Early Spring Cleaning

This may not be the most exciting post (who really enjoys cleaning the house, besides me?), but I wanted to share a neat & useful cleaning trick that I tried for the first time a few weeks ago.  I am a bit of a 'clean freak;' I can't stand having anything messy or dirty in our house.  And for some reason, dirty grout (the lines in between the tiles of your kitchen or bathroom floors) is hugely frustrating to me.  I had tried multiple cleaning products on my kitchen floor to try to clean up the grout and none of them had even a slight effect on the dirt hiding there.  So I searched Pinterest for other ways to clean it up and came across a winning combo!  It's super easy, and chances are you already have the products you need in your house.  Ready to clean?  Let's get to it!  

You will need:

Baking Soda

White Vinegar

A small bowl or bucket with warm water

A small scrubbing brush

A sponge

Cleaning Gloves

I'm learning that there are so many ways to use this combo for cleaning purposes!  

It's definitely worth keeping extra vinegar and baking soda in your house.

The bowl contains only warm water - you don't mix the vinegar or baking soda in the bowl.

 Step 1: Liberally sprinkle baking soda along the grout lines.

You can spread the baking soda into the grout lines with your hands if you need to.

Step 2: Pour small amounts of vinegar into the grout lines.  The baking soda will react with the vinegar and this reaction is where a lot of the cleaning power comes from!

You don't need a ton of vinegar, just enough to sit in the grout lines.

Hard to see, but the bubbling is the vinegar and baking soda reacting.

Step 3: Wait about 1-2 minutes to allow the baking soda & vinegar mix to really get into the grout.  Then take your scrubbing brush and scrub away at the grout!  You will have to use a little bit of elbow grease but compared to the scrubbing I had done before with other 'cleaners,' this was a piece of cake!  

Step 4:  After you have scrubbed the dirt out of the grout, use your sponge and bowl of water to "mop" up the vinegar mess.  *I've found that it's easiest to work in an area of about 4-6 squares at a time.  This way, you aren't kneeling in vinegar trying to reach across your entire floor.  It takes a while, but the result is so worth it!  

These are what the grout lines looked like before cleaning:

Ugh, so nasty.

And after!  So much better looking!  I honestly didn't know the grout was intended to be white, like the tiles.  (The tiles actually are white - the lighting in this area just happens to be yellow)

I hope this post was helpful!