I love making my own cleaning products because I know exactly what’s in them. It’s important to me to keep toxins and chemicals out of our home, especially when it comes to our cleaning supplies. This DIY natural floor cleaner is no exception. And I love the floor-cleaning system I’ve developed because it’s both nontoxic and environmentally friendly!
Keep reading to get my DIY natural floor cleaner recipe and learn all the details of my floor-cleaning routine.
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Clean Floors, Happy Home
Our house has almost all wood floors (except for two tiled bathrooms and a tiny carpeted office that used to be a sun porch). And with four pets – two Aussies and two housecats – keeping our floors clean is definitely a priority. But it’s difficult to do, I’m not gonna lie.
Our back door opens into our kitchen, and any time it rains or snows, our very active dogs track muddy footprints onto the kitchen floor. We’re there with towels to wipe their feet off every time, but it’s unavoidable. Muddy footprints are going to happen.
Like every other part of our home, I’m conscious of avoiding toxins and chemicals as much as possible. I’m also mindful of being environmentally friendly and creating as little waste as possible with my homemade cleaning products.
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The system I’ve come up with is pretty perfect because not only is it chemical free but it also involves only reusable cleaning supplies. So I’m not throwing away a mop pad every time I clean the floor. That means less trash and less wasted money because I’m purchasing these tools only once!
How I Clean Our Floors
Now that I’ve hyped up my floor-cleaning system, here’s what I do:
I start by vacuuming all of our wood floors with our Dyson V8 Animal cordless vacuum. We have a normal-sized vacuum, too, but the cordless Dyson has been a game changer.
It’s super lightweight and fits easily into all the quirky nooks and crannies of our 80-year-old home. The closets on our first floor are tiny, and I love being able to store a vacuum where we’ll use it most instead of lugging a full-sized one up the stairs from the basement.
The Dyson is designed for homes with pets, and it delivers on that promise! This vacuum picks up pet hair and dirt so easily. I love how you can change the attachments to make it a smaller size, which I use to clean the pet hair off our furniture and even the quilt on our bed!
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After vacuuming the floors, I mop them with my DIY all-purpose floor cleaner (recipe below) in a Libman spray mop. The mop has a large reservoir (3 cups/24 oz) that I refill with my floor cleaner whenever I need to. I like that I’m not constantly buying new bottles of toxin-filled cleaning solution to attach to the spray mop.
The mop comes with three reusable pads, which I obviously love because I’m not tossing out used mop pads after every cleaning (or buying a new box every month).
I also purchased some extra reusable microfiber mop pads. These ones fit the Libman mop head perfectly and are still going strong after five years of use! I prefer to have extra mop pads available so I have a good number of dirty ones to send through the laundry together.
I usually only have to mop our floors with this cleaner and spray mop once. However, if I have a lot of muddy puppy footprints to contend with, I’ll give our kitchen another mop. After that, our hardwood floors look sparkling clean!
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Homemade Floor Cleaner Ingredients
This DIY natural floor cleaner is super easy to make and uses ingredients that you probably already have at home. You can make this floor-cleaning recipe with just three ingredients; essential oils are a bonus optional addition!
1. Warm Water
Water is an important ingredient in this floor cleaner recipe because it’s necessary to dilute vinegar before you use it on your floors! To prevent vinegar from damaging hardwood or laminate sealant, make sure to dilute with a 4:1 water-to-vinegar ratio.
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2. White Distilled Vinegar
Vinegar is a master degreaser and great at disinfecting. Not only is it effective, but it’s also inexpensive! I keep a large jug of white vinegar in my home at all times because it has so many different uses in cleaning.
I find that the vinegar in this floor cleaner recipe is distilled enough that the smell doesn’t bother me (it just smells clean to me!). But if you find the smell of vinegar overpowering, you may want to add some essential oils to your DIY floor cleaner.
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3. Essential Oils (Optional!)
While they’re not necessary, you may want to add essential oils to your floor cleaner either to mask the scent of vinegar or just because you want your floors to smell a certain way.
I love adding citrus essential oils like lemon or orange to my natural floor cleaner. Some essential oils do have antimicrobial properties, so you may choose one of them to give your floor cleaner a little extra oomph!
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DIY Natural Floor Cleaner Recipe
You can use this homemade floor cleaner on ceramic tile, laminate, linoleum, porcelain tile, and sealed hardwood floors. You should avoid cleaning natural stone floors or unfinished wood floors with this cleaner.
Ingredients
- 2 cups warm water
- ½ cup white distilled vinegar
- 5-10 drops essential oils (optional)
Instructions
- Combine all ingredients together in a container that will be easy to pour from.
- Pour the floor cleaner into the reservoir of your Libman mop.
- To use, spray the area you want to clean and run the mop over it. This is a no-rinse floor cleaner, so you can just allow it to dry after cleaning.
I hope you love this homemade floor cleaner as much as I do! Ask questions and share your experiences in the comments!
Frequently Asked Questions
Why should you make your own floor cleaner?
There are three main reasons you should make your own floor cleaner. First, it’s easier on your budget. When I wrote this post, a 128-oz bottle of a popular floor-cleaning solution was $19.99 at Target. A bottle of distilled white vinegar that was the same size was only $3.59.
You could fill a Libman mop reservoir with the popular floor-cleaning solution 5.33 times, costing $3.75 per fill. On the other hand, you could make my homemade floor cleaner 32 times with the bottle of vinegar, costing $0.62 each time you make it. It won’t take too long to build up quite a bit of savings.
Second, making a DIY floor cleaner means you can ensure it’s natural and nontoxic. Many conventional cleaning products contain toxins and chemicals that can harm our bodies over time. I like to know exactly what I’m bringing into my home, so this reason is incredibly important to me.
Finally, making your own floor cleaner is more environmentally friendly because you’re buying fewer products, so you have fewer containers to throw away. If you’re using reusable tools like the Libman spray mop and mop pads, you’re not creating extra waste.
Is this DIY floor cleaner safe for all types of floors?
This natural floor cleaner is safe for some but not all types of floors.
It’s safe to use on:
- ceramic tile
- laminate
- linoleum
- porcelain tile
- sealed hardwood
You should not use this floor cleaner on:
- natural stone
- unfinished hardwood
Why should you dilute vinegar before using it to clean your floors?
Vinegar is a powerful cleaning, and if you leave it undiluted, it can damage the sealant on laminate and hardwood floors. Always dilute vinegar with a 4:1 water-to-vinegar ratio before using it to clean your floors.
