HARDWOOD FLOOR CARE & CLEANING
After every Chicago winter, your wood floor probably suffered from sand, salt and other debris that threatened to dull its finish. Protecting the beauty of your floor is really a two-step process – protection and maintenance.
Protecting Your Hardwood Floor
Protection refers to taking steps to ensure that furniture, heavy foot traffic and other objects that touch the floor do as little damage as possible. For example, if you have a chair that you move from time-to-time to clean or accommodate guests, then it is important to put felt floor protector pads on the feet of the chair to avoid scratches.
Similarly, most office chairs come with a choice of two different types of casters – hard and soft. Choose the casters with rubber wheels that will do the least damage.
What other preventative steps can you take to protect your floor? There are many things we can suggest, but most of them involve putting down a protective cover that while saving the wood, also interrupt the beauty of your flooring. (Do you remember your grandmother’s plastic slipcovers on her couch? It was a great way to keep the couch clean, but the squeaky plastic didn’t do much for the appearance of the room.)
- Put an area rug down in heavily trafficked areas including the front door, back door and perhaps underneath the table in the family room.
- Purchase a plastic floor protector for use under an office chair
- Use an easy-to-remove rubber mat in front of the sink, stove or fridge when cooking
- Close your blinds when not at home to protect the floor coating from UV rays
And if you are a dog lover, like many here at Mr. Floor, you’ll need to keep the nails trimmed and limit ball-playing to the backyard. If pets can scratch glass with their paws, your wood floor doesn’t stand a chance!
That being said, many of my clients just don’t want to cover their beautiful wood flooring, so the next step is to properly and consistently maintain the floor.
Maintaining Your Hardwood Floor
To maintain the beauty of your floor, no matter how heavily trafficked, the keys are to wipe up spills quickly, keep it free from dirt and grit, and clean it with products that won’t harm the finish.
- Don’t use any abrasive tool or cleaner to take care of a spill. Use a soft cloth or paper towel.
- Vacuum using the appropriate attachment for a wood floor. Don’t use the motorized carpet head with the beater-bar
- Dust as often as you can with a microfiber mop that catches and holds on to dirt. (We’re proud of our mop which you can find here.)
- Use only a cleaner specifically designed for a wood floor. Do not use ammonia, Pine-Sol, dish soap or Murphy’s.
- Do not allow water to pool or stand on the floor.
When it comes to wood floor cleaners, we do have an obvious preference for our specially formulated product. If you’ve purchased a floor from us, you undoubtedly received a free bottle and know first hand that it cleans beautifully and safely.
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