What Does Clean Smell Like?

My husband came home with a gift for me the other day. Nope, not flowers. Not chocolate. No gift certificate for a massage. It was a…..steam mop! I’m woman enough to know that this is not a comment on my cleaning abilities, but a man who knows how to get me excited. I’d heard of steam mops. But in the interest of keeping my cleaning closet uncluttered (and staying stuck in my own rut, thank you very much), I hadn’t gone in for one. Now before you think my hubby is all that and a stick of gum, here’s the real reason he brought it home. It was free. A coworker is developing the product for their company and wants some feedback. I’m good with feedback. We all know that.

So I put the steam vac through its paces, but not before noting (and maybe whining a little) that it isn’t cordless. In my opinion a newly developed steam mop really oughta be cordless. Heck, it’s not like other companies haven’t already made these babies. But taking my task as a product tester seriously, I assembled it. Without the directions. I figured no sense in acting out of character. Normal people don’t read directions, at least not for a mop, do they? It snapped together nicely and only took a few head scratches to figure out. That’s a plus. I filled it with water to the big giant “fill to here” line and set to work.

The first room I tackled was the kids bathroom. Ew. Figured I should start with the room that needed sanitized the most. Other than wishing it was a vacuum too, I was very happy. To a point. When I was finished, the bathroom looked pretty clean and the mop head looked pretty filthy. But the room didn’t smell clean. It didn’t smell like anything. Tiny disappointment here. The steam mop is great at being green – no chemicals, no phosphate laden detergent, no fumes. But I’d be lying if I didn’t say I missed that fragrance of vinegar or Murphy soap or lemons that tells me the room is clean. I wondered how clean it really was. No way of knowing. It looks clean. But does clean have a smell?

Which led me to put down the steam mop where it lay (actually on the handy little pad that came with it for parking it) and head for the computer. I looked up what gives cleaners that lovely clean smell and discovered something not so lovely. The smell comes from fragrances in the cleaner. And the word “fragrance” on any label could mean anything. In fact, manufacturers don’t even have to tell you anything beyond “fragrance”. The fragrance could be made from all kinds of chemicals and apparently the powers that be are not worried about how those chemicals might affect us. They could be natural chemicals or petrochemicals or synthetic chemicals. Really, they could be anything. So now I’m wondering if the smell of clean isn’t actually – nothing. No smell. If you want more information, check out the blog, econovice. There you’ll find more specifics on what exactly could be in the “fragrance” found on cleaning products, deodorants, air fresheners, and detergents and how they can affect your health.

So I’m all about appreciating my steam mop and have used it on tile, vinyl, and wood, all with wonderful fragrance-free results. Great idea for green cleaning. Glad I thought of it.

I guess he was on a roll, because my husband soon appeared with another eco-friendly, fragrance-free cleaning tool - a squeegee. When he first came home with the giant green window washer thingee just like the one the kids fight over at the gas station, I was skeptical. Really? Wipe down the shower every time? At first I skipped my share of turns, figuring he was already out of the house and he’d never know I didn’t squeegee today. But then curiosity got the best of me and I had to try it out in earnest. You know what? It’s great. Wiping down the walls of the shower, all the way down to the caulk, leaves them clean and only takes a moment. It’s kind of a thrill to be cleaning in the nude. Plus there’s no scrubbing, no smelly cleaners, nothing. The caulk even lost that pink sheen it had been developing.

I’m sure Nick is going to need to go split some wood or watch some football or find some other manly task to take on as soon as he reads this. But for a guy who dodges the cleaning bullet whenever possible and teases me about my green efforts, he sure did score big this week.

Tea For Your Floor?

(picture above taken before tea time, picture below taken after tea, sorry no professional photographer was available for the shoot, but at least I kept the puppy out of it!)

I made tea for my kitchen floor today. Really I did. I was inspired by a little organic cleaning tidbit I read about early on in my quest to clean organically. When I overheard it again at the library the other day, I knew I just had to know if it was true. Here’s your organic cleaning tip for the day: Tea cleans wood floors. Today I tested that idea out. I’m sure this post will be one of my husband’s favorites because it necessitated that I actually spend a morning focused on housework. My mom will like it to because when I was vacuuming the floor, I found the pearl she lost from her ring the last time she visited. At first I thought it was the molar my oldest son lost, left in the center of the kitchen table (yuck), and which mysteriously disappeared never to be swapped with the tooth fairy for the traditional gold dollar. (At least gold dollars are the tradition in our house, what is up with these tooth fairies that leave $5 bills? C’mon people – I mean fairies – you make it awfully hard on the rest of us!) The molar still hasn’t turned up. I don’t even want to imagine where it might be. I had my son write an I Owe You to the Tooth Fairy so we could stop worrying about it.

The scrap of paper I was using as my directions simply stated, “2 Tea bags, clean wood floor.” At the time I wrote that cryptic note, I’m sure I understood the concept completely. However, when I pulled out my note to get started, I had a lot of questions. Should I brew the tea first? What kind of tea? Does it need to steep? Just how much floor can 2 tea bags clean? How much water should I add? So many questions, but I was pressed for time so I decided to make it up as I went along. Guess what? It worked. My floor looks great, at least until 3:15 when the first child will enter, dump his filthy backpack, kick off his snow/salt covered sneakers and spill his snack all over it.

I chose Earl Gray Decaffeinated for the simple reason that the box was destined to sit in our cupboard for the next 10 years. I bought it a few weeks ago for my hubby who likes Earl Gray. I figured he could do without caffeine (it being a drug and all). He figured there’s no point to drinking Earl Gray without caffeine. And even though I’m a bit of tea nut, I don’t like Earl Gray. So we’d come to an impasse and the box sat on the counter for a few days before it was crammed in to the back of the cabinet not to be heard from again until somebody comes around collecting food for the needy. It was kind of great to have a purpose for the Earl Gray and I was relieved not to have to sacrifice good tea to my floor experiment.

My cryptic note didn’t specify whether to brew the tea or not, so I compromised. I heated water to almost boiling while considering whether boiling water would melt my mop bucket. I erred on the side of caution and poured it in before it whistled. I used five tea bags even though the “directions” said two because I figured whoever came up with the original plan had never seen a floor as filthy as mine. There didn’t seem to be enough water in the bucket, so I added more hot tap water until I had about 1 ½ gallons of hot water to five tea bags. This felt like the right mixture.

I used two buckets – one for tea and one for clean water to rinse the dirty mop. In only a few swipes both buckets were about the same color (note picture below) and I had to change my clean water bucket four or five times throughout the process. I think the tea did as good a job or better than anything else I’ve used to clean that floor. One area it seemed to excel in was removing scuff marks, so that’s impressive. And it smelled nice, much better than most floor cleaners, although I’m still partial to the scent of Murphy Soap because it reminds me of cleaning tack the night before horseshows when I was a kid.

I don’t know if cleaning with tea is any cheaper than vinegar, I’d guess maybe not, but it depends on your source for tea. Just about everyone has a few stale tea bags lurking around in need of a purpose. I’m all about re-purposing.

As I was mopping the floor, I noticed an especially dirty wall and I took my tea to the wall too. It worked just fine. Made me wonder what else I could clean with tea, but only for a moment. (Sorry, Honey.)