Home Work – When it comes to cleaning your floors, many commercial cleaners that you can buy at the store aren’t enough. Not only are they ineffective, they are full of dangerous chemicals that can make your family sick, not to mention harmful to the environment. You probably already have the ingredients you need to make a homemade floor cleaner that is just as clean, if not better, than the one you buy at the store.
Using a commercial cleaner when cleaning floors contributes significantly to indoor air pollution, which can be a major problem for asthma or allergy sufferers.
It also leaves behind a toxic residue, which can cause other serious health conditions and make your family sick. Making home floor cleaners is not only safer, but it’s also relatively inexpensive.
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How to Make Homemade Floor Cleaner
There are many reasons why making a homemade floor cleaner is a good idea. It is not only better for the environment, but also safer for your family.
Using a few basic ingredients you can find in your kitchen, you can make a detergent to tackle even the toughest of messes without leaving harsh chemicals behind. Include one of these recipes as part of your checklist for cleaning the kitchen and other parts of your home.
All Purpose Cleaner
Linoleum is usually easier to clean than other types of flooring. This great cleaner will work on all hard floor surfaces in your home including hardwood, laminate, vinyl, linoleum, and tile.
Be sure to use it to clean marble and granite, as the vinegar may damage any porous stone. It’s a powerful dirt-removing cleanser and leaves a brilliant shine.
Homemade All Purpose Floor Cleaner
- ½ cup white vinegar ¼ cup rubbing alcohol,
- 3 drops liquid dish soap (make sure it doesn’t contain antibacterial ingredients, humectants, or oxygen bleach),
- 5-10 drops of an essential oil (such as peppermint oil) of your choice.
Mix the ingredients in a large bowl. To learn how to clean vinyl or other types of flooring, add the ingredients to a plastic or glass spray bottle and shake well. Spray the cleaner generously on the floor and wipe it clean with a mop.
You can also combine the ingredients in a bucket, but you’ll need to get rid of any food scraps once you’ve finished cleaning the floor. This recipe is great for removing many different types of stains and will leave your floor smelling and looking like new. Add this recipe and regular floor cleaning to your weekly or monthly home cleaning checklist.
Note: Do not switch from Castile soap to liquid dish soap because it is an oily soap. Using castile soap will leave the floor full of stains and streaks that will only need to be cleaned again.
Homemade Wood Floor Cleaner
With this homemade hardwood floor cleaner, you can use warm water and a mop to clean floors daily. If the wooden floor is dirty, you can use this recipe to clean it. This formula does double duty as it polishes the floor, leaving it with a beautiful natural sheen.
homemade wood floor cleaner that shines
- 1 gallon hot water
- ¾ cup of olive oil
- Half a cup of lemon juice
Mix the ingredients in a bucket. Using a thoroughly wrung mop, apply the solution to your floors. Let it air dry.
Hot water and lemon juice clean the floors, while olive oil polishes them. You don’t need to rinse off the solution when you’re done, as once it dries your floors will look great.
Best Disinfecting Floor Cleaner
For floors that need regular deep cleaning and disinfection, such as scrubbing the bathroom and shower tiles, this great homemade bathroom cleaner does a great job of sanitizing. The recipe uses borax, which you can buy at your local grocery store, laundry aisle, or online.
Disinfecting Bathroom Floor Cleaner Recipe
- 1 gallon hot water
- ¼ of borax
In a mop bucket, mix water and borax and stir well. Dip a mop in the bucket and clean the floors.
Borax is great for cleaning up even the toughest of messes on a variety of surfaces. Add it to your cleaning kit for your granite floors or as a marble tile floor cleaner. Your tiles will shine again.
Homemade Laminate Floor Cleaner
Laminate floors are relatively easy to care for, but from time to time you may need to clean up messes that require a bit more cleaning power.
If you use the wrong type of cleaning product, you could end up damaging your floor finish and then have worse problems to worry about. This homemade laminate floor cleaner will clean hardwood floors without damaging them.
DIY Homemade Laminate Floor Cleaner Recipe
- 2 cups hot water
- 2 cups vinegar
- 5-10 drops of an essential oil of your choice
Mix the ingredients in a mop bucket or spray bottle. Using a clean mop, dip it in the solution and mop the wood floors. No need to rinse the mixture. Let it dry. This recipe can also be used to clean bamboo floors.
You can also clean floors by spraying them with a spray bottle filled with the cleaner and then rubbing them with a mop. You’ll need to rinse the mop in the sink a few times when it gets dirty, but that way you won’t have to get rid of the solution residue.
Homemade floor cleaner is not only great for wood floors, but you can also use it to wash dirty walls. To clean the walls, you can dip a sponge into the solution and use it this way, or use a microfiber mop like Swiffer to reach the walls from top to bottom.
DIY Vinegar Floor Cleaner
The white vinegar you have in your home is extremely versatile and can be used in everything from making pickle pie to adding to salads to dressing or brightening bathroom mirrors. It’s also great for cleaning a variety of floor types.
It’s powerful enough to remove dirt and grime without damaging the exterior, even as a natural tile cleaner. Make it even more effective by adding a little liquid dish soap and baking soda to the mix for extra cleaning power.
Homemade Vinegar Flooring Cleaner Recipe
- Half a cup of warm water
- Half a cup of dishwashing liquid
- 1 2/3 cups of baking soda
- 2 tablespoons distilled white vinegar
Take care of how to clean tile floors the easy way with this recipe. Add ingredients together, stirring until all lumps dissolve. Pour the mixture into a spray bottle. Working in small sections, sprinkle the solution on the floor and then wipe it dry. Make sure to rinse the floor thoroughly with clean water to avoid leaving streaks.
Vinegar mixed with baking soda, water, and dish soap not only cleans floors and makes them shiny, but the mixture can be used for other purposes as well.
Take care of dirty work surfaces, toilet, sink, shower, painted walls, and even remove some stains from the carpet or mattress too! You can’t go wrong with using this kit to clean and disinfect all kinds of areas in your home or office.
Homemade Natural Tile Floor Cleaner
If you have tile floors in your home, you can use some common household ingredients to clean layers of dirt, grime, and dust. The cleaner will help loosen the dirt while gently scrubbing the tiles. The best part is that it won’t leave a soapy residue. Eliminate the need for stronger commercial cleaners by using this cleanser on a weekly basis.
Natural Tile Flooring Cleaner Recipe
- 1 gallon hot water
- ¾ cup of white vinegar
- 1 cup baking soda
- 1 cup ammonia
Fill a bucket with the ingredients, stirring well to dissolve the baking soda. Pour the mixture into a spray bottle. Working on one section at a time, spray the cleaner directly onto the tiles. Mop the floor using a bucket with one cup of vinegar and ten cups of hot water. Leave time to dry.
Cleaning floors with a natural, homemade floor cleaner is a great way to green your home. Using natural ingredients in your pantry and essential oils will give your entire home a clean, fresh scent while removing dirt, bacteria, and germs.
Recipe for Homemade Floor Cleaning Spray
Ingredients
- 16 drops of orange essential oil
- 4 ounces of rubbing alcohol
- 8 ounces of vinegar
- 6 drops of dishwashing liquid without additives
- 32 ounces of water
- 64oz glass spray bottle
- Mop
Instructions
- Mix the ingredients well in the sprayer.
- Generously spray one area of the floor at a time.
- Clean with a damp mop.
- Let it air dry or use a dry mop.
Note
Apple cider and white vinegar also work.
