I'm in an old building with wood floors. I think it' time to move beyond Swiffer Wet.
I'd probably use a mild dishsoap and warm water mix in a bucket and get an old towel and a scrub brush for high trafiic areas. Just to makeup for what Swiffer HASN'T cleaned up or pushed into the corners. After that, Murphy's Oil Soap works great with that mop that has built in(twist)rinse. The heads are interchangeable so you can use one for bath/kitchen and one for your wood floors. Easy sqeezy!
I use good ole pine sol on mine and finish with Holloway House Floor Shine. Makes them look so shiny and new!
A 50/50 mix of warm water and white vinegar. If you have wax on the floors you will have to wax them when you're done mopping.
If your wood floors look dingy, it could be a wax build up problem. You can use vinegar and water to polish them but be sure not to soak the floor like you might a vinyl floor, just damp mop. I recently bought the steam mop as seen on tv' and I am very very happy with it on tile and my wood floors!Just uses water!! Its so easy!! I would NOT scrub them with a brush or you can rub the polish off and leave them raw and vulnerable to being ruined by wet shoes. I also heard that if you put wax paper on your swifer kind of mop that that will offer a quick shine! If they are really worn out wood floors, you can hire someone to buff and polish them and they will look brand new!
Wood floors are tough! You NEVER want to use a Swifter on hardwood floors!!! Especially if they are natural or treated wood. Laminate and pergo are ok, but not for real wood floors! Trust me, I'm a professional house cleaner! What you want to do is go out and get yourself a good hardwood floor cleaner. If it's really bad, you may want to invest in a good pair of kneepads as well. What we normally do it we take the floor cleaner and put about a 1/4 of it into a bucket and fill it with water. If you're using rags, make sure to wring out the rag really good before putting it on the floor. Then as you're washing the floor, use a dry rag to dry the floor so there are no streaks. I'd do this about maybe once every month, or 2 months. Oh, and invest is what's called a shmop It's just like a swifter, only it uses a cloth, and what you do is; wet the cloth and put it on the shmop,then spray the cloth with the floor cleaner and use it on the floors. It keeps them shiny and it's a lot cheeper than having to buy swifter cloths. This one uses just one cloth and you can wash it and reuse it. You don't want to use a swifter though because it takes the finish off the hardwood, if there is a finish. If there isn't a finish, it tends to dry out the wood and make it look dirty all the time.
