in the area you have ready to go for about another foot, soak up the grossness, and repeat. Once you've done 2-3 ft you could start pouring more H2O2 so that it can start working it's magic while you continue to scrub and mop the area you've already poured it onto.

The pic is kinda blurry, but you can see a difference in the color from the left to right side.

Once you have completed the area you want to complete mop the entire floor. Then your grout lines will look almost as good as new again! No more embeded stains! YAY! (I haven't completed my floor yet, so no picture of the whole thing looking sparkling and gorgeous. Sorry!)

I know this wasn't a crafty post, but I also know that holiday time also means a lot more people coming over. And, in our case, we also clean out closets, dressers, toy bins, etc and donate. Then we do a fairly good cleaning of the house too. Spring cleaning in the winter? Why not!?

Don't worry my crafty friends, next week will bring a new FUN filled project! Although, for some odd reason my 10 year old seems to think the grout cleaning is fun and asks if she can do it. I love her. Even if she is a little weirdo. ;-)