It's come to this

Well folks, when you begin blogging on you adventures in cleaning, your life is officially...well...uneventful. And that is what it has come to.

Actually, I could tell you about our fun trip to St. Charles this weekend, but I didn't take photos and it just isn't worthwhile to tell you about a place without photos.

What I did photograph, was my cleaning escapades. Strange.

I am not one of those people who enjoys cleaning, nor do I feel like I am very good at it. I never have and a I have high hopes of hiring a person in the future to help me in this area, because although I don't enjoy cleaning, I do LOVE having a clean house. If I could pay someone to do it for me and concentrate my efforts on areas that I do enjoy, while having a clean house in the process, that would be a dream come true.

Living with a dog makes your house dirtier. It is just a fact. But I love my dog enough that I deal with the drool marks, the endless fur on the floor, and the fact that he thinks licking the entire kitchen floor keeps it clean when in actuality, it just makes it dirtier.

For weeks months, I have wanted to clean the grout in our kitchen floor. I could tell it was dirty and it was just getting dirtier. Yesterday I reached my limit and decided that it was going to be cleaned, especially since it was a nice day and the dog could spend time outside while I did it.

Side note - don't you love it when you find something on Pinterest that you actually use and love or use and it works?

I needed something strong to clean our grout because it was black and super dirty. I am against any cleaning product that requires I step outside to breath in between scrubs. A few weeks ago, I had tried Mrs. Meyers version of comet and it didn't do much. So this time, I found a recipe for a cleaning solution using baking soda, vinegar, lemon juice and water. One person said to put it in a spray bottle, the other person said to put it in a bucket. A spray bottle sounded easier, so that was my plan. I also bought a heavy duty scrub brush with the stiffest bristles I could find and a grout cleaning sponge.

The science person inside of me loved mixing the ingredients together because it caused a great reaction with bubbles and fizz. Of course my mind started to try and put together the chemical equation and failed. It's been about 10 years since I've taken an inorganic chemistry class people. At least I remember the formula for baking soda.

The spray bottle was a bad idea. It didn't work, probably because the baking soda didn't dissolve into the liquid and clogger the sprayer. So, I just poured the solution onto the tile and let it sit for about 1 minute before scrubbing. The dirt came out immediately and I would wipe it up right away so that it didn't soak back into the grout.

This was some of the grout before:

And this was the same grout after one scrub:

I was pretty happy with the ease of the results. I had expected a long day of cleaning since our kitchen floor is large, but this was a relatively easy process. 

You can definitely see the difference that the cleaning was doing to the floor. I don't know that we had ever seen the grout as white as it became.

The one downside was that, even with wiping up the excess liquid and dirt after each section, a film stayed on the floor. I did a quick wet swiffer run over the floor, but that didn't help. I should have gone ahead and re-washed the floor with my normal floor cleaner, but by that time I had lost interest in the project and I will do it another night. Plus, Ransom probably enjoys the taste of lemon juice and vinegar and I know it won't hurt him.

Overall, I am very happy to have an easy cleaning solution for my grout. Unfortunately, as with all cleaning jobs, this won't last for very long. I can only hope that I will stay on top of it before it gets as bad as it was.

Hubs noticed the clean floor, which made my day. And that, was my adventure in house cleaning!