Oils such as Lavender, Wild orange, Lemon, Tea Tree, Pine, and Peppermint have effective cleaning properties and will leave your home smelling good. Grapefruit, Eucalyptus, Cinnamon, and Thyme essential oils in your mop water will effectively clean your floors, leaving a pleasant smell in your home.
A way to get rid of this odor is by creating a cleaning solution for it to soak in. Mix together one cup of white vinegar (or three percent hydrogen peroxide) and one gallon of hot water. Let the mop head soak for a significant amount of time before ringing it out and letting in dry in the sun.
Feel free to add a few drops of your favorite essential oil to your mop water or sink water when hand washing dishes.
Distilled white vinegar usually has an acidity around 5%, which gives it the power to cut through dirt, mineral deposits, and hard-water stains. This acidity also gives it some mild disinfectant properties, though we don't recommend relying on vinegar for thorough disinfection.
Vinegar's power to clean lies in its acidity. With a pH around 2.5, vinegar is effective at dissolving grime and mineral deposits like hard water and rust stains.
Wood – As long you dilute it and you make sure to rinse and dry the floor afterwards, lemon juice is safe to use on wood. It will cut through dirt, grime and stains, making it good for cleaning wood floors. Tile – Diluted lemon juice is good for cleaning tile floors, but undiluted lemon juice can damage them.
Use baking soda to create a powerful cleaner for tile and other types of flooring. Mix ½ cup of baking soda in a bucket of warm water, mop the floors, and rinse. Note: this method should not be used to clean floors that have been treated with wax, such as hardwood flooring, as it can damage the finish.
Mop Frequently
High-traffic areas, like kitchens, bathrooms, hallways, and entryways, require weekly mopping. Infrequently used rooms, such as formal living areas or guest rooms, can be mopped every other week, or even once a month, so long as they're vacuumed once every seven days to remove dust and grit.
2 REASONS YOUR FLOORS ARE STILL DIRTY AFTER CLEANING
Thinking that wet equals clean, they then forget to rinse out their mop pad, resulting in a mop pad that is fully saturated with dirty water. Continuing to use the mop pad on the floor leads to smearing dirt, not lifting it.
Floor Mopping
Mild dish soap is a surprisingly good floor cleaner. All you need is 1 to 2 tablespoons of dish soap mixed in with a bucket of water. Floors will be clean and shiny in no time. Dish soap is very effective on resilient floorings, such as linoleum and vinyl, and also works well on ceramic tile.
There's no set time that the vinegar smell will linger. It depends on the air flow in the space. However, vinegar actively looks for things to bind to. In most cases, it won't take more than 5-15 minutes for the smell to go away.
Does mopping with vinegar stink? While vinegar is a magical cleaner that you can use on almost any surface, its strong odor can make cleaning a little bit of a challenge. Of course, over time, the smell will dissipate, but you shouldn't have to wait around for the smell to fade.
However, it's important to remember that while vinegar does work as a disinfectant to some degree, it is not as effective as bleach or commercial cleansers when it comes to killing germs.
Try 1 part baking soda to 2 parts vinegar (and feel free to add a spoonful of dish soap in there, too, if you want a little extra boost of cleaning power). The result should be surface cleaner that's still natural and powerful, but much less odorous.
Instructions. To make this all-purpose cleaning solution, simply combine a few citrus peels (lemon is great for a fresh, clean scent, but orange, lime, and grapefruit work too) with equal amounts of water and white vinegar. Shake the mixture well, and let the citrus infuse in it for a week before using.
Baking soda is one of the best items you can use to absorb bad smells. You can leave an open box or bowl of baking soda in your refrigerator and sprinkle some in the bottom of your trash cans to neutralize foul odors that tend to develop in these places.