The kitchen floor and I don’t have the best relationship. I’m annoyed at the color (white? come on!) and it’s irritated at my lack of attention these last few years. Perhaps if it was white tile or another material of some sort, it would be easier to get clean and the color wouldn’t be so bothersome, but old linoleum…. not so easy. (And even so, white floors? Seriously? And no offense, dear floor, but gold sparkles just aren’t for me.) Before Bracken was born I always aimed to mop the kitchen floors once a month. After he was born, mopping the floors wasn’t as high on the priority list. Caring for him, cooking, laundry, sweeping, working for the business, getting myself showered and the simple task of even getting my hair brushed each day…. those things were more important. Luckily, now Bracken thinks mopping the floor is great fun. We started our task with great gusto over the weekend and then I suddenly felt a bit deflated, like I always do when I first start tackling the job. And the reason why is that there are stains that don’t come off and I get discouraged. I want to make the floor look good, but realistically I can only make it look better. I was determined this time and took a toothbrush, vinegar, and baking soda and scrubbed the hard spots with an attitude of “I won’t take no for an answer.” Bracken enjoyed that part too. We cleaned the heck out of that floor. It does look much better, better than it’s ever looked in fact! Maybe the floor and I will start changing our relationship after all… I’m even willing to make my peace with gold sparkles.
It’s good you are becoming friends with your floor. The younger generation would call white with gold flecks a cool antique and would love to have a floor of that era.
Why do we have to wash floors anyway.
get a good scrubber like scotch brite, i dont usually like disposables but just this time…then borax, peroxide, vinegar, lemon and baking soda..let it sit for a lunch then scrub the crap out of it,,i have white linoleum too with blue diamond shapes..what were they thinking?? this works with time and elbow grease…sometimes a few apps works
Thanks for the tip Sarah!!
i feel ya, we are renting a house with white tiled floors thru out the house! who does that?? the kitchen is the worst, if i dont scrub it weekly it is so groody. thankfully my 4 year old loves to mop, lol, makes it a heck of a lot easier.
We have used stick-on cheapo linoleum tiles (in a much nicer colour and pattern) to cover an awful old floor. Fast and cheap and looked great. A white kitchen floor is truly a tough one to deal with…so unforgiving, ugh. They look great when clean though!
This is how I feel about my bathroom tile floor, with stains in the grout in areas, that won’t come clean. Not even bleach will make it white again. How does one make the grout New again?
I wish I knew!
If you google painting linoleum it comes up with a good many links as to how to do it and what type of paint works best, etc. I haven’t ever tried it but it might be worth investigating. Paint isn’t very expensive and you probably wouldn’t need a whole lot to do a kitchen floor. The main challenge for you would most likely be finding the time to do it and keeping Bracken off of it till it dries.
Never heard of painting linoleum, interesting idea!
Oh dear, I have very similar (if not the same) kitchen flooring. I hate it too!! I can never get that sucker clean enough, and when it does look kinda okay it just gets ruined pretty quickly. I can’t wait to replace it…. years and years from now.
I’m looking forward to replacing ours at some point too, but in the meantime I gotta learn to like it. 🙂
I never mopped the kitchen tiles for years (the shame!) because the kids were little and life was busy and it just didn’t seem to make any difference. The tiles came up with a hallelujah 3 years ago and now there’s some lovely pine which is much easier to keep. Its such a joy when we can get the mopping done and so much the better if you can love [tolerate!] whats there.
It gets dirty again so fast, doesn’t it? 🙂 A lovely pine sounds wonderful! Something easier to clean will definitely be the priority when we eventually replace it. 🙂