If we had chosen our floors, I'm not sure white tile would have made the list in our kitchen. Possibly bathrooms, but with the amount of food we have flying around here on a given day, it's hard to keep the floor looking even halfway decent. It's pretty easy to clean tile - we have some squirt and mop products and of course a real, thorough mopping is excellent for most spills.
The tradeoff for the easy care of tile is of course its grout. Which is the worst for many of us who are bothered by the feeling of crud, or, who live in our kitchens. I've tried a few different cleaners of varying degrees of chemical-inclusion, and they don't make me feel warm and fuzzy inside, or in my nose, which makes me very worried for our furry girls whose insides and noses never leave and might eat something from the floor.
Not too long ago, I found a suggestion to clean the floors with baking soda and vinegar. No way! I thought, that's like PG-rated cleaning and these floors are not in good shape. But then I read it again, and the poster didn't seem to be a liar, as in, she had photos to back her claim up. So, one night, after poor Alex had sacked out, I decided to give it a go.
I sprinkled baking soda around the edges of six tiles. The first round, I definitely overdid it, just a light covering should do it. Then, I busted out my trusty spray bottle of white vinegar (not the cleaning kind - I feel like the edible amount of acidity is sufficient, and then can always use from the same gallon if needed), and spritzed the grout lines with vinegar.
After the very therapeutic fizzling sounds, that at least made me feel like I was doing something, I scrubbed at the joints with a grout brush. We bought one at Target for six or seven dollars when we first moved into our last apartment and realized the water was going to leave orange stains on the white shower grout forever.
It is officially paying off, because I was able to scrub a good bit of the dirt out of our kitchen floor, rinsing the brush out periodically. After hitting all of the tile edges, I wiped the excess baking soda into a pile in the middle of one of the tiles, and spritzed with another round of vinegar. It would probably have been more effective to use less baking powder from the get-go, and do a couple of rounds of this. I scrubbed down the edges one last time, and left the floor to dry to see how it looked in the morning.
I also thought it best to stop loudly scrubbing our kitchen floor, unless I wanted to write a very short follow-up post on how to make your husband ready to throw things at you because he ran around and did errands all Saturday and was exhausted while you HAD to clean something you'd lived with for over nine months. Even just that night, the difference between the cleaned tiles and unaddressed ones was pretty apparent.
By the light of day, the difference was real, and I got to the rest of the floor over my "break" from classes. One night, I looked at Alex and said, I need to have fun again. I am sure he thought I was batty the next day when I'd done this (you know, as a really bizarre version of "fun"), but it felt like we might not have food crud everywhere now. This was a fantastic opportunity to scrub the difficult spots and around the edges of our kitchen under cabinets and appliances, and also the day my painting pants died of strain. Sigh.
When I'd finished, there was a baking soda haze all over the floor, and I let that dry and played elsewhere. After our bedtime cat overlord feeding, I gave the tile a quick clean with hot water and a fresh mophead, and called it good enough for the day. When we get the kitchen put away, I'll give another good mop to it and be fortified by success, ready to return to the cabinets (you know, sitting around since December....). Also, now that the caulk is happy in the bathroom, I guess the floor looks pretty awful...
I sprinkled baking soda around the edges of six tiles. The first round, I definitely overdid it, just a light covering should do it. Then, I busted out my trusty spray bottle of white vinegar (not the cleaning kind - I feel like the edible amount of acidity is sufficient, and then can always use from the same gallon if needed), and spritzed the grout lines with vinegar.
After the very therapeutic fizzling sounds, that at least made me feel like I was doing something, I scrubbed at the joints with a grout brush. We bought one at Target for six or seven dollars when we first moved into our last apartment and realized the water was going to leave orange stains on the white shower grout forever. It is officially paying off, because I was able to scrub a good bit of the dirt out of our kitchen floor, rinsing the brush out periodically. After hitting all of the tile edges, I wiped the excess baking soda into a pile in the middle of one of the tiles, and spritzed with another round of vinegar. It would probably have been more effective to use less baking powder from the get-go, and do a couple of rounds of this. I scrubbed down the edges one last time, and left the floor to dry to see how it looked in the morning.
I also thought it best to stop loudly scrubbing our kitchen floor, unless I wanted to write a very short follow-up post on how to make your husband ready to throw things at you because he ran around and did errands all Saturday and was exhausted while you HAD to clean something you'd lived with for over nine months. Even just that night, the difference between the cleaned tiles and unaddressed ones was pretty apparent.
By the light of day, the difference was real, and I got to the rest of the floor over my "break" from classes. One night, I looked at Alex and said, I need to have fun again. I am sure he thought I was batty the next day when I'd done this (you know, as a really bizarre version of "fun"), but it felt like we might not have food crud everywhere now. This was a fantastic opportunity to scrub the difficult spots and around the edges of our kitchen under cabinets and appliances, and also the day my painting pants died of strain. Sigh.
When I'd finished, there was a baking soda haze all over the floor, and I let that dry and played elsewhere. After our bedtime cat overlord feeding, I gave the tile a quick clean with hot water and a fresh mophead, and called it good enough for the day. When we get the kitchen put away, I'll give another good mop to it and be fortified by success, ready to return to the cabinets (you know, sitting around since December....). Also, now that the caulk is happy in the bathroom, I guess the floor looks pretty awful...
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