Cleaning Wood Floors – Prevention and Your Shiny Floors
Shiny wood floors… the dream of every homeowner. Nevertheless, it’s impossible to achieve such floors without knowing certain things and having the necessary experience. Besides the huge lists of products that is available on the hardwood cleaning market today, a proper care is required from the homeowner who really wants to maintain his floors in a perfect and shiny state. Most know, others don’t, but prevention is still the very first thing to start with when considering options to increase the longevity of your hard floors. It has to be clear that the necessary steps and efforts which you are going to be required to perform when trying to clean your floors are going to be minimum when you learn how to preserve and maintain your flooring in the first place. I am not talking about any kind of magic or special rituals that you have to do about your flooring. Just pure science and home improvement actions that will help.
Preventing your pets from scratching the floors
Scratches are common problems that most homeowners which have floors in their house often stumble upon. However, while these marks can appear due to many various reasons like dirt particles, the nails of your pets which are running around are also a reason to stay alerted. I see many sources all around the web telling you to trim and brutally cut the nails of your dog or cat. However, this merciless measure of keeping your floors safe is going to destroy your pet. Stop doing it or you are going to get in big trouble from the very beginning. As an alternative, I recommend using rugs in high traffic areas and the living room.
Leave your footwear at the entrance
While it is a common western way of being to enter a house without taking your boots or any other type of footwear off, it is often the main reason why so many dirt and dust gets in your house and mainly on your floors. That’s why obtaining and maintaining shiny floors requires a constant sweeping of this dust. However, if we already talk about prevention as an important measure to stay out of trouble, why not try and ask your family members to do the footwear exchange at the entrance and leave the shoes near the door. I guarantee that you are going to feel the awesome effects of this procedure in the long run and that you’ll be able to avoid many of the potential scratches. Moving furniture from one place to another in your house is also a reason for the appearance of marks which are very hard to get rid of. Make sure you use special clothing under it when doing the move, because otherwise… say goodbye to shiny floors Mr. Joe.
Spilling liquids on your floor
Accidentally spilling liquids like the drinks you have on a daily basis (coffee, water, tea, sodas, etc) can contribute to the appearance of various stains on your wood floors. Cleaning them is going to be extremely hard especially if you have eyesight problems and didn’t manage to get rid of the stain immediately when you spilled the coffee for example. In this particular case I recommend to avoid eating in your bedroom and to do all the cooking strictly in your kitchen. This way additional damage to your floor can be avoided.
Proper vacuum usage
When trying to get rid of dirt, dust or any other easy to recover stains on your floors you can use the almighty vacuum cleaner. However, this might be quite a problem if not installing a proper brush at one end because certain invisible scratches can appear which become visible after a while. Make sure that you don’t exaggerate its usage and that you do your cleaning only in situations when mopping and simple cleaning won’t work. I recommend staying away from most of the vacuum cleaners if you don’t know all the prevention methods. In order to safely contribute to the cleaning of your wooden floors you have to make sure that you know how to prevent their damage in the first place. Every day care of wooden floors is extremely important and is one of the most important aspects of increasing their life expectancy.
When dealing with all types of cleaning, you want to be able to attentively optimize the time necessary to do it. In such a case, you should concentrate more on prevention, because believe it or not, it is king!