How to Clean Laminate Floors
Dealing with certain kinds of floors is harder than dealing with others. A rule of house cleaning requires you to know how to deal with all of them if you want to have nice things in the house. And nice things such as laminate floors take some good maintenance and a good amount of cleaning when the time comes. They have their own cleaning needs, require their own tools and products and, if you do your job right, they still reward you with being good-looking floors. So how do you meet all those needs and how do you go against them? Let’s see the dos and don’ts.
DO
• Always use a microfiber mop when cleaning the floor. Standard mops don’t do the job as well and brushes may scratch the surface of the floor.
• Pick your laminate floor cleaners carefully, or find a recipe for DIY home cleaners that work on laminate, such as ones that include vinegar and water mixing.
• Use natural cleaners whenever possible. They are always the better choice for when you are home cleaning as they don’t bring in any chemicals to the home. Also a big bonus of not using chemicals is your laminate floors not having to react to them.
• Use the cleaning agent on the mop, not on the floor as it may leave a mark.
• Sweep the floor, if needed. Occasional sweepings will eliminate the need to do more serious cleaning later on.
• Use a vacuum cleaner on a regular basis to keep dust from settling in and becoming a dirt-absorbing problem.
• Clean the floors regularly. It’s up to you how often to do it, but it is advised to do it at least a couple of times a week.
• Clean in the right order. Sweep or vacuum, then do stain removal, then rinse, then polish, and then you are done. Doing it in any other order won’t do the job with 100% efficiency.
DON’T
• Use stiff brushes. As mentioned, they scratch the surface of the floor and destroy the nice and pretty scene you had previously set up.
• Use the vacuum cleaner’s beater brush. It is way too abrasive for laminate flooring and it will damage them after a while.
• Use baking soda or any other kind of powder substances. Same as above, they are abrasive and won’t look good on the floor after a while.
• Use soap. This is one place where standard detergents which include soap in their ingredients are bad for you. No, not for the floors – for you. Soap makes the laminate floor slippery, so watch out with that.
• Use steam cleaners. They are bad for the floor’s texture and surface and you want to keep those steam cleaning services away.
• Use steel wool. If you have a hard stain that needs rubbing out, find the right chemical solution and use a cloth. Steel does not work well as a cleaner unless you want to scrape parts of the floor along with the stain.
• Use wet mops. They leave water behind and leaving water on your laminate flooring means problems. The boards will swell and warp and leave you with less than nice-looking floors.
• Use just any commercial floor cleaner. Laminate flooring has its own needs and either use home cleaners or specific ones, but not ones that could react badly with your floors.
Stick to these dos and don’ts and you will do just fine when you endeavour your laminate floor cleaning. You will be able to shine up those rascals in no time and there will be no risks with the cleaning if you just avoid the don’ts. There is always a right way and a wrong way. Here you have almost all of them listed, so read up and do proper home cleaning.
