My life as a professional house cleaner began at eight years old. Initially an unpaid internship under my mom’s tutelage, such experience that gave me a priceless onboarding into the intricacies of keeping a clean home. Beginning with the oft-repeated adage, “Look for dirt!”, I was gradually introduced to proper cloth-wringing technique, water temperature, ingredients and proportions, satisfactory bucket attributes, and the sometimes-arbitrary time/project ratio. A floor should not take “all day” to clean, but it should take long enough to show you did, indeed, “look for dirt.”
To this day, through countless iterations of stick mop, Swiffer, and spin mop, I have yet to find a substitute for hands-and-knees mopping by hand. A circular spin mop simply cannot get in corners. A rectangular Euro-style method still lacks precision. And don’t even talk to me about sliding a mop of giant cloth fettucine noodles around your floor and calling it clean. All you did is liquify the dirt and shove it along your baseboard. And in bathrooms? You’d better hope the mop head is grippy enough to keep the hair out of the grout.
No, sadly, there is no substitute for tackling your accumulated dirt head-on. Do it often – once a week was the rhythm growing up. Here’s how.
- Nice sturdy bucket. Not the thin horrible ones that bend and tip over.
- HOT water. It will dry faster, cut through dried ick, and as your cloth cools you have a sense of when to rinse.
- Rags. Cloths. Whatever you call them, everyone finds their preference. My mom likes those diabolical microfiber cloths. I like cotton terry washcloths. Some people like those diaper rags that are thicker in the middle, but I don’t like how hard they are to wring and the different thicknesses make it difficult for me.
- White vinegar. 1/4 cup per 2 gallons or so. It’s a ‘big splooch’.
- Dawn dish soap. 3/4 teaspoon or so. Add LAST, do not add water on top or you’ll have a bubble bath!
- Optional: thick yellow gloves. I used to forego them, but now I like my nails to stay strong. I also was told I had “worker’s hands” by a nice lady giving me a spray tan and I got self conscious that I should take better care of my hands. They work very hard, treat them well and protect them when you can!
- Optional: Thieves household cleaner. 1 teaspoon – if you like the smell, it’s nice and adds antimicrobial properties. Not sure the best quantity from a scientific standpoint to achieve that. Don’t use it if you have pets, especially cats, that live where you’re mopping.
Vaccum your floor thoroughly. Do a good job, you’re about to be crawling around on it! Get under and behind furniture. Vacuum rugs and roll them up.
If you’re like me and you get unspeakably hot when cleaning, do yourself a favor and wear something that won’t get in your way and pull your hair back. I did this in a bathrobe once while my hair was down drying in its curl cast and it was a lesson in self-aggravation.
Start in the cleanest corner. You don’t want to start where it’s dirtiest and then clean the rest of your floor with dirty water. Work backwards. Don’t mop yourself into a corner!
Heard of ‘elbow grease’? Use it! Push into the floor as you mop. Don’t just slosh the cloth along. There’s also an art to wringing the cloth so it’s not too dry (you want it to last more than two swipes) but not slopping puddles on the floor. Scoop debris into the cloth and turn it over for one more pass, then rinse and wring.
There it is: “LOOK FOR DIRT!” Since you’re down there anyway, wipe the top of the baseboard trim. Look at your doors; do the panels have lines of dust? Once you make it to the kitchen or mudroom or wherever you have cupboards, look at the doors- wipe them down if necessary.
As you clean, consider how doing this job is a fabulous metaphor for regular confession and repentance in the life of a Christian. If you do it often, mopping the floor will still be a chore, but it is nowhere near as difficult as when it’s been left for weeks… or months… or years. The thing about sin, when unconfessed and unrepented-of, is that just like dirt underfoot, it eventually becomes too noticeable to ignore. It never stays in the mudroom. It’s tracked all through the house. And the only way to take care of it is to be willing to run the vacuum, pour the hot water, put on the gloves and get your face in the dirt.
There’s nothing like the reward of a clean house.