How to Clean Tile Floors

How to clean tile floors with vinegar and baking soda. Cleaning tile floors can be HARD.  The grout.  So confusing.  This post will show you how to clean tile floors with vinegar and baking soda (yay for no harsh chemicals).  Get your whole floor surface cleaner, with household ingredients and natural products to make homemade solutions.  Sounds awesome, right?

Cleaning Floors with Baking Soda & Vinegar

This is how I clean the floors at MY house.

Learning how to clean floor tiles took a while.  We had come from a home with hard wood floors (btw, this is my favorite hardwood cleaner), so it took some adjusting.

I do the floors on Monday.  I find that once a week is plenty often to sweep and mop.  I should say that my ceramic tile floors are the color of dirt.  Someone did a wonderful job picking them out.  Are they prettiest floors you’ll ever seen in your life?  No.  But they’re perfect for my life right now.

Vinegar and Baking Soda Floor Cleaning Recipe

I mainly use Vinegar to clean my floors.

I wouldn’t recommend using BOTH vinegar and baking soda in your cleaning solution. It causes a chemical reaction that makes them fairly useless. BUT, I do use them each separately.

Best Homemade Tile Floor Cleaner

Cleaning Tile Floors with Vinegar and Dawn

I use about 1/4 vinegar, the rest hot clean water, and about 2 drops dish detergent.  I don’t add drops of essential oils — it’s just this.  It does smell VERY vinegar-y in the beginning, but that quickly wears off to just leave your house smelling fresh and clean. This vinegar solution is a great homemade cleaner. If you are using a type of swiffer mop, putting some homemade vinegar mixture in a spray bottle is one of the best to spot clean tough stains when you aren’t cleaning your entire floor. White vinegar is one of the best natural cleaners because it doesn’t have harsh chemicals that commercial cleaners have.

I HAVE used Baking Soda to clean my floors — but be VERY thoughtful about your baking soda usage.  While this is an effective method, you don’t want white baking soda residue all over your clean floors.

I do find that a baking soda paste (just some baking soda and water) is the best way to clean stubborn stains in grout — just be sure to rinse it off well (I am planning to try a Tide recipe I saw a bit ago). Using a damp mop or soft, clean cloth with plain water will give you the best results.

How to clean baking soda residue from tile floors

That’s truly the problem with baking soda (sodium bicarbonate) — I’d recommend the easiest way is using just hot water to dissolve the baking soda, and rinsing your mop frequently. No matter what diy cleaner you use, make sure you pick an inconspicuous area for a patch test to know if there will be any adverse reactions with the surface of your floor.

Why You Don’t Use Baking Soda & Vinegar Together To Clean

They really just counteract each other. You may think something is happening when they bubble-up together but it ends-up with salt water. So, not helpful….

Tools I use to keep my Tile Floors Clean

Full vacuuming

I very rarely sweep with a broom or dust mop.  I have just found that a vacuum cleaner works better, with less work involved.  I use a Hoover Lynx vacuum.  I had it for about 5 years, and then it was dying (mostly the battery).  I then saw it on a smokin’ deal at Costco and bought it AGAIN.  I still LOVE IT.  Sometimes we have to take a straightened coat hanger to unplug the thing when my kids think it can do pieces of paper — but most of the time it sucks, sucks, sucks.  {stop you and your dirty mind}

Nightly Vacuuming

I had wanted one for SO long — I finally broke down and got a robotic vacuum.

We got this one on Amazon for a steal (plus I had a gift card from my birthday).  It has very few bells and whistles.  After about a year we just noticed it wasn’t picking up anything.  I’d see it go over crumbs/dirt, dust particles and not pick it up at all.  It was frustrating and we felt like it wasn’t a good choice.

Then, one day my daughter had a playdate and somehow left the door open while the vacuum was going.  And yes, it made a break for freedom.  We didn’t realize it was gone til’ the next day and, of course, it had rained.

That’s right — our last robotic vacuum committed suicide.

SO, we got another one.

This time we spent a LOT of time looking at our options.

We finally decided on this one.  It had the things we wanted:

• A lot of suction (I love how Eufy shares how much suction is in each of its vacuums — I’ve had a hard time seeing it on other vacuums).
• We were able to create barriers with their magnetic strips.
• We could program it to run pretty easily.

I love it.

It’s not gotten suck hardly at all (we didn’t notice the other one was gone for so long because it was always stuck somewhere), the magnetic strips are a great way of keeping it from eating cords.  The suction is great, and I am SO glad to finally see our house floors cleaned each time.

No more crumbs between our toes! It’s a great success!

You can learn more about Eufy vs iLife vs Roomba.  You can get the 30c at Amazon and at Eufy (and sales are sometimes better on one or the other).

Hand Vac

I have a little Black and Decker hand vac that I use is an effective way to clean up quick spills.  I also use it to really get into corners, etc.  I recommend every house have one of these.  My main complaint would be that the filter fills up really easily.  And, while easy to clean — it is kind of a pain.

Broom & Dustpan

I will also say that I have a small broom/dust pan that I keep by our washing machine.  Sometimes that is just as easy as pulling out any of these tools to clean up.  I have mine hanging on a Command Hook — so it’s simple to use and put back.

Best Mop to Clean Tile Floors

I used a Rubbermaid mop.  I have had to replace it 3 times at this point.  One time it just broke off at the head, the 2nd time it wouldn’t squirt right and I just got #3.  I will say that Rubbermaid has been good to work with and they feel like it might be my choice in cleaner that’s doing it.  I tend to alternate between just Vinegar per their instructions and then this one.  I find that the less dish soap I use, the better.  Now, I only put a couple of drops in.

My one beef with this mop is that you’re still using the dirty mop head each time, and the dirt just builds up.  I am now using this one I like how it easily rinses and does a great job wringing out the pad with each dunk in the solution.

It’s very simlar to this one (which I can’t find for sale anymore):

Perks of that type of mop:

• It wrings out the solution really well (you could also make your own diy floor cleaner once their’s is gone) and floors don’t get too wet.
• It rinses the mop each time
• It has a soft mop head and a scrubby head — great!

Steam Clean Tile Floors

When I get around to it, I steam my floors with my steam clean machine.  I don’t actually think it cleans all that better then a regular mop, but I do think there’s something to switching up cleaning tactics and how it makes things cleaner overall.  But, my cleaning philosophy is a blog for another day…

When my kids are on break (like spring break) I usually have them cleaning tile grout with grout cleaner, a scrub brush and a rag.  Kids are GREAT at cleaning grout.  They’re close to it and it works well! 🙂

What do you do with your floors?  I’m always working on it.  We have at LEAST 1100 square feet of tile here, with little kids.

If you liked this post — be sure to sign up for my weekly cleaning schedule (Floors are done on Mondays at my house) — and check out my other cleaning posts below that:

This post was originally written in April 2014, but has been updated.