4 Things We’re Doing to Take Care of Our Delicate Floors

Today Sarah Mae is on her hands and knees moppin’ the floor. Okay not really, she’s at a conference, but a few days ago she was.

It’s all about floors today in 31 Days to Clean. Hope you got the book and are chiming in.

Here’s my story….

A few years ago when we were living in an apartment I used to mop the kitchen floors EVERY NIGHT!

Did I have it going on or what?!

But we’re here to talk about my current floors.

I like to call my floors delicate because I have to think way more about them and care for quite a bit more than my previous vinyl and carpeted floors.

My floors are laminate.

Wood and quality laminate floors are nice to look at, beautiful in fact, but they can be a little high maintenance so learn all you can about them to keep them looking their best.

My old floors could take anything I threw at them. We weren’t told much about the floors when we moved in many years ago so I used my steam mop and microfiber mops to keep them clean and shiny. I mopped about once a week but the color of them was so masterfully designed that it was kind of hard to tell when they were dirty.

Didn’t know how good I had it.

Now we have laminate flooring.  No matter how much they try and tell you it’s maintenance free anything that shrieks and runs from water is NOT maintenance free!

We discovered the issues with water on our floors our second day in our home. Someone had left a plastic bag that had formerly had a wet door mat (those fakey grass kind that actually work really well for keeping dirt out) in it on the floor by the door.  My husband had hosed off the mat at the old house and at the last minute threw it in a plastic bag to go to the new house.

In the exhaustion of moving in we took the mat out of the bag and dumped the bag on the floor not really thinking about it. A bit of water had pooled overnight and I didn’t discover it until cleaning up the next morning. When I picked the bag up I noticed the water and mopped it up. Evidently a bit too late as it had already seeped into the floor and caused a small bubble. I’m like, “huh?”

So then I, of course, came online to find out all about the delicate nature of laminate.

• So I can’t get it too wet.
• Must protect it against scratches.
• Use special cleaners for it.

Sigh!

Well okay. I’m so spoiled.

I guess I’ll have to find a way to make this work.

So Here are 4 Things We’re Doing to Take Care of Our Delicate Floors

1. The first thing we did was to find good rugs for the kitchen and hallway.

I’ve always used rugs in the kitchen. I know people have conflicting views on this but from a cleaning standpoint they make excellent sense. In front of the sink, the stove and the refrigerator where the most spills happen. We went with FLOR for this because I can pick them up and hose them off a section at a time. I did underestimate the amount we would need so I have to make another order to fill out the rest of the spaces I want to. In this home I’m covering more floor than I normally would in the kitchen simply because of the water issue with laminate.

We have plans to get more rugs for the downstairs floor but in the meantime we’re using very low cost ones from Ikea.

2. Next we’ve started adopting the no shoe policy in the home.

This is something we’ve talked about over the years and bounced back and forth. We even had one of our distance learning teachers discuss it in English class a year ago. Since we go outside in the yard a fair bit and can track in all sorts of pieces of bark or hazelnut shells and grass that can scratch up the floor we’ve just started kicking off our shoes and slipping into slippers when we come in. We don’t require our guests to do this mainly because they’re not walking in with dirty shoes like we are.

3. I have a new cleaning schedule for my delicate floors.

• Sweep daily.
• Vacuum FLOR rugs and other Waterguard rugs every few days.
• Damp mop once a week or more if needed. (rugs come up for this)

4. Don’t get too bent out of shape if something happens.

This one is hard when you have a beautiful new floor. Eeeek! Something happened! What to do! What to do!

Well yes things will happen but it is just a floor. Life will go on. Maybe you’ll learn a new DIY that pulls your floor back to brand spankin’ new or maybe your house will feel more loved and lived in.

We’re blessed that our builder is actually coming back next week to repair our floors, even though we did it, as part of our warranty. So that makes me happy 🙂

How do you take care of your floors?