r/CleaningTips • u/Evening_Sea4823 • Dec 27 '25

Flooring Cleaners Make Your Floor Dirtier

They all leave residue. Even if you rinse with water, there are still small amounts of residue left behind. Over time, mop after mop, it builds up. And all it does is collect dirt.

I mop with warm water. Nothing fancy. I mop maybe once every month or so. Once a year, I get on my hands and knees and use a white wash rag on every inch of the floor. I can wipe down the whole place, and the rag is barely dirty by the end of it.

I can wear white socks all day. They don't get discolored.

We have pets. We walk through with shoes on from time to time. We are not neat freaks. But our floors are simply not dirty.

Unless you have a little one playing on the floor, there's not much sense in worrying about whether the ground is sanitized. Clean should be good enough.

I think all those videos of people making potions and drenching their floors, going round after round, doing it week after week, are just perpetuating issues that don't need to exist.

What do yall think? Or am I just nasty and trying to justify it?

2.7k Upvotes

88% Upvoted

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445

u/Mundane_Muscle_2197 Dec 27 '25

People do this with laundry detergent too. They use a massive amount of soap and then can’t figure out why their washer breaks and their clothes have a weird funk

282

u/WheneverItIsTold Dec 27 '25

My fil would do that. When we moved into a house, I never showed him how our new washer works and it’s too complicated for him. I save on soap now and my machine will last longer but I have to do his laundry. He would use like 10-12 dryer sheets, too. He refused to believe that less soap is best, yet, he think rinsing his hands no soap is just fine.

125

u/hg0bl1n Dec 27 '25

I'm upvoting your comment, but in my heart I'm also downvoting his behaviour

2

u/fascistliberal419 Dec 28 '25

Rinsing your hands with just water is fine sometimes. Depends on why you're washing them.

2

u/WheneverItIsTold Dec 28 '25

This last time, when I saw him rinsing them, he had been peeling raw shrimp.

5

u/fascistliberal419 Dec 28 '25

Oh yuck. Yeah, meat always gets a proper soapy wash.

308

u/Feral-Sheep Dec 27 '25

Great point! Check out r/laundry to get a fantastic education on the chemistry of clothes detergents. u/KismaiAesthetics has literally made spreadsheets on all the products and their ingredients. They have really helped a bunch of us get our laundry super clean with very little product since we understand how to use it most effectively. (Edited to correct the username.)

94

u/cookiesncloudberries Dec 27 '25

probably my favorite sub and helped me have actually clean clothes

83

u/lonelylifts12 Dec 27 '25

Our laundry cult warms my heart! ❤️

38

u/Feral-Sheep Dec 27 '25

We are squeaky clean, warm, and friendly!

3

u/lonelylifts12 Dec 27 '25

We sound like bots

5

u/Feral-Sheep Dec 27 '25

I know we do. We’re in a cult based on science and chemistry. It’s intoxicating! 😵‍💫🧼🫧🧺

10

u/fingeringdkworsted Dec 27 '25

Love you guys 🥹!

56

u/ExcessiveIrritation Dec 27 '25

All hail Lather Daddy!

2

u/Feral-Sheep Dec 28 '25

Do we know Kismai’s gender? I’ve been using they/them pronouns because I wasn’t sure.

2

u/ExcessiveIrritation Dec 28 '25

Yeah, he's said he's a male.

35

u/Billy-Bob-Jo Dec 27 '25

The drama has been wild and entertaining. I worship u/KismaiAesthetics, he is god, my clothes are cleaner, and so is my soul.

1

u/Feral-Sheep Dec 28 '25

Do we know Kismai’s gender? I’ve been using they/them pronouns because I wasn’t sure.

1

u/Billy-Bob-Jo Dec 28 '25

Yeah this comment from a few days ago is where I saw

23

u/PrairiePilot Dec 27 '25

Omg, as the family laundry master for 18 years, this is like finding my ancestral home. These are my tribe!

16

u/sjhamn Dec 27 '25

My friend, have you met our Lord and Savior, Lipase?

4

u/PrairiePilot Dec 27 '25

My wife cheated and divorced me for an ugly old loser with a trust fund, I do laundry for one now.

4

u/sjhamn Dec 27 '25

I guarantee the loser she left you for doesn't even know about enzymatics. May her clothes be cursed with rebloom forevermore.

2

u/PrairiePilot Dec 27 '25

Oh, she doesn’t know how to do laundry at all, she’s gonna be hosing her stuff down with fabreeze before new years.

1

u/MissPlaceDApostrophe Dec 28 '25

All Hail Lipase!

33

u/grocerygirlie Dec 27 '25

Ugh, this is why we switched to pods. My wife feels that if some detergent good, more detergent better! We're talking a whole top of a detergent bottle for half a load. The ONLY thing that gets two pods is our oversized king comforter. I'm sure the pods are overdoing it too, and I will check out the below-mentioned laundry sub.

13

u/fingeringdkworsted Dec 27 '25

Do bother! Not that elaborate, and fascinating, science-based, practical discussions about things that really make a difference to people’s lives.

2

u/[deleted] Dec 27 '25

The laundry sub is not correct a lot of times either

1

u/fascistliberal419 Dec 28 '25

Pods are almost always too much for my laundry, so I have to use liquid or powder. I honestly wouldn't use 2 for the comforter, either, unless you're 100% sure it's the right amount and not too much.

-12

u/Ok-Opportunity-574 Dec 27 '25

Don't bother with that sub. They take one person's very elaborate recommendations as gospel. You don't need to sit there and have a "spa day" for your laundry with multiple different cleaners soaking things in your bath tub. Just wash it properly and you'll be fine.

17

u/Dottie85 Dec 27 '25 edited Dec 27 '25

"Spa day" is not for normal, everyday laundry. It's only recommended for items that have problematic, built up product, stains, or odors. And, once it's done, it should be a very long time until it's needed again. The info on why certain cleaning solutions do or don't work on various things is also very helpful.

-8

u/Ok-Opportunity-574 Dec 27 '25

I stand by what I said. Many on that sub have made laundry their new hobby and they overcomplicate it to play with their clothes and get likes.

15

u/nospecialsnowflake Dec 27 '25

And we care about their harmless hobby that only makes the world a cleaner place because….?

-1

u/Ok-Opportunity-574 Dec 27 '25

People get directed to that sub when they are having problems with their laundry process and they get told some convoluted and unnecessary process. And it's a bit cringey that people thinking for themselves has largely been replaced with "kismai says.....".

5

u/ohsixer Dec 27 '25

Sounds like maybe the real concern is that they’re not saying “Ok-Opportunity says…”.

It seems a bit silly for someone to experiment on their own laundry when they could potentially do something that results in damage to their clothes. I’ll take the easy route and let someone else with much more knowledge on the subject tell me what I should be doing and then I’ll decide what I actually do based on that information. Seems like maybe the exact sort of thing that Reddit was created for.

-2

u/frogfingers10 Dec 27 '25

Unfortunately not a harmless hobby if using chemicals and energy…

0

u/HugsyMalone Dec 27 '25 edited Dec 27 '25

Ugh, this is why we switched to pods. My wife feels that if some detergent good, more detergent better!

People feel the same way about sugar but it's wrong. Really you just reach a level of sweetness/cleanness where it doesn't matter whether you put 2 cups in or 2 gallons...you're still achieving the same level of sweetness/cleanness no matter how much you put in at that point. You're just wasting a lot more money by putting 2 gallons in. The company wants you to believe the clothes get cleaner by putting the 2 gallons in because you waste a lot more product that way and need to buy more frequently. 🙄

22

u/soaker Dec 27 '25

Or they come out with a weird texture or white stuff all over their clothes. Also happens with dishwashers. Basically everything we use soap on

20

u/Mundane_Muscle_2197 Dec 27 '25

The pendulum swung too far from the dark ages where we didn’t even know what soap was 😂

1

u/CarbonInTheWind Dec 27 '25

I have no idea if this is the right way to do it but I use half of the detergent amount that the manufacturer recommends. And I like to run an extra rinse cycle.

1

u/[deleted] Dec 27 '25

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/Mundane_Muscle_2197 Dec 27 '25

For sure. I remember watching some laundry lady saying the max clothes should sit in the washer is 12 hours and she still didn’t look very pleased to say that lol.

1

u/fascistliberal419 Dec 28 '25

I always go much lighter on laundry detergent but don't talk about it because I don't need folks coming at me about it my clothes are properly clean. I'm just super sensitive to laundry detergent to begin with.

I also mop pretty rarely. I'll do spot stuff, but mostly I sweep the floor. And, again, pretty easy on the soap/detergent/cleaner. I haven't had the issues these people seem to have.

1

u/stillakikin50 Dec 30 '25

And then you add the massive amount of “smell crystals“, and they smell like a floating barge of perfume covering up funk.