A Complete Guide to Floor Cleaning
If you’re looking for a complete guide to floor cleaning, this post will teach you everything you need to know. Whether you are maintaining carpets or hard floor surfaces, you need to know everything about regular maintenance and annual maintenance.
Floors are going to become dirty no matter how much we clean and how much we try to prevent it. Clean and fresh floors can make a huge difference in adding value to your business or home. Below are our tips for floor cleaning and to keep the floors squeaky clean at your home and your business.
Carpet
Preventative Measures
To preserve your carpet and keep it looking fresh and new, you will need to take preventative steps and hire professional carpet cleaning services every now and again. Placing mats outside of all entrances will help absorb dirt and moisture that can come into the home to damage and discolor carpet. Don’t forget to clean these mats off at least once a week to get rid of dirt and grime that is collected on the mat.
Moving furniture not only will prolong the life of your carpet but it will help keep the carpet clean. Most of the time, carpet underneath furniture doesn’t get cleaned as much. This allows dust and dirt to collect and if you ever decide to move the furniture you might be in for a surprise of dirt.
There is no worse feeling than stepping on wet carpet in your home. To prevent water damage and stains on your primary carpet, place down area rugs in high traffic areas and areas that have the potential to get wet, to absorb water and stains. The area rug will be easy to replace compared to the carpet.
Vacuuming
Before you start on carpet cleaning with a vacuum, make sure your vacuum is clean. Check the bottom for dirt and gunk that has built up and removed. After checking the bottom, check for blockage in the tube running to the bag or dust bin. Once you’ve cleaned and checked the vacuum, it’s time to start vacuuming the carpet.
When we vacuum, we want to get the job done as fast as possible but this might be counterproductive and may consume more time. Vacuuming fast can cause dirt particles to go in the air and come back down later. This will lead to you having to vacuum multiple times, instead of just once. When vacuuming carpet, it’s best to vacuum slowly and go in multiple directions. This will maximize the vacuum suction, to get all dirt and grime out of the carpet.
Stains
The worst part of carpet cleaning is trying to remove unsightly stains. If you don’t act fast, a stain can become permanent. Once a stain happens, grab a cloth to absorb as much of the liquid as possible. This is the most important step because the longer it takes to clean up the more time the liquid has to absorb into the carpet. After absorbing the liquid, it’s time to clean up the mess. Use warm water and a cloth to clean up as much of the mess as possible.
If the liquid is still showing up on the carpet, it’s time to go get a heavy duty carpet cleaning solution. If you don’t have any cleaning solution, just use warm water and vinegar.
PRO TIP: Please remember that some carpet cleaning solutions can damage specific carpets. After you buy carpet cleaning solution, try it out on a piece of old carpet or carpet in a closet so you have peace of mind when you do use the solution.
From here, apply the solution onto the stain and wait a couple of minutes for the solution to do its job and then rinse and dry the carpet. For some great spot cleaning techniques, take a look at this post here!
Hire A Pro
Deep cleaning and removing stains from carpets is very time consuming. To save time and stress, reach out to the carpet cleaning professionals. They have the heavy duty equipment, the knowledge, and the experience to restore your carpet back to its original look. Carpet cleaning isn’t usually that expensive for the result and depending on the space the job can be completed in an hour or two.
Commercial Carpet Cleaning
If you own a business or manage a building, you know that carpets take a lot of damage and require constant attention. At business carpet squares are becoming more popular due to the ability to pull up a damaged area of carpet and replace it with a new one. If you don’t have carpet squares or out of replacements, here are some ideas to keep your carpet looking brand new.
- Buy a carpet extractor to clean carpet multiple days a week. Here’s one we love on the Home Depot website. This will be a bigger cost up front but you are able to clean carpets on your own time. Carpet extractors do break down over time and will have to be replaced as well.
- Hire a carpet cleaning company to clean bi-weekly or monthly. This will cost more over time compared to a carpet extractor but you are getting a professional and professional carpet cleaning solution to make your carpet look brand new. A company we love is New Jersey based Cleaning World Inc. The provide NJ commercial cleaning services for all of your home or business needs and can help with this type of project.
Hardwood Floors
Hardwood floors are a great addition to your home but can be more time consuming to clean and maintain compared to carpets.
Preventative Measures
To keep your hardwood floors looking great, place a doormat inside and outside your home. This will help keep the dirt and elements from outside from damaging and dirtying your floors. Another tip is to take off shoes at the front door, so dirt is not tracked throughout the house. For other parts of the house place rugs to catch dirt, hair, and grim that got past the front door. When placing these rugs and carpets down throughout the house, make sure you place the stick pads underneath so they don’t move and bunch up throughout the house.
For heavy furniture and items in your home, place pads underneath to make sure the furniture or heavy objects don’t scratch or damage your floors. You’d hate to rearrange the living room and see damage to the floors.
Sweep and Vacuum
Before deep cleaning your hardwood floors, let’s start with cleaning the loose dirt, grime, and hair first. If not, the dirt, hair, and grime can be difficult to come up later when mopping.
Sweeping hardwood floors can be very time consuming and you may have to do multiple sweep throughs to pick up all the junk off the floor. To help speed this process up, consider buying a robot vacuum. This will save you a lot of time, go under furniture, and will pick up more junk than sweeping. Other options are to go with products like swiffers that have pads that junk sticks too.
After sweeping through multiple times, go over the floor one more time with a robot vacuum or a traditional vacuum to pick up the extra dirt and grime on the floor. When choosing a vacuum for cleaning hardwood floors, choose one that doesn’t have a beater bar because it can damage your hardwood floors.
Mop
After dusting, sweeping, and vacuuming your floors, its time to move to mopping the floor. Before you start, you will need to find your cleaning solution to use on your floors. Most companies will include the best type of cleaner to use with their floors. If not, go with a general cleaner that is good for all hardwood floors. But just to be safe, try the cleaner on a closet or left over hardwood to see if it changes or damages the wood.
Once you’ve tried out the solution, it’s time to begin mopping your floors. When mopping hardwood floors, you want the mop to be damp. If the mop is soaked in water, it can puddle up on the floor and damage your wood floors. After mopping the floors, turn on the ceiling fan, air conditioner, and floor fans to dry the mop water on the floor to keep the floors in great condition.
Removing Stains
Before you begin to remove stains from your hardwood floors, identify the finish of your hardwood floors. The two finishes are hard finish and oil finish.
For hardwood finish, scrub down the area with a cloth. Other methods of sanding and using products may damage the floor. For oil finish, use steel wool with wax to clean the floor.
Waxing
DO NOT USE WAX ON NON-WAX FLOORS, URETHANE FLOORS, OR VINYL FLOORS.
To prolong the life of your hardwood flooring, you may need to wax your floor. Before waxing your floor or hiring floor waxing services, make sure you prepare the floor by sweeping, vacuuming, and mopping. If you have had your floors waxed in the past, you will need to have the floor stripped of the wax before adding the new layer of wax. After stripping the old wax, you are able to apply the new wax to the floor. There are many different types of wax to use like paste, oil based, and silicone. Apply the wax through cloth or mop and then spread evenly across the floor. Once the wax has been spread across the floor, you will need to buff the floor to finish the waxing process.
Commercial Hardwood Cleaning
Hardwood floors add a great style to any business. Over time, the floors can take a lot of damage from customers. To keep floors looking great, place multiple floor mats at each entrance, sweep at least three times a day, and mop every other day. Wax floors once or twice a year to keep floors looking brand new.
This can be a lot of work and can become time consuming to do on top of running a business. Calling a professional floor waxing service can save extra time and work. The pro’s will take care of your floors and will be able to put the correct products on the floor to keep them safe and prolong the life of your floors.
In addition to this, if you are preserving the life of a commercial space, you can certainly hire office cleaning services for floor waxing too. Finding a business to provides a diversified range of services is sometimes more cost-effective and good for the long run. Cleaning World, Inc. of New Jersey is a business just like that so you should definitely consider them if you’re in NJ!
PRO TIP: Read this article on what does office cleaning consist of to pick the right office cleaning company!
Tile Cleaning
Preventative Measures
Like the hardwood floors, using a doormat can prevent dirt and grim from getting on the tile and in the grout. Use small rugs and mats in bathrooms and kitchens around bathtubs and sinks to keep water and dirt from getting onto the tile.
Prepare Floors
At least two or three times a week, sweep or vacuum your tile floors. Robot vacuums will also work well on tile surfaces to help clean up more dirt and grime off the floor. Dirt and grime can become stuck to the floor and make it more difficult to remove. To remove, use a putty knife to get underneath and lodge out. Adding water to the dirt and grime can make it easier to remove with the putty knife.
Cleaning Tile and Tile Grout
After preparing the floors, it’s time to mop the tile. Before mopping, grab a bucket full of warm water and a small amount of detergent cleaner. Make sure you mop with a damp mop, using too much water can push water and dirt into tile grout. After mopping the floor, dry the floor with fans or air conditioner to make sure water doesn’t seep into the tile or grout.
The challenge of keeping tiles clean is not the tiles, but the tile grout. Tile grout is white and it easily absorbs dirt and grime to make it discolored. Even if your tile is squeaky clean, having dirty off colored tile grout will make the tile look dirty.
One popular way is to create a paste of baking soda and apply to the dirty grout then scrub with a toothbrush. Leave the baking soda solution on the tile grout overnight and rinse with warm water. Other solutions are to use a grout cleaner spray and then scrub out after 10 minutes. After rinsing the grout cleaners with warm water, let the grout air dry. Then apply grout sealer to protect and prolong the clean grout lines.
Commercial Tile Cleaning
To prepare for tile cleaning your business, make sure you grab all the supplies that you will need. Broom, mop, and bucket are the basic necessities for cleaning tile but you may need to buy a specific type of cleaner for your business. For example if your business has a kitchen you may need to use tile cleaner that is designed to pick up grease.
After gathering supplies, you will need to consider renting or buying a floor cleaning machine to clean your commercial tile floor. This can help save money and time cleaning compared to using a broom and a mop. Once you’ve selected the equipment and supplies, the next step is to start working on clearing off the floor surface with sweeping and vacuuming.
Once the floors have been swept and cleared off, it’s time to power up the floor cleaner and begin cleaning. When scrubbing the floors with the cleaner, make sure you go slow to make sure the cleaner is able to scrub out all of the dirt and stains on the tile. After finishing up the cleaning process, make sure you turn on fans to dry the floor and avoid potential slips and falls with customers.
Conclusion
There is no better feeling than coming home and seeing a fresh floor. To keep your floors clean remember to take preventative steps of mats and rugs throughout the home, buy great and specific equipment, and do the work.
When owning a business, it can be difficult to maintain floors because you’re maintaining a business. You may also have multiple types of floors that need different equipment and different products. Over time it can become expensive to buy all the equipment and product to keep great floors. To keep cost down and to focus primarily on your business, reach out to a professional cleaning service to keep your flooring looking fresh and brand new to impress new customers coming in the door.
We hope this complete guide to floor cleaning has been helpful and wish you luck on your project.
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