My favorite way to clean hardwoods

I’ve mentioned before that our previous floors were laminate. The fridge died, leaked water all over, and the laminate was toast. Fast forward a couple months later and a (very) helpful insurance check, and we ended up with hardwood floors.

Have I mentioned how much I love them?

Our laminate floors were super shiny and IMPOSSIBLE to keep clean. I cannot express to you the agony of the cleaning (using a floor cleaner and one of those microfiber mops – which was not easy to push around) for a good hour, then not two minutes later someone would walk through in bare feet and I would be in a corner rocking and mumbling something about “floors…clean…help.”
It was intense. :)


After our new floors were installed I asked the Floor Guy how to clean them, and he recommended a steam mop. That made me giddy, cause the fine folks at Black and Decker had sent already me their steam mop to check out:


I actually got it before the floor debacle and tried it on the laminate and it cleaned them well, but did leave streaks. But ever.y.thing. I used left streaks – I found out later it was because of the build up of all of the cleaners I’ve used on them over the years. Nothing would clean them up.

I’m THRILLED to say the steam mop did stellar work on the new floors. I’m in heaven. No more mumbling.

I told you before that the new floors don’t show anything. We go in and out of this back door multiple times a day and bring in dirt, water and dust. I hadn’t cleaned our floors in over a week week, and this section is the worst it got:


Can’t see it? I know. Because they rock my world.

Here’s a closer look:


I know. Still not bad.

One of the many things I love about this steam mop is that it’s ready to go in seconds – you just grab one of the (THREE!) pads they provide:


Just lay it face down on the floor and place the mop on top:


The steam mop has three different settings:


I of course picked the wood option, which I’ve noticed seems to “steam” the least of them – which is a good thing when dealing with wood.

I put water and just a bit of vinegar in the mop and then push it around a bit. It dries almost immediately – I mean supa fast:


OK, that may be the most underwhelming before and after of all time, cause the before looked pretty good.

I know. Rocks my world.

This is the area we walk through the most every day, and you can see there are NO STREAKS!:

Holy cats. Hallelujah.
Oh. happy. day.

Best part? It takes less than ten minutes to clean all of the floors in the family room and kitchen. That took at least an hour (and some sweat) before.

We get sun all day in the back of our house, and before it was like a big huge pointy finger, highlighting all of the smudges and dirt and footprints.

Now, it’s just…(pretty) floors:


I also use the steam mop on our vinyl, tile and the peel and stick floors in the laundry room – every type of flooring cleans up great!

See more of our home here. To shop items in our home, click here! Never miss a post by signing up to get posts via email.