Floor tile cleaning in the house can be a challenging task, especially in today’s time where you are constantly being bombarded with harmful chemicals and substances.
At one part, you want your floor tile to be cleaned. On the other part, you’re also worried about your health. That’s why you need to clean your tile floors with natural substances, which in this case, it’s vinegar and baking soda.
You heard that these two combinations work wonder. But how? If so, how to actually do it. In this article, we have everything you need to know about the cleaning tips.
Without further ado, let’s get started.
Why You Should Use Vinegar & Baking Soda To Clean Tile Floors?
The simple answer to this is because of their chemical nature and safe for your health. Let’s explore deeper on how they work for your floors.
Vinegar – It’s Acidic!
That’s right. If you don’t know, vinegar that you use for your cooking is slightly acidic in nature. For a substance to be termed as acidic, it needs to have a PH level less than 7. Here, we don’t want to dive into the scientific knowledge behind this. You can check out the information here.
Since your ordinary commercial cleaning chemicals are also acidic, there’s no reason why you cannot use vinegar to clean those stains on your floor.
Another advantage of using vinegar to wipe out your floor stains is it’s cheap and available at hand. Surely you can find one in your kitchen!
Baking Soda – Another Level Of Cleaning Efficiency
Do you remember that baking soda that your grandma used to use to bake that sweet cake or bakery for you? That’s right, it’s the same old ingredient.
This natural cleaner has a super-effective abrasive effect of getting rid of countless spots on your floor. At the same time, its deodorizing agent picks up any odor quickly to give back your shiny tile.
So when you combine both the vinegar and baking soda’s properties, you get a perfect ingredient to clean your tile floor and make them bright and shiny again.
Plus, it’s also toxic-free, which means you will be 100% safe from any cancerous substances that are in the traditional house cleaning products.
Steps To Clean Tile Floors With Vinegar & Baking Soda:
In this section, we will dive into how to actually clean and wipe those stains off your floors using vinegar and baking soda.
But before we proceed, you first need to get ready with these cleaning equipment:
- Baking soda
- Distilled white vinegar
- Brush for scrubbing (grout brush)
- Spray bottle for spray the solution
- Mop (steam mop) or vacuum cleaner
- Dish-washing detergent
- A Bucket to keep the water
- Tap water (also you can use hot water or freshwater)
- Gloves (to keep your hand safe)
Once these are ready, let’s head right off to the cleaning steps:
Step 1: Prepare Your Floor For Cleaning
The first step to clean your floor with baking soda and vinegar is to sweep off any hair or dust particles that could be on the way.
You can use the mop or vacuum cleaner in this case. This step is crucial because if you have any substances in the way while cleaning, this could reduce the cleaning efficiency.
Once you’ve prepared your floor, let’s move on to the next step.
Step 2: Create A Mixture Of Vinegar & Baking Soda
While waiting for your floor to dry, you can go ahead and create the required cleaning mixture. Here, we will use the spray bottle to spray the cleaning solution.
To create the mixture, follow these steps:
- Pour hot water into the bucket
- Add 1/2 to 1 cup of baking soda into the water. Hot water will help dissolve the solution better
- Add 2 tablespoons of vinegar into the solutions. Stir up the mixture to make them dissolve faster
Once you have the right mixture, you can dip in the spray bottle into the bucket and fill it up to spray the cleaning solution. Don’t forget to use your glove for safety because the solution is acidic.
Step 3: Spray The Solution Into The Tile Floor
Next up is to go ahead and spray the vinegar and baking soda solution on the floor. You don’t have to spray it all over the floor because you’ve already cleaned the dust and hair with the mop.
Wait for several minutes and then start scrubbing the grout using brush. Don’t forget to wear gloves as well. Use soft brush here. Don’t push it too hard or too little. Once the brush starts accumulating the dust, wash it and repeat the process.
For the hard and stubborn grout, you may need to spray more solution to it and wait for longer period of time to let the solution dissolves them.
Step 4: Use Mop To Clean The Floor
So once you’re done with the grout cleaning, you need to clean off the grout particles using mop and water.
Fill into the bucket with enough water to submerge the mop head completely. Warm water is better. If possible, add some essential oil so that your house will smell more comfortable after the cleaning.
There are several recommended techniques to mop properly:
- Mop your tile floor in small sections (4-to-6-inch areas at a time)
- Get your way of directing to the door so you will not step on parts where you already cleaned.
- Move the mod sides first and the center later in narrow stretches
- Clean the mod several times during your cleaning
- On completing, wring the mop out and squeeze the mop head to get rid of the dirty water.
- Unpack your mopping supplies to clean before putting it aside
Take Away
And that’s all on how to clean the tile floors with vinegar and baking soda. Hope now you don’t have to worry about how to clean your floor without inhaling those toxic chemical cleaners.
Just keep in mind with all the safety precautions, which in this case, the most important one is to wear gloves. Sure, the cleaning solution isn’t as acidic as synthetic products, but it is still harmful to your skin.
If you’re someone who doesn’t have time to do all these, you can check out our cleaning service company if you happen to live in Australia.