Guest Post: Grout Cleaning

Those of you with tile countertops in your kitchen or bathroom will be kissing my feet (okay, my mom’s feet) for this useful and handy tip. I have one-piece counters so I can’t complain… but I think this will definitely work on problem-ridden areas of my floor tile too (when it’s warm enough to banish the pup to the backyard, that is! Safety first!)

That said, yes this is my very first GUEST POST written for facebook by the woman who brought me into the world and taught me that dishes can [almost] always wait until later. I’m sharing it with her permission!

How do you clean your grout, tile and
hand towels all in one project?

This is not a riddle.  A few years ago, when Clorox introduced the bleach pen, my daughters, Staci and Stephanie and I went to work on the grout in my kitchen.  I have a 6 x 6 foot island with offwhite tile and white grout.  It was quite a chore, but the grout lines were improved.

Now it is time to clean the grout again, but I didn’t have a bleach pen and was too lazy, busy, unmotivated, (whatever adjective you want to insert here) to go to the store, so I looked around to see what might work.  Hmmm.

I spied the tub of powder Oxyclean sitting on my washing machine, so I decided to try making a paste and using that on the grout.  Now to find my grout brush.  Couldn’t find it.  So I looked for a small brush that could work, but the discarded toothbrushes were too wimpy.  I asked Randy if he had a brush attachment for his Dremel tool, but he was afraid that would ruin the grout.  I spied my worn out and unused electric tooth brush.  Voila!

Armed with my somewhat dissolved Oxyclean and my tooth brush, I began the project.  Oxyclean worked really well to get rid of the dirt in the grout lines, but left a residue.  Paper towels were useless, so I grabbed an old dish towel.  I wiped off all the extra with the dry towel and then grabbed another old towel and dampened it to wipe up the rest.

Randy told me the counter looked like new!  Later in the day, the counter dried a little cloudy so I took some Sprayaway and washed it one more time.  Now it shines and the grout is clean.  Throw the towels in the laundry and they come out sparkling white!

Today, I reluctantly decided to tackle the tile and grout next to the stove, but did not want to do it.  I procrastinated by washing the linens on Stephanie’s bed and spied an Oxyclean tube of gel that my husband had purchased.  Hmmm.

So, I grabbed the gel, squirted it out onto my counter top and repeated Saturday’s process.  It worked really well, but is very messy and took more rinsing.  Overall the stove area looks better than the island, but we will see if it dries with a film.  No problem if it does, but it would be great if it doesn’t.

Side effect:  We loved the clean grout and are biting the bullet and having a pro come to clean the floor tomorrow.  Randy saw how much effort it was to clean the island, and couldn’t imagine how long it would take me to do the floor.  Probably over 200 square feet!  woohoo! I have been wanting to hire that done, but until Randy saw how hard it was, I think he imagined me doing it myself.  Win Win.  Clean counters, clean dish towels, and after tomorrow, clean floors.

It is the small things that get me going!  :’)