My kitchen floor needed a good old cleaning. I’ve been putting it off because I didn’t know how to go about cleaning it. This past weekend I finally got around to doing it, so I Googled how to clean a kitchen floor, and Google told me I could use vinegar and baking soda to clean it. I thought, cool, I just bought both of those things last week when I did some restock shopping. I poured vinegar all over my kitchen floor, then poured baking soda over the vinegar. The baking soda reacted with the vinegar and made a foamy solution, as baking soda tends to do with vinegar because, well, chemistry. The more you know. Anyway, I let it sit for a few minutes while it soaks up the grease I’m trying to clean out. I start to mop the solution off, when suddenly the baking soda appears to have stuck to the floor, and although the solution did do a good job of cleaning off kitchen grease and whatnot from the floor, I’m now left with a huge mess of baking soda. I tried mopping it with water, and it appeared to look less baking soda-y, but… when the water dried up, I saw that the baking soda was in fact still there. I’ve now been going at it for a few days now, using diluted soap from my spray bottle, and that appears to be getting the job done. It’s not perfect yet, but it’s working better than the pure water, so let’s hope I get this thing clean in the next few days or so.
TL;DR: I tried cleaning my kitchen floor and it just created a mess of baking soda that is impossible to clean.
Comments
Just pour more vinegar
This is the chemistry version of “If you give a mouse a cookie.” LOL
If you’ve used sodium bicarbonate and acetic acid (baking soda and vinegar) you’ve created cardon dioxide (the fizzing) and sodium acetate (the residue).
Sodium acetate is very soluble in water, so you should be able to just use water to dissolve it and mop it away.
> The baking soda reacted with the vinegar and made a foamy solution, as baking soda tends to do with vinegar because, well, chemistry
Incidentally, chemistry also makes this cleaning hack practically useless. You’re just creating water, CO2, and sodium acetate (which is not useful for cleaning), which is probably the residue on your floor.
You would have been better off just pouring water on the floor
Have you tried vacuuming it up when it’s dry? If what you’re left with is a lot of excess solid, then clean it like a solid, instead of throwing more and more liquid at it waiting for it to get dilute.
Jesus Christ, how are kids being brought up these days? Next there will be someone asking how to boil an egg.
Bless the hearts of the folks who like baking soda and vinegar because they aren’t CHEMICALS.”
Sorry, but thank you for the PSA. lol
The best thing I found for a greasy floor is actually dish soap. Since it’s made to remove grease from pots and pans, it works great on floors too.
I don’t know what cleaning tools you have, but assuming you only have a mop and a way to wring out that mop:
Don’t keep wringing/rinsing the mop in the same bucket; you’re quickly reaching the point where that water is more saturated with baking soda than you want. After wringing out the mop after mopping an area, completely rinse it with fresh, clean water in the sink so each time you’re starting with no leftover baking soda.
This is just general correct practice: always mop in a direction, so you’re always pulling contaminates away from an area. If you’re pushing the mop back and forth over an area, you’re just evenly spreading the contaminates the mop picked up at its dirtiest back over the areas mopped when the mop was cleaner. Cut a swath with the clean mop and don’t go back over that swath unless the mop has been rinsed.