Water in the bathroom, spills in the kitchen, and mud in the hallways; every corner of your home has a different culprit for dirty grout. As grout is light-colored and porous, it gets dirty way faster than tile. Luckily, tile and grout cleaning Dallas, TX is easy if you follow a schedule.
Making the home safe for the family is something we all should practice, and to achieve this, cleanliness is key. When your floor is dirty and full of stains, the superficial décor won’t look good, no matter how much money you spend on style.
To save money and time, think about cleaning the tiles yourself. No worries if your home is big; you can do different rooms on alternate days and protect your shiny floor from becoming bland. If you understand the basics of tile and grout cleaning, you won’t need to spend extra time or hire help for it. Instead, this will be as easy as dusting the furniture.
If your floor tiles and grout have recently started fading, you can preserve their original form with minimal effort. Using a few simple tools and a bit of elbow grease will help you make your tiles and grout shiny. But before we proceed to the DIY tile and grout cleaning procedure, here’re a few rules that you must follow:
- Wear gloves
Floor cleaners have potent chemicals in them, which can irritate your skin. Wear gloves to protect your skin from coming in contact with a dirty floor and harmful chemicals.
- Wear a mask to avoid breathing problem
When you rub the tiles and pour cleaners on them, it creates a foul smell. Also, if you have any breathing problems, make sure to avoid these strong cleaners. And since there are bacteria and spores stuck in the grout, they can reach your mouth and cause breathing problems. So, it’s better to be safe than sorry.
- Wash your hands thoroughly
Once the tiles and grout are cleaned, wash your hands thoroughly so that no contaminant/allergen remains on them. Use a sanitizer if possible as you never know what kind of bacteria grows between the tiles of a heavily used bathroom/kitchen.
Now, let’s start the cleaning process so that you can make your home fresh and presentable:
- Collect the tools
For DIY tiles and grout cleaning you’ll need:
- Hard-bristled brush
- Baking soda
- Hydrogen peroxide (only required for heavily stained tiles)
- Warm water
- Vinegar
- Bleach
- Rubbing alcohol
- Start agitating
Tiles and grout are full of greasy pollutants that don’t come of quickly. To completely uproot them, mix warm water with white vinegar and spray that mixture on the tiles and grout. Leaving this for 5 minutes will loosen the contaminants so that you don’t have to put excessive effort while scrubbing.
- Time to scrub
Add some more warm water to the surface and start scrubbing it with a hard-bristled brush. You can find thinner brushes for grout lines or use the standard cleaning brush with some extra pressure. This process will take quite some time as you’ll be cleaning in patches. Don’t give up midway; otherwise, the vinegar will absorb in the deeper layers of the grout.
However, if only vinegar and water don’t work on your floor, mix vinegar with baking soda. Make a paste of these two ingredients and apply it to the floor with a toothbrush. Scrub the grout with that same brush. This process will generate some bubbles, so don’t worry if there is foam on the floor. As an alternative, you can apply a paste of baking soda and water and spray vinegar on it. These ingredients will work both ways.
- Use hydrogen peroxide for stains
Bathroom and kitchen tiles often have stains on them which don’t go away with vinegar/soda rubbing. To remove those sticky stains, buy hydrogen peroxide from any drug store and pour it directly on the stains after you have sprayed vinegar. Leave the solution there for 5-10 minutes. Ten minutes are sufficient for most oily areas.
This solution contains chemicals, and you must protect your skin from it while working on the floor.
- Wash the floor
Once you see that all tiles and grout lines are equally shiny, wash the floor with a generous amount of water and wipe it away. If the wiper doesn’t dry your tiles entirely, use a cotton cloth to do the job, but make sure no moisture/cleaner is left in the grout.
- Retain the shine
Rubbing alcohol is the best ingredient to make the floor tiles shiny. Once your floor is dried, use cotton swabs to rub alcohol on it and leave it for a while.
Your tiles and grout will be super-clean and stain-free after this procedure. Spend one day working on your dirty floor and enjoy fresh tiles for a whole month. This DIY method will save your hard-earned cash, which you might have had to spend to buy cleaners and refill the grout.
Summary
Once you learn the art of keeping your floor tiles shiny and clean, there is no going back. Your home will never need machine cleaning or insanely expensive chemicals, as these simple ingredients will make your grout fresh.
Also, repeating all the steps mentioned above isn’t mandatory every time. Just remove the sticky stains and pollutants once and keep spraying vinegar occasionally to retain that shine. Spraying vinegar and wiping it with cotton swabs is the easiest way for tiles and grout cleaning.
Your rooms, kitchen, and bathroom deserve to look like new, regardless of the what activities you do on them. If you adopt this routine of DIY cleaning, your home will never look dull and dirty.
Moreover, if you just got new flooring, this is the best practice to maintain its beauty. Start doing this now, and it’ll look beautiful for the years to come.
