How to Clean Wood Floors

Here’s a fresh idea how to clean wood floors without any harsh chemicals…

Cleaning and maintaining wood floors without harsh chemicals is much simpler than you think. When you make your own floor cleaner and polish you will reap immediate benefits. Homemade green cleaning products are safe for your home and family, gentle on the environment, and much less expensive than commercial ones.

Sweeping or dry mopping your hard wood floors once or twice every day is the best way to keep them clean. When they need some extra sprucing up, here’s what you can do: Vacuum or sweep first to remove dirt and crumbs from the floor. Then, mix up your cleaner.

For sealed wood floors, you’ll need a bucket, a spray bottle, rags or a mop, two gallons of warm water, one-half cup distilled white vinegar (this will keep your floors from getting those pesky streaks), one-eighth cup castile or other plant-based soap, and a few drops of essential oil. Four or five drops of grapefruit oil will work great and smell delicious, too. Lavender, rosemary, and tea tree oils have anti-bacterial properties, so use up to ten drops of one of these if you’re mopping up a particularly germy floor.

There are two possible ways for you to go about this: You can mix your floor cleaner in the bucket and dip the cloths directly into that, or you can pour some into a spray bottle, then and spray and clean small areas as you go. Since wood floors look better and last longer when they don’t get too wet, this may be the best method. This also means you won’t have to lug around a heavy bucket of floor cleaner. After scrubbing, use a rag to rinse your floor clean, and then shine with a dry cloth.

If your wood floors are waxed, and not sealed, it’s best to clean them with some rags or a sponge mop damp with warm (but not hot!) water.

And that’s about it!

This small change in how to clean wood floors has so many advantages over using commercial cleaning products. Many floor cleaners and polishes on the market today contain carcinogens like formaldehyde, as well as ingredients like petroleum distillates that may be toxic to both the digestive and nervous systems. It is not uncommon to see labels that read ‘WARNING’ (or ‘CAUTION’ or ‘DANGER’) on commercial cleaners, and you pay more money for these toxic chemicals than you will when you make them at home.

Essential oils can be purchased for only a few dollars at health food stores, and will last for a long time. Vinegar and castile soap are similarly inexpensive. Not only are homemade cleaning products less costly, they work just as well, if not better, and with the addition of essential oils, they smell wonderful too. So now you get all of the benefits, without the any of the danger.

Thanks for reading.

Happy cleaning!