Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I have dark hardwood floors. Bona and other similar products do not work well on my floors. These products leave an oily haze and residue that starts showing foot and paw prints within 24 hours of cleaning. The floors look terrible within a matter of days. Please don’t try and tell me I’m not following the instructions or am using too high a concentration of the cleaning fluid. I have performed experiments using 10%, 25%, 50%, 75%, and 100% of the recommended concentrations, and I get the same poor results every time. Frustrated by my experience with these products, I spent the last several months performing experiments with a wide variety of mops and cleaning products to find a cleaning process that actually works on my floors. In terms of the cleaning products, I tried Bona, Bellawood, Bruce, Weiman Hardwood Floor Cleaner, Pine-Sol (various concentrations), ammonia (various concentrations), white vinegar (various concentrations), Windex (various concentrations), and plain water. In terms of the mops, I tried Swiffer Wetjet, Libman Wonder Mop, Quickie Automatic Sponge Mop, Rubbermaid Reveal Spray Mop, Quickie Roller Mop, cotton string mop, bath towels, paper towels, and microfiber cloths. As a result of this research, I developed a cleaning process that works to my satisfaction, and that works better than all of the other products and processes I have tried. For your benefit, I have described the optimum process and products below. To begin, here’s what you need to know: As best I can determine the haze/residue on my floors is caused by two problems. The first problem is that all of the hardwood floor cleaning products contain ingredients that get left behind on my floors. These ingredients combine with the pre-existing dirt to create a film that appears as a haze. If the haze is oily, as it often is with most of these products, the haze shows foot and paw prints when people and animals press down upon it. The second problem is that the mops don’t actually pick up the dirt. They mostly just smear it around, especially once their microfiber pads become dirty, which they do very quickly. As a result, my floors develop a haze that is a combination of cleaning product residue and pre-existing dirt, smeared into a thin layer by largely ineffective mops. I have found that the only way to eliminate the haze/residue on my floors, and actually get the floors clean, is to lift that smeared layer of dirt/cleaning product residue up off the floor. Here’s how you do it: Here’s what you’ll need (I’ve included photos below so that you can better identify the products): - Weiman Hardwood Floor Cleaner. This product is by far the best of the ones I tried. It gets the floors clean without damaging them, and leaves a lot less residue than most of the products. It even leaves less residue than a dilute solution of white vinegar and water. When it dries, the finish is clean and hard, not thick and oily like those of Bona and Bellawood. As a result, it shows foot and paw prints much less easily than its competitors. http://www.amazon.com/Hardwood-Floor-Cleaner-fl-oz/dp/B007BOEE8W/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1427384093&sr=8-1&keywords=weiman+hardwood+floor+cleaner - An automatic sponge mop with a regular rectangular sponge. I like this one by Quickie because it’s very sturdy. http://www.amazon.com/Quickie%C2%AE-Professional%C2%AE-Automatic%C2%AE-Sponge-Mop/dp/B0002T7NEK/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1427379648&sr=8-3&keywords=quickie+sponge+mop. - A package of 12-24 microfiber clothes. I like the blue ones by Quickie. http://www.amazon.com/Quickie%C2%AE-Original%C2%AE-Microfiber-Towel-24-Pack/dp/B005BGCI8K/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1427381163&sr=8-5&keywords=microfiber+cloths Here’s what you do to clean the floors: 1. Clean the floors with a vacuum or dust mop to remove any large debris, as you normally would do before wet-mopping them. 2. Spray the floors with a light mist of Weiman Hardwood Floor Cleaner (as per the instructions on the bottle). 3. Dampen one of the microfiber cloths. I take 12 of the cloths and place them in a mixing bowl full of water. Once they are soaked through, I choose one of them and squeeze most of the water out over the sink. I leave the cloth fairly damp, but not dripping, so that it will slide easily over the floors. 4. Place the wet cloth flat on the floor I intend to clean. 5. Place the automatic sponge mop (with a dry sponge) on the top half of the cloth as shown in the photo below. Unfortunately, you can’t use a spray mop, such as a Bona or Swiffer, for this process. If you try it, you’ll find that the microfiber cloth will wrinkle and bind to the floors, making it impossible to mop them. A dry, rectangular sponge mop is the only kind that will work. 6. Mop a section of the floor by pressing the sponge mop down upon the damp cloth. I usually do an area that is about 10’x10’. When you are done, pick up the cloth and look at the bottom of it. You will see a brownish/yellow rectangle as in the photo below. That brownish/yellow material is the dirt/cleaning product residue that is causing the haze on your floors. Your goal, quite simply, is to transfer as much of that yellow/brown material from your floor to the microfiber cloths as you can. The more you transfer, the cleaner your floors will be, and the less haze, oily residue, and footprints you’ll see. 7. Move the mop to the other half of the cloth and clean another 10’x10’ section. When you are done, you will see two yellow/brown rectangles on the cloth as in the photo below. You can then flip the cloth over and do two more sections of floor, placing two yellow-brown rectangles on that side of the cloth as well. When you are done, the cloth will have four yellow/brown rectangles on it (two on each side). At that point, that cloth is done (it’s holding all the dirt it can), so get another cloth and keep mopping additional sections of the floor in the same manner, putting up to four dirt rectangles on each cloth. 8. Let the floor dry for 10 minutes. 9. I have found that a single pass will get up about 75% of the residue. So, if your floors have a lot of build up on them before you do this process the first time, and you want to get them crystal clean, you may need to repeat this process 3-4 times to transfer all of the yellow/brown material from the floors to the cloths. Once you get them clean for the first time, however, a single pass should be sufficient for future cleanings and ongoing maintenance. 10. When the floors are satisfactorily clean, throw the microfiber cloths in the washing machine so you can use them the next time. 11. You’re done! This process is somewhat labor-intensive, but it works extremely well. To make things a bit easier, I use the process once a month even though I clean my floors every two weeks (i.e., I use the process every other time I clean the floors). When I don’t use this process, I spray the floors with Weiman and then go over them with a spray mop filled with plain water. I like the Rubbermaid Reveal Spray Mop because it’s very sturdy and the fluid bottle is very easy to detach, fill, and replace. http://www.amazon.com/Rubbermaid-2856049-Reveal-Spray-Mop/dp/B003YHF4AC/ref=sr_1_13?ie=UTF8&qid=1427380516&sr=8-13&keywords=mop. By alternating this lighter cleaning process with the more intensive cleaning process described above, I find my floors stay very clean with a reasonable and acceptable amount of labor. If you have been as frustrated with your floors and these supposedly-great cleaning products as I have been, I hope you will find that the process described alleviates your suffering. Good luck, and happy mopping!