How you clean a kitchen floor depends on the type of surface that your kitchen has and its condition.
Key Takeaways:
You should always clean your kitchen floor based on its material. Ideally, use non-abrasive cleaners and brushes. White distilled vinegar is an ideal cleaning product as it cleans thoroughly and has natural antibacterial properties. Bleach works well on tough stains, as does hydrogen peroxide.
Clean as and when necessary or when stains arise. You may also use a steam cleaner to go deep on disinfection.
Preparing to Clean Your Kitchen Floor
If you want to know how to clean a kitchen floor, you need tolearn techniques to handle different kinds of spills as well as regular maintenance cleaning.The strategies that you use to clean a kitchen floor can also depend on the type of tile or covering that you have in your kitchen.
The substances and tools that you use to clean your kitchen floor can vary, but the methods are quite similar regardless of the type of surface that you have.
How Often Should I Clean the Kitchen Floor?
Kitchens get a lot of use, which means you need to clean them frequently. Also, you are cooking, washing dishes, and, inevitably (even if you are careful), spilling things on the floor. Except, perhaps, for the bathroom, the kitchen is the room in the house that requires the most frequent cleaning.
Yes, you will need to do these kinds of deep cleaning, but you will have to do them less often if you keep up with the daily and weekly cleaning.
How to Handle Daily Kitchen Floor Cleaning
Daily kitchen cleaning starts with two tasks. First, you need to wipe up any spills that you make during kitchen use.
Most kitchen floors have ceramic, vinyl, or composite tiles, stone, cement, or other durable surfaces.
With these floor coverings, cleaning spills is usually as easy as blotting the liquid or oil with a cloth or sponge. You can use a few drops of dish soap or a mixture of vinegar and water to deal with any leftover staining. An alternative is to leave a paste made with baking soda and water on the spill area for a few hours.
You should never let spills sit for an extended period. If left long enough, substances will stain even the hardiest flooring.
You should sweep your kitchen floor daily, or at least do so on the days when you use your kitchen for cooking. You should always clean spills before sweeping because sweeping will spread the spill out over the floor. When this happens, you will need to perform a deeper clean to deal with the spill.
Here is an excellent in-depth guide from Porch on how to handle deep cleaning of the kitchen.
How Should I Mop the Kitchen Floor?
Because it gets so much use and witnesses so many spills, you should mop your kitchen at least once per week. Some home care experts suggest wet washing the floor at least twice per week.
Pretty much everyone agrees that you should give your kitchen a thorough wet cleaning as often as you can. However, there is less of an agreement on what products you should use to perform this cleaning.
The first step in the kitchen floor deep-cleaning process is the same regardless of your chosen cleaning agent.You need to sweep and remove any visible spills or stains by hand.
What Products Should I Use to Mop the Kitchen Floor
If you want to take a more natural approach for cleaning vinyl or ceramic flooring, you can use a mixture of warm water and vinegar.Vinegar is an ideal natural solution because it has cleaning and antibacterial properties.Also, it is pretty easy to get. If you don’t have it in your pantry already, you can buy a bottle at any grocery store.
You can use anammonia-based cleaneron a tile kitchen floor. However, you may need to go over the floor a second time using only clean water to remove any residue that the cleaning product leaves behind.
If you have wood or stone flooring, or if you have tile and you are looking for another alternative, you can usewater and a few drops of dish soap.Again, if you notice a residue from the soap, you can go over the floor a second time.
If you opt for a chemical cleaner,try to find a mild one that has a pH of 7(a “pH neutral” cleaning agent, in other words).
How to Clean Grout on a Tile Floor
Some kitchen cleaners get frustrated because the grout in between the tiles gets stained, and regular mopping does not deal with this discoloration. You can try to handle grout discoloration by making a paste with baking soda and water. You can apply this paste to the grout with a rag or a small brush, such as a toothbrush.
A great tool to clean grout from tile is a steam cleaner. Here are a couple of great steam cleaners for tile flooring.
What Cleaning Tools Should I Use?
The cleaning implements that you use should, in general, be non-abrasive.Even if you have a difficult stain, you should not resort to using scouring pads or steel wool. These products will likely leave a mark on the flooring or produce small scratches that will attract and hold dirt. Also, you should mop with microfiber mops and use brooms with softer bristles or dry mop pads.
What Should I Do with Difficult Spills or Stains?
Bleach-based cleaners can handle difficult stains or spillsthat involve oil or hot items from the stove that leave a mark or adhere to the flooring. Another option is touse hydrogen peroxide, which has antibacterial and cleaning properties. You can pour the hydrogen peroxide directly on the spill or create a solution with water and hydrogen peroxide.
What If I Want to Perform a Deep Cleaning of My Kitchen Floor?
You can go even deeper by using a steam cleaner
on your kitchen floor. These special cleaners use a hot mist to clean the floor. This type of cleaning is suitable for some kitchen floors because it can deal with troublesome stains, even on grout, and it helps with disinfection without the use of harsh chemicals such as bleach.
We put together a list of updated steam cleaner reviews that you can check out here.
With these techniques, you can clean your kitchen floor and keep it looking like new throughout its lifespan.
