I'm siting here at my computer taking a break from spring cleaning because my arm hurts. I've been tackling some of my lower kitchen cabinets this morning. It's depressing and I've decided I don't want to talk about the cabinets. I hate scrubbing. I feel there has to be a better way to do just about anything.
I do want to pass on some information about cleaning grout.
I have a first floor half bath with truly funky, dirty grout. Amend that, I
had a first floor half bath with truly funky dirty grout. Every time I cleaned the bathroom I'd try to ignore the grout, or I'd tell myself I'll attack it next time - when I had some free time. Been there, done that, my knees hate crawling around that hard tile floor, but it never looked really clean.
I'd tried all sorts of cleaners and methods I'd found online, but nothing made the grout look really clean, and it just kept getting worse.
I wish to announce that the surest way to clean white or or light gray grout is a steam cleaner and bleach. The second best way (if you don't have a steam cleaner) is baking soda and bleach.
Baking soda and vinegar? Vinegar? They're fine if your grout is only moderately dirty and you enjoy scrubbing.
First I'll pass on the method for bleach and baking soda and how I wound up using it.
----They say to make a paste of the stuff and scrub it on with an old toothbrush, let it sit for 20 minutes, scrub and rinse the area. I found that the paste tended to not stay in the grout, but spread out onto the tile when I brushed it in. I figured if part of the process was to let the paste bleach out the grout you'd want it to stay on the grout lines.
I tried a wetter mixture in one corner. I mixed bleach and baking soda in an old squirt bottle. I carefully squirted the mixture onto a small area and let it set 20 minutes. The grout came out clean. Great, I thought to myself, and filled the squirt bottle with a larger mixture of baking soda and bleach. ----Then I ran into trouble.-----The baking soda and bleach tended to separate. The baking soda would paste up and clogged the nozzle. When I cleared the nozzle the bleach would squirt out.-----No good.
I also discovered that dusting baking soda into the grout and spritzing it with bleach then adding another dusting of baking soda worked ok, but not perfect. I let the mixture sit 20-30 minutes, scrubbed with the toothbrush, let it sit 10 minutes or so and washed the area clean. The grout got clean, though a few places were still dingy and it was a messy process.
Ultimately I discovered the best thing was to make a paste and work it into the grout lines with an square ended flexible artists' palette knife. It was like working in grout only on a smaller scale. All of us here understand about working in a smaller scale, only this time it was just a
slightly smaller scale.
-------I filled in an area of the floor with this mixture, and planned on letting the paste sit for 30 minutes. However, I got busy doing something else, lost track of time and almost 2 hours later I realized ----it was almost 2 hours later.
I scraped the paste off the floor with a putty knife, then rinsed the floor well. After the grout had dried thoroughly (that took a couple of hours) I saw that it looked good as new.
I had one section of floor left to do. It was on the
other side of the toilet. I'd been breathing in so much chlorine over the past several days I just could not stand the idea of any more. This was one reason it took me days to clean the grout. I'd just do a small area at a time so I wouldn't be constantly breathing in the fumes.
I'd used the steam cleaner on grout before, and though it did a good job, it wasn't as good as I'd wished on my ultimate dirty funky grout. I'd be fine just using steam on my bathroom floor, for instance. The grout there isn't very dirty. -----so I went online to find more information - and found someone who added a sentence about using a little bleach together with the steam.
Do NOT --- I repeat --
Do NOT pour any bleach into your steamer.
Now, here's what I did, and I wish I had found this before I got to the
last section of the floor.
I put some bleach mixed with a little water (I used about 3 parts bleach to 1 part water, though half and half might have worked ok too.)
I sprayed the bleach mixture carefully along the grout lines, then I worked the steam slowly over the grout. I placed the nozzle about a half inch above the grout and moved slowly back and forth, steaming just a few inches at a time. I'd do about a half a square foot area at a time, wiping away the excess water. Interestingly, I didn't notice the bleach as much as when I cleaned with the other methods. Maybe the steam scorched away the chlorine? I don't know. I just know it didn't smell overwhelmingly like bleach to me.
End result - the steam cleaned area looked just as good as the baking soda & bleach paste area I had done the day before that had set for 2 hours, and the job was a lot easier.
I had planned on painting my grout with grout paint. I figured I'd never get it to look good again, but I won't need to. I just bought another bottle of grout sealer. (Yes, I had sealed the grout before, but it seems the sealer can wear off over time). I'm going to go over some sections of the floor with the steam cleaner and maybe a few squirts of bleach, because some previous trial sections didn't come out as clean as the rest, then I shall reseal the grout.
Finally, if you have a window in the room, keep it open. All I had was the bathroom ventilator fan, which I ran continuously while working and for an hour or so after I was done. An open window and a running bathroom fan would be even better.
I should head back to the kitchen. I started cleaning my stainless steel stove the other day, and discovered that my husband cleaned the rust dots on the front of the stove with steel wool. He was trying to be helpful, I guess, so I'm keeping quiet about it. I went out yesterday to the hardware store to pick up some stuff that might repair the damage and clean off any remaining funk. I'd found that the steam cleaner did a good job on the stove front too, but you need to wipe the steam off right away.
Baking soda on a tooth brush was good on a couple of little rust spots I found on the stove top that the steamer didn't take care of. I read that some people swore by Bar Keepers Friend for their stainless steel stoves, so I got some. My stove always builds up tiny rusty dots over time. My dishwasher and refrigerator, also stainless steel, never do, though I always find marks from dribbling water on the front of my dishwasher. They're both just a better grade of steel.
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