The Kitchen Floor Adventure

I do enjoy perusing the Yahoo forums; especially the cleaning type questions. I like to offer advice and occasionally I pick up a cool new tip that I can try at home. My most recent find was a tip on how to clean up linoleum floors.



I hate my floors, but replacing them right now just isn’t an option. I sweep and Swiffer constantly, but to no avail. All I had to do was look at those floors and it left an ugly scuff on them. Every day it seemed I was down on my hands and knees with a Lysol wipe scrubbing away the days scuff marks and dirt. It was maddening.

So as I was scanning through the Yahoo questions I noticed one about constantly dirty linoleum floors. Someone recommended scrubbing the floors with ammonia and applying a coat of Pledge with Future Shine. I was intrigued. I found the Pledge with Future Shine at Wal-Mart and made sure I had ammonia handy and I was set.
When I woke up yesterday morning, the house had that awful ammonia smell that I’m not too fond of. My wonderful husband had taken on the task of the dreaded kitchen floor! The ammonia did an amazing job lifting all of the dirt that other cleaners couldn’t. In the past we had used vinegar and a green scrubby to take care of the heavy duty cleaning, but it left behind an unfortunate white chalky film on the floor. The ammonia left it perfectly clean.

Next was to apply the Pledge with Future Shine which he did with a sponge. The bottle boasts that it takes 20 minutes to dry. Do not believe this. We ended up scuffing it in several places over the next 4 hours. The “un-scuffed” parts looked beautiful…well, as beautiful as ugly linoleum CAN look. When Pledge with Future Shine begins to dry it becomes very sticky. It looks dry, but it isn’t. Socks, 5 year olds, pets, …yup, they all stick to a floor with a coating of Pledge on it.

So this meant we now needed a second coat, of course after we scrubbed away scuff marks and fur and fuzz from Spiderman house shoes. My dearest applied another coat before we went to bed and the next morning…

It still wasn’t completely dry. Sigh. I like the product, I really do, but this may be a more time consuming project than anticipated.

Aside from house shoe prints near the coffee pot and a very small hand print in the middle of the floor, it looks terrific. You would have to ask my son how a single handprint ended up there, what 5 year olds do is quite the mystery.

So, basically if you want very clean shiny linoleum floors: ammonia and Pledge with Future Shine….and no kids, cats, or coffee for at least 8 hours.