Mopping Made Easy

It has been awhile since the last blog. Sorry about that. We just moved and I have been crazy busy. In fact the move has inspired this homemaking tip! At my old place I had a big kitchen and dining room combined and the floors were tiled. My bathroom floors were also tiled. Mopping was a big job and doing it was on the top of my "hate to do" list. I'm sure many of you understand and hate mopping as well! When we moved to this new place I looked around and realized that only the kitchen had tile floor! What a relief. The dining room and both bathrooms all were carpeted. In the old place in order to mop I would have to start by taking all the chairs, garbage pail, high chair, and anything else on the floor out of the room. This would probably take me about 15 minutes. Then I had to go around and sweep the whole floor. This took me approx. another 15 minutes. Then I had to get the pail and fill it with hot water and soap which took about 5 minutes. Then on to the mopping itself which was the usual dip the mop in the bucket, ring it out, mop the floor, over and over again until the whole floor was done. This would take me about 20-30 minutes. Then when you're done you have to empty the pail, let the floor dry and then bring all of the chairs and other items back into the kitchen. Taking the items back into the kitchen took up another 15 minutes. All together it took me about 1hr 15 min. just to mop my kitchen and dining room floor! Now you see why I hated this job and usually (although not proud to admit it) put it off until I couldn't possibly put it off any longer! So what a relief when I realized only my small kitchen in the new place had tile. Then I got to thinking that I did not want to drag out a bucket, and mop the old way with only a small space to mop. It would be a waste of time. I went to Wal-Mart and looked around in the cleaning section and found a Swiffer mop! It looked so much easier. I bought it and am currently in love with it! You put a velcro cleaning pad on the bottom and a scrubbing pad on the side. Then you put a bottle of cleaner and a few batteries in the mop. There's a button at the top that you press to spray the cleaner on the floor in front of the mop and then you just swiffer the floor!! It is wonderful and extremely easy. If you come to any "hard" spots on the floor you tip the mop with your foot and scrub it with the scrub pad. It takes me a total of 5 minutes to swiffer the kitchen floor now. I find this to be extremely handy and wanted to pass it on to all you other homemakers out there that like to find ways to make your life easier.

Some things to let you know about the Swiffer:

This works great with smaller kitchens that are not carpeted and are not attached to the dining room. It is most effective when used often so that the floor doesn't get really messy. If the floor is really messy and needs a good hard scrubbing this Swiffer mop probably wouldn't do a very good job. It is made more for upkeep and keeping the floor clean. It would work fine with a big kitchen if you were consistent to take 5 minutes every day and run over the floor with the mop. All in all I have found this to be a wonderful replacement of the old "bucket and mop" way of cleaning the floor. It keeps me much more motivated to keep my floor clean instead of procrastinating because of the time consuming job of mopping with a bucket.