Monday, August 03, 2009

Already with the questions

So! The living room in the new house has a hardwood floor. Whenever somebody talks about hardwood floors, I always wonder, as opposed to what? Soft wood? Like, balsa or something?

But anyway, how do you clean a hardwood floor? Mr. Clean? Seriously, I have no idea.

Also, the floor in the kitchen is what the seller described as "pergo". Got me. Looks like some kind of fake wood. Any cleaning ideas for "pergo"?

In other exciting (to me) house news, I bought a new (to me) couch over the weekend! I was bound and determined not to move the ratty old vintage-1974 couch from the old place, so when I saw a good used couch for a hundred and fifty bucks this weekend, I grabbed it. Now I've just gotta rope the guys from the office into moving it for me ...... I was going to bribe them with donuts, but with this crew, I actually think beer will work quite a bit better.

Okay! Floors! How to clean! Any ideas?

4 comments:

inflammatory writ said...

For hardwood floors, buy Murphy's Oil Soap! That stuff is the best. You mix with water (I usually just dump a bunch in the sink with hot hot water) and mop. I do that usually every other week. The rest of the time you just sweep. I find floors much easier to deal with than carpet.

Unknown said...

Yep. I've got hardwood floors throughout and Murphy's Oil Soap is simple, easy, and does the trick. Just don't saturate the floors or you might lift the varnish. Sweep or dust mop as needed (with cats, a lot).

For Pergo, make your own cleaning cocktail. 1/3 c water, 1/3 c rubbing alcohol, 1/3 cu vinegar and a few drops of dishwashing detergents for some surfactant/suds. Put it in a spray bottle and spritz on -- this stuff works on windows, shower doors, chrome, pretty much the standard stuff on everything around the house. If you want it to smell good, drop a few drops of lavender or lemon essential oil in it and you're set to jet.

rockygrace said...

Thanks for the advice! I remember cleaning the floors of the church's parsonage* with Murphy's Oil Soap as a teenager. I wonder if it's still the same formula?


*Believe it or not, I wasn't always a Godless heathen.

the queen said...

Murphy's Oil is kind enough to create a "Squirt and Mop" formulation, for the truly lazy like me. No rinsing, no mixing.