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When we bought our house in May, updating the floors immediately rose to the top of my home renovation to-do list. It’s somewhere between overhauling our backyard and gutting our master bathroom.
But thanks to our AC going out this July, replacing our current tile and laminate has fallen down the timeline and likely won’t be completed until spring.
That’s the joy of homeownership, right? It’s always something.
I am obsessed with floors — specifically with making sure they are clean.
Here’s a little secret of mine: Floors disgust me, and the thought of moving into a home with floors that someone else had lived on absolutely made my skin crawl. Don’t ask me why. It’s just a thing.
I honest-to-God steam cleaned the carpets in all of the bedrooms twice and steam mopped the rest of the house I don’t know how many times before we even moved in, and they still did not feel clean enough for me.
I had to suck it up, though, because the house was officially ours and ripping up the floors and putting down new ones was not in the budget right away.
Now that we’ve been in the house for two months and the floors have our own germs on them and not so much someone else’s, I’ve relaxed (haha, JK) a little about the situation.
However, since we have pets — two dogs and one cat — maintaining clean floors is naturally part of my daily and weekly routine.
It’s simply a fact of life when you have animals in your home — especially animals that shed as much as our border collie Lucy.
Therefore, learning how to keep the pet hair at bay and floors disinfected is part of being a responsible pet owner. Especially when you’re as fixated on floor care as I am.
Here’s what I do to keep our tile and laminate floors clean with three pets:
Swiffer Sweeper
Swiffering every day is such a simple chore for someone who has multiple pets.
It is part of my routine when I get home from work, while my husband is cooking dinner. I go over every inch of our living room, hallway, and kitchen to collect all of the pet hair tumbleweeds. I make sure to swipe it under the couches and tables, too, because there is always pet hair lurking under there.
It takes me (maybe) five minutes to completely Swiffer the hard floor surfaces in our house, so it really is no inconvenience at all. Plus, it makes me feel much more relaxed after it’s done.
Bissell Pet Hair Eraser Cordless Hand Vacuum
This Bissell hand vac has been a life saver. It was the perfect wedding gift for my obsessive compulsive self. So, if you gifted it to us, a strong round of applause to you.
Typically, every other day I power this bad boy up and run it along the baseboards and in the corners of each room to remove any pet hair that the Swiffer missed. It is also the perfect tool for cleaning up any litter that our cat Brutus might kick out of his box.
Our home has a ton of wainscoting and chair rails — beautiful details that we loved when we first looked at the house. However, keeping cat and dog hair out of those extra nooks and crannies is a pain in the you know what. It’s so easy to use the hand vac to suck up the animal hair that tends to accumulate in those spots.
The Bissell Pet Hair Eraser also comes with an upholstery attachment for vacuuming your couches.
Bissell PowerFresh Lift-Off Pet Steam Mop
My last (and best) secret weapon is the Bissell PowerFresh Lift-Off Pet Steam Mop.
When I bought this thing, my co-workers had a great time poking fun at me for my love of it.
It would be Friday at 4:55 p.m. and someone would ask me what my weekend plans were.
“I’m going to steam mop my floors,” I would reply, excitement beaming in my voice.
They just didn’t understand. It’s my own version of therapy.
I steam mop every weekend to deep clean the floors where the dogs (and my husband) have tracked in germs, mud, and who knows what else from the outside world, as well as sanitize the area around the cat’s litter box.
The mop eliminates 99.9 percent of bacteria using only water, which makes me happy because I can reduce the amount of harmful chemicals used to clean my home.
What I love most about this particular steam mop, though, is the fact that it is incredibly easy to use and it is so versatile. It comes with an arsenal of unique attachments and the hot water reservoir lifts off from the base for portability.
I use the grout brush attachment most often because we have tile floors in our kitchen and bathrooms. It does an amazing job of restoring the grout back to its original color. For example, the spot under the dogs’ water dish was starting to look pretty gross from our messy drinker Lucy. This dog seriously cannot lap water without getting it all over the floor. I was able to quickly blast away the grime with the grout tool.
Because the hot water reservoir lifts off, I also use the unit and the bristle brush and squeegee attachments to steam clean our glass-enclosed shower and our bathtubs.
Truthfully, this steam mop is a great investment, and I highly recommend it. It has made cleaning our floors an easy task to tackle each week.
I hope you enjoyed this glimpse into my cleaning routine. As we continue to settle into our new home, you can expect to see more blog posts about home renovation projects, home decor, and much more!
