How Often Should You Be Mopping Your Floors?

Having hardwood, laminate, or tile floors provides a finishing touch to your condo. However, you might find your dream floors harder to care for than you imagined. While carpets just need a quick vacuum once a week, frequently, flooring can show more dirt than carpeting. This can have you wondering how often you should be mopping your floors to help keep them looking clean. If you are finding that your floors are less than pristine, here are some tips to keep them looking spic and span from our condo-cleaning services experts.

Type of Floor

First, you have to be very careful when approaching your mopping because different floor types require different care. You want to use the right cleaner and tools to get the best results, whether it is a combination of a broom, mop, and cleaner, or a quick sweep, often in hand with spot cleans now and then.

Target Weekly Cleaning

Regardless of your flooring type, your target should be a weekly cleaning to avoid buildup of dust, dirt, grime, etc. If you have pets, you might find sweeping is required more often to keep on top of all that fur and hair floating around. As well, your kitchen tends to be the worst when it comes to mess, so keep an eye on things there. You might find you have to sweep daily, especially if you have a full house. Buildup of any kind can slowly cause your floors to look dull and even affect its finish, so cleaning is a must.

Sealed Floors

Sealed wood floors do not need to be mopped and swept as frequently as unsealed floors. This is because they have a shield to protect them against wear and tear. As well, when you mop a sealed floor, as long as you use minimum dampness, they dry quickly, which actually helps shield them from damage and mess. Unsealed floors, on the other hand, have less resistance to water. Therefore, using a damp mop works best, as it can help maintain their condition.

Frequent Traffic

The busier your home, the more attention your floors will need. This goes for how much traffic each room sees. For example, your entrance area will tend to see the most traffic, so it will have the most dirt. It’s also the place every guest will see, as it’s the only way into the condo. So, you’ll want to keep the area looking neater than, say, an office no one ever enters other than you. Areas with more traffic will most likely need a good sweep and mop every few days to keep up with the dirt being brought in from outside. Otherwise, people will start tracking the dirt from the entrance into the rest of the home.

How a Room is Used

This is a little different from traffic. For example, you might not use a hobby room often, but it might be more prone to potential floor messes such as paint and glue drips, shavings from woodwork, glitter, and paper bits from scrapbooking. In this case, you should wash the floor every time you use the room. Another consideration is if you have pets and kids. The rooms they favour will tend to need more attention. As mentioned above, the kitchen usually needs a daily sweep and, sometimes, even a mop since crumbs, food, drips, and so on make a mess almost every time you cook.

Tips to Reduce Mopping Time

If you want to reduce the amount of time dedicated to cleaning your floors, here are some tips to help:

• Use floor mats. This is a good idea for the entryway where people are constantly tracking in mess. A floor mat to wipe feet can reduce how often you find yourself mopping up, especially in the winter when people carry in slush, snow, and salt from the street.
• Boot trays. Keeping boot trays at the entry can also reduce the amount of runoff from boots and shoes in the winter that can create stains and muddy marks on the floors.
• Swiffer. Keep a product such as Swiffer handy to manage messes as they occur. One swipe of drips in the kitchen, for example, can really make quick work of messes and then reduce the time needed for a major mop up.
• Unused areas. Keep an eye on unused areas of the room because they can get dust buildup since no one is walking in to kick it away! Make sure you dust them with a dry mop or cloth to avoid the dust from those areas swirling around the room.
• Dry mop. Dry mops with a microfiber cloth can collect all kinds of debris. This makes it easier to use your wet mop because there will be less dry dirt swooshing around and getting caught in the mop.

Tips to Mop Your Floors

Use these tips to make mopping easier:

• The right tools. Use a sponge or string mop, bucket, and mild cleanser, and keep a nylon scrub pad handy to tackle tough spots.
• Sweep first. As mentioned above, using a dry microfiber mop first or even a vacuum to suck up debris, larger particles, and hair will make it easier to mop up without dragging dirt around.
• Clean water. Use warm water and just a small amount of floor-appropriate cleaner in your bucket. If you don’t choose the right cleaner, not only can you damage your floors, but you can also make them dangerously slick even after they dry. As well, if the water becomes very dirty, you really should replace it.
• Work smart. Don’t clean yourself into a corner. Start at one end of the room and work your way back from side to side. This allows you to swipe at least twice as you move backward and wipe away all the mess. Aim to make an easy exit so you don’t walk across your clean floors.
• Wring out the mop. It can be tempting to slosh more water and cleanser on your floor to clean more effectively, but the opposite is true. You need to wring the mop out so you can get the floors to dry quickly. This way, you won’t leave any stains and watermarks from soppy puddles. Dip and wring out the mop every few steps or so.
• Attack scuffs and buildup. Use your nylon scrub pad to attack grime and stains by hand.
• Clean water rinse. Once you cover the whole area, replace the water with fresh, warm water, and do a quick swipe to remove cleanser residue.

If mopping seems like way too much work, leave it up to our expert condo-cleaning services at Maid4Condos to keep your floors clean. Reach out to us today.