And another cleaning post

Listen people, this is my life. I am a SAHM and that includes taking care of the house too. Yes, I'm aware that working parents take care of the cleaning, etc. too, but I this is what I do for a living, and so I'm damn well going to blog about it because what else do I have to say?

I wanted tile floors. Let me just be a woman and man up to that statement. I asked for these floors. Little did I know that they would be the bane of my housecleaning. If truth be told, I hate these tile floors in my kitchen. I love them in my dining room, but the kitchen? In the kitchen they make me crazy. My husband was right. Yes, I've said it. He was right. He was all for the tile floor in the dining room/library, but not so much in the kitchen. It isn't that it isn't nice because it is. I chose a pretty color and a funky swirly tile that will not match any counter top in my lifetime that makes me happy. It is the dirty grout that is killing me.

I never knew that grout got dirty. It seems a stupid thing to say out loud, but I didn't have tile growing up. My mother carpeted our kitchen for heaven's sake. When we moved in this house we put down parquet flooring to match the living area. That required a swish and a swipe of a broom and a wet mop. I did the same to the tile in my bathrooms and never thought a thing about the dark grout look that both bathrooms have and which I now know most likely harbors a deadly, flesh eating bacteria that will one day end me. I didn't figure that out until I began researching how to clean grout when I noticed that my sandy colored grout was not sandy anymore. Bottom line is that grout gets dirty as spills and life happen and it should be cleaned more than just a swipe of a broom or mop in high traffic areas. Like a kitchen. Or a bathroom.

So far I haven't even begun to touch the grout in my bathrooms. I have no idea what the original color even is in the bathrooms as the tile was there when Tom purchased the house. The kitchen is what I have been tackling for years now. I have tried cleaners and home remedies and found that the best cleaning solution was to get on my hands and knees with baking soda and water and scrub. It is not an easy job.

This year while out Christmas shopping a young man handed me his business card as I exited Sears. I thanked him and kept walking, but as I got outside the store I actually glanced down at the card. It was for cleaning carpets, but it also advertised tile floors. I turned around and went back to discuss my grout issue. He assured me he could do the job, along with my bathrooms, so I could get the special. We kept talking, me telling him to cut through the bullshit sales job because I was out of mind with black grout. He finally told me it was such a small job that he wasn't sure how the company would handle it or what the cost would be, but hey, why didn't I just get my carpets cleaned too. I told him that needed to be done too so maybe after the holidays I would look him up.

My friend had a fit. "What? Why would you pay for carpet cleaning when I have a new carpet cleaner? You can use that." I whined about my back and my age and she told me she would do it. "And I'll try it on your tile floors too. What the hell!" She showed up on a Saturday morning with her cleaner and her various solutions and we went to work. We decided we would clean the Steelers room carpeting this day as it was older and dirtier than the newer carpet. We moved half the furniture to one side and she went to work. While she was doing that I went to work in the kitchen prepping the grout.

I made a paste of baking soda and water and put it into the grout. Madison, who made the mistake of exiting her bedroom at one point, got roped into helping and we did the entire kitchen floor. It took over an hour with many breaks, one of which required a trip to the grocery for more baking soda. We let it sit for another hour or two while we ate lunch, picked up Darcy from her volunteer job, and ran through Rita's for an Italian ice as a reward for all our hard work.

When we returned we took brushes and went to work scrubbing the tile. Darcy was pulled into the job and SueG joined us after cleaning the other half of my Steelers room carpeting. While they scrubbed I went along behind them rinsing and picking up dirty baking soda paste. By the time we were done with that my floor was very gritty. SueG then took her carpet cleaner and went over the floor. The water did turn dirty so something was working.

She finished it up with her steam mop going over the floor three times so that we made sure it was clean. Then we had some cocktails. The floor was a tad gritty for about a week. The baking soda residue is still in some of the grout, but I figured it can only work some more in there so I'm ignoring it. A lot of the grout is back to its color. Some of it is not. I have been good about sweeping daily and mopping every other day. Today I am using OxiClean on those spots that are still black. I'm going to see how well that works and then I'm going to keep a daily chart on the grout color. If it is less than one month I'm calling the Sears guy or ripping out the tile with my bare hands.