Can You Clean Ceramic Tiles with Vinegar and Water?

Like many homes in the Palm Beach County area, your home has tile. This means getting your tile floors clean is a big priority in your life. Are you worried about potentially toxic chemicals? You are not alone. There are many do-it-yourself, environmentally friendly recipes for cleaning tile floors that will make your floor shine and remove any dirt, grime, or crud that is currently stuck on. These typically involve vinegar along with a couple other household items. Vinegar is a natural, non-toxic product that safely deodorizes, disinfects, and cleans tile.

Before you run off and dump vinegar on your tile floors, wait! Vinegar is a multi-purpose cleaner you can use on many types of flooring, such as ceramic tile, but it’s not without caution. While it is safe to use on ceramic tile, it is best to use it sparingly since the acid in the vinegar can dissolve the finish on your floor. For this reason, when you are using it to clean ceramic tiles, you will want to make sure you cut it with water or rinse it completely with water.

White vinegar works especially well to dissolve grease and hard water stains. In order to have clean ceramic tiles with water and vinegar, you’ll need:

• 5-gallon bucket
• Mop
• White vinegar

Before you begin, it is important that your floor is free of debris. Otherwise you will simply be making mud and swooshing it around the tile! Remove as much dirt and grim as you can with a broom or vacuum. Then, simply fill the bucket with about two gallons of warm water. Add a cup of white vinegar to the mix. Mop the floor, paying special attention to caked-on, high-traffic, and stained areas.

If you just need to spot clean an area or you have a tough stain that you are trying to remove, you will want to add baking soda. You can play with the measurements, but you are looking to make a pretty thick paste, then get on the floor and scrub with it. Rinse with the water and repeat this step as necessary. Once the stain is gone, rinse with a mop dampened with the vinegar solution.

All of this being said, we don’t blame you if you don’t want to spend your time mixing a concoction and scrubbing the floor. You’re busy! Or perhaps, you’re really not that busy but you simply don’t want to be on your hands and knees cleaning. There’s nothing wrong with that, especially since you can call upon the cleaning experts at Florida Tile & Grout to do the job for you. Let’s face it, tiles get dirty and grimy pretty quickly. If you can’t get a professional-grade cleaning, which you won’t be able to do on your own, you’ll be cleaning your floors again before you know it.