When I bought my house, one of the things that scared me was that it had hardwood floors. Up until that point, I had only cared for carpet, vinyl (tacky, I know but hey – it was an apartment!), and tile. The methods that I was used to using to clean my floors would be useless on my new wood floors. After hours of research and many more hours on the phone with my mother, I finally learned how to take care of hard wood floors. I would like to share my findings with you.
Do not use anything with bleach on hardwood floors
When you were a kid, did you ever spill any nail polish remover on a finished wood surface? I know I did. I also remember what happened – the chemical peeled the finish right off of the wood furniture. After that experience, common sense told me that abrasive chemicals do not work well with finished wood surfaces. This brings me to my point: Do not use bleach on hard wood floors.
Let me repeat. Do not use bleach on hard wood floors. I know that if you have a laminate flooring, or tile, bleach water is the most efficient method of cleaning. This is not so for hard wood floors. Do not come close to your wood floors with anything that has touched bleach.
What happens if your wood floors get bleach on them? It is very likely you will need to sand and refinish at least a portion of your wood floors. It’s that bad.
Keep your hard wood floors swept
I go over my wood floors every day with a microfiber duster. This is a really big blue broom-like apparatus that I got at Lowe’s. It picks up a lot of dust. I go over all my floors with it- simply put the broom on the ground and walk behind it. I get the broom as close to a door as I can and then I shake out all the dust and debris. Then, I get out my Dirt Devil and vacuum up the debris.
I do not vacuum my wood floors because I am afraid that the wheels on my vacuum cleaner will scratch the floor.
Keeping your hard wood floors swept will keep them cleaner longer, and make them look really great between moppings.
Wash your floor with Murphy’s Oil Soap
Murphy’s Oil Soap is gentle enough to use on your wood floors. Put one or two capfulls in a bucket of warm water. I always use warm water because my mom told me that it works better. Once you have your bucket of warm water with one or two caps full of Murphy’s Oil Soap in it your are ready to wash your wood floors.
I don’t want water to stay on my wood floors too long, so when I wash my wood floors I grab a helper. What we then do is one of us will take a mop and go over the wood floors. The other will go behind the other with a towel. Usually, my husband uses the mop and I stand on a towel and just dry up everything that he washes. This keeps your wood floors from getting unsightly water spots.
Washing wood floors is easy. It also keeps your wood floors beautiful. My wood floors shine after I get done washing them using the method I just described.
Do NOT place those poly waffle-looking rug pads on your wood floors.
I have a large area rug in my living room on my wood floors. Under the rug I had a “Rug Saver Rug Pad” that I purchased at Wal-Mart. This rug pad was designed to keep the rug from slipping under your feet on your wood floors. I watched an episode of “Designed to Sell” on HGTV. In the particular episode, the couple had what looked like the exact same rug pad on their hard wood floors. When the designer went to take the rug up, the rug pad STUCK TO THE FLOOR!! I freaked out. I moved all the furniture in my living room so that I could pull up the rug pad to see if the rug pad I had was sticking to my wood floor. It stuck a little and I was left with a waffle print residue on my floor.
To remove the residue, I washed the area with Murphy’s Oil Soap and water using the method I described above. You could still see the waffle print. I had to buff the mark off my floor using an industrial grade buffer. Please learn from my mistake and don’t put a rug pad that is polyester coated with PVC on your wood floors.
I have given you some great tips on how to care for your wood floors. You don’t need expensive products, just some simple Murphy’s Oil Soap, water, and a microfiber broom. With a little care, your wood floors will stay gorgeous for years to come.
