Why I'm not a cleaning lady

I don't have much experience with tile floors.  Growing up we had carpet in all the bedrooms and living areas and linoleum in the bathrooms; one cleaned with a vacuum cleaner and the other with a wet mop.  Moving into this house I just carried on with my experience and used a mop on the tile floors that covered our bathroom floors.  As long as the floor was swept and shiny I was good.  When I tiled my kitchen and dining area a year ago I just continued the mopping routine, content with the shine.

One day while sitting in my bathroom I noticed the dark color of the grout between the tile.  I goggled tile floors and discovered that one should be cleaning the grout.  Who knew?  I went into my kitchen and stared at the dark color of my new grout.  Was that the original color?  I couldn't remember.  I moved around the room and noticed that in areas that didn't get much traffic the grout was a lighter color.  Hmmm...I put that in the back burner of my mind until a couple of weeks later I noticed, while wandering around my dining room, that the grout color fell into the lighter shade category.  Houston, we have a problem.

I goggled cleaning grout and read about several methods.  The ingredient that kept popping up was something called oxygen bleach.  Sprinkle it on the grout, scrub a dub with minimal muscle power, and mop.  Maintaining it could be easily done by mixing the oxygen bleach into water and using it when mopping the floor.  Sounded good, but I didn't have, let alone know, of oxygen bleach.  I tried the next suggestion which was the use of vinegar, something I've used to polish my floors since my cleaning lady (had one during both pregnancies) showed me this trick.  I got a toothbrush and some vinegar and scrubbed away.  Not much difference.

I tried the next suggestion which was applying a paste of baking soda and water.  I sat on the floor and patted the paste in between each tile.  It took forever, but after waiting 15 minutes and then rinsing the tile grout was lighter.  Unfortunately, this was very time consuming.  I could paste pat one tile in about 3 minutes and then I would have to mix up another batch of paste for the next tile.  All the getting up and down was a killer on the back, and then I had to scrub it before leaving it.  And the rinsing?  Pain in the ass.  The paste left a gritty residue that I had to rinse and rinse, which would have been easy if I had a drain in my kitchen where I could hose down the floor.  I thought I should try something different...and buy a mop.

I discussed the grout situation with a friend who also put in tile the same time that I did.  She was a previous tile owner and she suggested Oxi-clean as the solution to oxygen bleach.  After all, she surmised isn't that the same thing?  She had used the kind in the spray bottle and found it worked quite well.  I bought the bottle and sprayed several tiles.  I scrubbed and let the solution sit on the grout for about 15 minutes.  Then, using my new mop, I rinsed.  And rinsed.  And rinsed.  As I moved around the kitchen floor rinsing, the dog began attacking the mop and barking.  He ran after the mop, but the floor was so soapy and slippery with Oxi-clean solution and water that he slid across the floor and banged into the cabinets.  Then he jumped up as if the mop had attacked him and slid across the floor in the other direction.  I started after him to hustle him out of the kitchen and ended up flat on my butt as I too slipped in the soapy mess.  Again I could have used that drain in the kitchen.  By the time I got all of the Oxi-clean rinsed and dried off the floor I had spent over an hour on a fourth of the kitchen tile.

I went back to the Internet and tried to find another solution.  I goggled oxi-clean and found that it works on almost everything in the home including mildew, blood, mold, wine, juice, and baby formula.  You can clean jewelry, ice chests, wedding dresses and tennis shoes using oxi-clean.  Also...grout.  I should buy the granular Oxi-clean and make it into a paste and apply it to the grout and let it sit one hour or overnight and then rinse.

So far I have discovered that the answer to cleaning grout is forming a paste of some type of bicarbonate and letting it work magic while I watch television.  I have purchased the granular Oxi-clean and have mixed it with water and mopped my kitchen floor to find it just leaves the same soapy film that the spray bottle stuff did.  I suppose some day when I'm seriously bored I will attempt the paste mixture.  Or not.  Lately I seem to be drawn to the carpeting section of all home stores...