Mama Said, Mama Said!

i am sooooooooooo ready to hit the road to our new house!!! our house is ready to hit the road to the new house too!!

with the house being packed, my next step has been to focus on getting as much of our security deposit back as possible (which will be all of it! i'm determined!). we cleared the yard to make room for the ground covering to grow back in, we've replaced outlet covers and blinds, e spot cleaned some of the walls yesterday, etc.

the floors have been my nemesis in this process. aside from the 3 bedrooms and the bathrooms, this house is entirely fake hardwood. and whoever resided here before either lived in cleats or broke the lease agreement and kept a dog here. there are scratches everywhere and whatever lacquer may have at one point been sloshed over the floor to make it shine and give it some dirt protection is long since gone. thus dirt very easily works its way into the grooves created by all those scratches and gets itself quite stuck in there.

it has been a constant, losing battle trying to make the floors clean.

i've been a big fan of the water-vinegar cleaning solution for years. but recently, to clean out our sinks, some other metal things and a few plastic items, i started spraying those things down with the water-vinegar and then sprinkling a little baking soda over it.

simple science fair logic: vinegar+baking soda makes fizzies. fizzies are all the rage in cleaning stuff these days. baking soda is a tad abrasive and vinegar cleans well. watering down the vinegar means my fizzies don't take over my house and i get double cleaning action.

it worked like a charm.

so on a whim today, i sprayed down the problem areas on my hardwood floor with a very generous amount of my favorite cleaning mix. then i sprinkled some baking soda over it. then i filled up a bucket with a water-vinegar mix and dipped my mop in.

immediately, and i mean immediately, the dirt scrubbed up. it was almost effortless. it left me wet clumps of gray baking soda, but the dirt was GONE. it was like magic.

i almost started swearing. i've been trying for 8 months to clean these floors and i figure it out 3 days before we leave?!!? to a house with no hardwood!?! is this a joke!?!!!?

i ended up sprinkling baking soda over the dry wood where there weren't any major spots and mopping over it with the same bucket vinegar-water throughout the house. the floors look amazing. i have to let them dry after the first mopping, sweep up the remaining baking soda, and then mop once more with plain old water to get rid of the baking soda residue (some places required 2 rounds of sweep and re-mopping).

but it worked.

the problem areas also got a rag taken to them by hand while they were still a bit wet. it helped me get the baking soda clumps out and offered just a bit more scrubbing power. total magic.

moms are always telling their kids to leave a place better than they found it.

well, mom, you'd be proud. today i did just that. these floors weren't even this clean when we moved in.

do you know what that means?

i get ice cream for being a good girl. $1k security deposit worth of ice cream, to be precise.